Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 7
May 18, 2022
What the Hookup Culture and Purity Culture Have in Common
Sheila here!
Today I’m proud to turn the blog over to Sam Jolman, a licensed counselor in Colorado who is passionate about promoting a healthy idea of sexuality to Christian men especially. He sent me this excerpt from a longer piece he’s working on about developing a Christian sexual ethic, and I thought the insight was amazing and worth sharing.
As we’ve been talking about attachment theory this month, I see so much overlap here. We’ve taught ourselves not to FEEL–to avoid. And we can never really attach to our spouse unless we learn to let ourselves feel.
Sheila Wray Gregoire“It’s always nice,” said a college student to professor Lisa Wade, “to have a clean, emotionless hookup.”
Lisa is the author of American Hookup, a whole book dedicated to deciphering the casual sex culture on college campuses.
She writes that possibly the most essential rule to hook up culture is this: Don’t feel it.Whatever you do on your hookup—from making out to oral to intercourse with anyone from a friend to a stranger—make sure it does not move you. Wade calls it compulsory carelessness. As another student said, make it “…fast, random, no-strings-attached sex.” (p. 135). Hooking up should bring no emotions and mean nothing so that it’s no big deal.
Emotions are talked about like an STD. You don’t ever want to catch feelings.
In her book Girls & Sex, Peggy Orenstein writes:
Catching feelings meant developing an emotional attachment and was, for many girls, something to protect against when hooking up, just as they would guard against catching herpes or chlamydia.
Peggy OrensteinDon’t feel it.
It’s such a bizarre endeavor, an attempt to stop something that seems implicit in the experience of sex itself. Why would you not want to feel it? The body and heart are wired for its pleasure. But then the whole culture would collapse on itself. Hookups wouldn’t work anymore. They would be too moving and invoke too much care and connection to one person. That would be to admit its power over you.
The only way to accomplish this is through alcohol. As Peggy Orenstein points out, “Hookups aren’t just lubricated by drinking; they are dependent on it.” (p. 117) It turns out, when it comes to sex, it’s really hard to make it not matter without some help. In the words of one freshman girl, “Being sober makes it seem like you want to be in a relationship. It’s really uncomfortable.” (p. 119)
Andrew, a college freshman put it this way to Peggy Orenstein,
The sex can feel like two people having two very distinct experiences. There’s not much eye contact. Sometimes you don’t even say anything. And it’s weird to be so open with a stranger. It’s like you’re acting vulnerable, but not actually being vulnerable with someone you don’t know and don’t care very much about. It’s not a problem for me. Its just—odd. Odd, and not even really fun. (p. 78)
Peggy OrensteinAndrew can’t admit he struggles with it. He’s following the rules.
Whatever might be said about purity culture— the churches failed attempt at imagining and instilling a strong sexual ethic in our youth— this could be its best summary statement: Don’t feel it.If it’s sexual desire, you simply cannot trust it.
If you’re a woman, you probably weren’t being modest enough and need to be afraid of tempting a man.
If you’re a man, your desire is probably lust and needs to be confessed and controlled so you don’t become a monster.
Yesterday, in a counseling session, a man said to me, “Growing up in church, you’re trained to feel that all sexual desire is awful and you’re not supposed to feel anything.” This man is laboring to find his body again after suffering the toll of purity culture in his youth. If that weren’t enough, he also suffered sexual abuse within the church. But because we don’t talk about sex, he has only recently begun to name and grieve this pain.
One man wrote to author Sheila Wray Gregoire about the popular sexual purity book Every Man’s Battle, “I can’t say loud enough how much this book made me believe that I was going to grow up and be a monster.”
Purity culture doesn’t go away once you get married. It just changes.For men, sex becomes a need you must quickly get met by your wife so it doesn’t become lust or an affair. And if you’re a woman, well, there’s really no room for you to want anything. Sex is a duty you need to fulfill to keep your husband from stumbling. Remember, “Don’t deprive your spouse,” is the most important verse on sex in the Bible, which somehow still isn’t about you. In all of this, there is no room for the play of actual sexual desire.
All of this is accomplished with a deep moral fear. Purity culture holds that you actually have purity before God that you need to obsessively keep. It equates purity with hyper virginity. Do not even think sexual thoughts. And it’s all driven by a deep and abiding moral fear. This isn’t the knee shaking wonder that people experience before God or an angelic visitor and are reassured, “Don’t be afraid.”
Purity cultures really wants you to stay afraid.And it works well at shutting people down. Psychologist and sexual abuse expert Dan Allender, in The Wounded Heart, points out that fear and arousal are competing experiences in the body and cannot be reconciled together. They are not meant to be together. And fear will win out.
What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?What if the messages that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these toxic teachings?
It's time for a Great Sex Rescue. Buy it on Amazon! Where Else Can I Buy It? Hookup culture uses alcohol. Purity culture uses fear. But the goal is the same: Don’t feel it.Don’t let your body “…love what it loves,” in the words of Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese. From wildly different values, both cultures hold that we can actually stop ourselves from feeling it. We can be sexual and not be moved. Like a pinned wrestling match, it’s an attempt at having power over the force of human sexuality.
It’s an arrogant power. It carries no reverence for human sexual design. “Saying we can have sex without emotions is like saying we can have sex without bodies,” says Lisa Wade. So the only way to accomplish this then is through turning off your body. Shutting it down. Numbing it out. Hating it, even.
In reality, the only thing getting turned off is the connection to your body.Your body is still there, but you’ve disconnected from it. And this traumatizes people immensely. We weren’t meant to live separate from our bodies.
“The price for ignoring the bodies messages,” writes trauma expert Bessel VanderKolk in The Body Keeps the Score, “is being unable to detect what is truly dangerous or harmful for you and, just as bad, what is safe or nourishing.” (p. 99). This distrust and dissociation of the body leads to putting people in real crisis.
As coauthor Rebecca Lindenbach wrote in the Great Sex Rescue, about her experience of purity culture, “My body became the problem… My body is so dangerous that it can kill boys’ spiritual lives.” Another woman wrote, “I wasn’t a person, a human, a woman, a sister… I was a walking talking collection of tempting body parts.” Can you hear the disembodiment?
Yesterday, I also sat with a woman who wept, “I can’t even see myself naked and not flinch.” She was taught repeatedly in Purity Culture to not arouse a man with her body. And even now in marriage, she cannot relax into her own body and enjoy the arousal she brings her husband, nor her own arousal.
Hookup culture isn’t faring much better.According to American Hookup, one in three college students reports that their hookups were traumatic or difficult to handle.
Let’s be clear that the suffering is not equal between men and women. Writers for both cultures expose something called the orgasm gap—the nearly 40-50% difference in frequency of male orgasm to female orgasm. Research shows that this is not a biological difference but a purely social construct. There is not a value on mutuality or female pleasure altogether.
It seems to arise from the darker patriarchal value on male pleasure, where male drive dominates and women’s responsibility is to satisfy. It plays the stereotypes that men are strong and women are attractive.
As mutual pleasure falls away, so does consent.In The Great Sex Rescue, the researchers found that women who believe the tenants of purity culture, are 79% more likely to have sex out of obligation and 59% less likely to experience arousal. To her body, obligation sex mirrors abuse. As Peggy Orenstein put it, “It’s the right men feel to sexual pleasure, how dejected and even potentially angry they become when denied it.” (p. 80, Boys & Sex).
When men are taught that sex is an uncontrollable need, we know why.
Both cultures are guilty of fostering this more insidious rape culture against women, which Lisa Wade describes as, “a set of ideas and practices that naturalize, justify, and glorify sexual pressure, coercion, and violence.” (p. 206).
All of this strips sexual experience of the wonder and pleasure and reverence it’s meant to hold.“When our senses become muffled, we no longer feel fully alive,” said Bessel Vanderkolk, about being disconnected from our bodies. And when sensuality goes, so does our sex. Or here is how one junior said it to Peggy Orenstein,
I’ve had two one-night stands in college, and both of them have left me feeling empty and depressed, I have no idea what I gained from those experiences other than being like, ‘Yeah, I had sex with someone.’ There were no feelings of discovery or pleasure or intimate connection, which are really the things that I value. (p. 99)
Peggy Orenstein The solution is the same: We must return to our bodies.We must learn to live with the inherent vulnerabilities of being a person in a body—especially a sexually alive person. Yes, sex is powerful and it can be a lot to let it bowl us over and undo us.
But if we return to our bodies, we get back our sensuality.
A woman wrote to Sheila Wray Gregoire, “I finally understood that sex was a God-sanctioned way to experience a complete, ecstatic loss of control mixed with intense, overwhelming pleasure. And it completely blew my mind.”
Even in the hookup culture people are recognizing the difference being fully present makes. Lisa Wade found that her students who engaged in sober sexual experience had very different experiences too. “They talked about having sex while sober in these reverent tones, like it was an amazing unicorn: it was meaningful in a way that drunk sex was not.” (p. 117)
When we allow ourselves to be truly vulnerable–as commitment in marriage facilitates–we usher in this returning. If we forsake our numbing shame and fear and drugs, we get back our play and our risk and our openness and our pleasure. We can truly know another and be known. We get back the awe that’s mean to make us grateful for being sexual beings. We can be changed by our sexuality, if we feel it.
So add this to your sexual ethic: Make sure everyone is feeling it.
Sam is a professional therapist with over 15 year of experience in narrative focused trauma care. He specializes in men’s issues, couples counseling, and sexual abuse recovery. He writes regularly for his blog on topics of sexuality, spirituality, and mental health. He loves helping people heal and find freedom amidst the plots of their lives.
He lives in Colorado with his wife and three young sons, the people that inspire his writing and ideas the most. Together, in their pop up camper, they are exploring the best camping spots in Colorado. Sam goes to therapy, mountain bikes, and can be found trying to catch his breath on the floor of his local CrossFit gym.
Find him on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Sam Jolman
What do you think? Have we been taught not to feel? How can we overcome this? Let’s talk in the comments!
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May 17, 2022
On Michelle Duggar’s Signature and the Infantilization of Women in Fundamentalist Christianity
I noticed something that I shared on social media yesterday, and I thought it was worth a super quick post because I’m curious what my commenters think (and there were great comments on Facebook yesterday!).
As you all likely know, Josh Duggar was convicted of possession of child sexual abuse materials (I hope that it becomes normal to call it that instead of child porn; let’s all adopt the term like the Brits already have!), and will be sentenced on May 25.
His mother Michelle and his wife Anna, as well as some family friends, sent letters to the court in support of him.
To be clear–I’m very upset about Michelle’s letter and Anna’s letter. In no way do they admit that Josh did anything wrong. They seem to think that the fact that he blended in to the community means that he should get a pass at looking at materials which depicted the torture of children (and I’ll leave it at that).
Much has been said about that. But I just want to draw attention to something else.
I’ve been staring at this part of Michelle Duggar’s letter to the judge in support of her son Josh for a while, and thinking about it for a few days:
Michelle Duggar is a 55-year-old woman writing an official letter to a judge–and she doesn’t use a signature.She prints her name and puts a “heart” over the i. This is how 12-year-old girls doodle.
She also seems to have perfected a “sing-song”, childish voice.
Have the Duggar women been raised to stay child-like? To never really grow up and take responsibility? Been so sheltered that they don’t even understand sexual abuse?
I just can’t get over this signature and I keep thinking about what it means.Does this give us clues about why Michelle and Anna aren’t able or willing to see the truth about Josh? They’ve been so infantilized that Anna can’t picture actually raising her family alone? That they can’t picture what child sexual abuse material may even mean? That they’ve been so taught to not question the men that they can’t believe the men would do anything wrong?
I mean, what post-menopausal woman would sign a letter like that?
Why are women rewarded for staying child-like? And does this creep anyone else out besides me?
I just find it very strange, and I’m wondering if anyone else does too, and what you all think it means about fundamentalist Christianity!
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Sheila Wray Gregoire Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
Sheila is determined to help Christians find BIBLICAL, HEALTHY, EVIDENCE-BASED help for their marriage. And in doing so, she's turning the evangelical world on its head, challenging many of the toxic teachings, especially in her newest book The Great Sex Rescue. She’s an award-winning author of 8 books and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila works with her husband Keith and daughter Rebecca to create podcasts and courses to help couples find true intimacy. Plus she knits. All the time. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts The 5 Love Styles and the Attachment Styles DanceMay 11, 2022 | 18 Comments
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May 16, 2022
A 7 Point Plan for the Church to Care for Victims, not Support Abusers
I want to start this morning with the story that got me thinking in this direction, and then propose 7 guidelines for how we, as Christians, handle taking sides when abuse is made public.
Yesterday I was on my feet too much and threw my back out. So after dinner I headed to bed and lay flat on my back and needed something to do. I decided to watch something on Netflix that I knew Keith wouldn’t like, since it was hard to watch something together with me in that position. I found a documentary called “Our Father” about a case I had read about a few years ago–Dr. Don Cline, a fertility doctor in Indiana, had used his own sperm without telling women countless times, and the resulting half-siblings had found each other through DNA testing on ancestry.com.
So far there are 90 half-siblings, but that’s only the ones who have tested. I imagine there are far, far more.
What made it even worse is that not only did Dr. Cline use his own sperm when he told the women it was donor sperm that would only be used two or three times; he substituted his own when a husband’s sperm was available. Many of the half-siblings did not even know that the father’s sperm hadn’t been used until the DNA testing.
And, to top it all off, most of this took place in the early 80s before frozen sperm was used, so you needed “fresh” sperm–like within the last hour. So the doctor would “produce” the sperm in the next room while the woman waited, not knowing what he was doing just down the hallway.
Those are the basic facts (and you can read more about it in the Atlantic story).
What interested me about “Our Father”, though, was the thread of evangelicalism that was woven through the whole documentary.The doctor had Bible verses cross-stitched all over his rooms, including Jeremiah 1:5:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart; Jeremiah 1:5(a)
He used that verse to tell the half-siblings, once they discovered each other and discovered what had happened, that it was all okay because God had planned them into existence.
He never apologized. He never took responsibility for what he did. Instead, he portrayed himself as a saviour, someone who actually gave these women babies who wanted them so badly.
The only thing the state could ever charge him with was obstructing justice by lying to authorities.He was given a suspended sentence and fined $500.
But at his trial so many members of his church submitted character reference letters.
The documentary interviewed one member of the church who stayed anonymous, and while he acknowledged that what Dr. Cline had did was bad, he also said that we knew that Cline was forgiven, and that all of this had already been taken care of by Jesus.
That’s the juxtaposition I couldn’t get over: insistence that Cline was forgiven at the same time as so many were in absolute turmoil over what he had done.It was classic DARVO (the method abusers use to excuse themselves): They were reversing victim and offender by painting Cline as the victim. He had been forgiven; so now everyone else had to forgive him, and what was wrong with them that they were still harping on this?
And they were portraying Cline as this pillar of the community simply because he was a well-known doctor and was an elder in the church who used to baptize new believers.
Do church people have no discernment?
The logic of his fellow church members went like this: “He was actually doing a service for these women because donor sperm back then was really hard to get (since it had to be collected fresh, right when she was ovulating). Sometimes the donor sperm just wasn’t available, and he didn’t want to disappoint these women. So he used his own.”
Like they were painting him as a selfless hero!
And let’s remember that he did this even when the husband’s sperm was available, fresh, and right there.
By doing this, these church members were spitting in the faces of the victims. They besmirched the name of Christ. As one of the victims, who was Catholic, said, “you don’t get to use the name of my God to justify what you did to me. You don’t get to use God.” Yep.
You may also enjoy:10 reasons rushing forgiveness ruins intimacy My thoughts on what we should do about publicly defending someone who has done something wrongI would like to propose a new standard that we use before we, as Christians, publicly defend a friend, colleague, or someone that we respect, when they are accused of abuse or wrongdoing of some kind.
1. Always speak to the victims tooBefore you say anything publicly, talk to the other side. So often we only talk to the perpetrator, and they can defend themselves in all kinds of ways and spin the story. But you won’t know the whole story until you also talk to the victims.
2. Make sure that the perpetrator has done everything they can to reconcile, including apologizing and making restitutionIf the perpetrator has not apologized to the victims, and if they have done nothing to make restitution, then they aren’t to be defended yet. Think of Zacchaeus, whom Jesus brought back into the fold in Luke 19:1-10. He was a tax collector who had stolen a lot from his neighbors. When he encountered Jesus and was changed, he gave away half of what he had to the poor, and paid back what he stole 4 times over. That’s called restitution.
3. Make sure the perpetrator has been up front and honest.If there has been a pattern of truth coming out in drips and drabs–like he admits a bit of something, but only a bit, until something else comes out, and then he admits a bit more–then you cannot assume that the truth is actually out.
In Dr. Cline’s case, he first said that there weren’t more than 10 children, then more than 20, then more than 50. There are 90 at the current count, but it’s likely much, much more.
Unless the perpetrator has confessed to MORE than what can be proven, it’s unlikely the perpetrator has actually owned up to everything he or she did, because usually more was done than was actually discovered.
4. Make the victims’ well-being the focusWhen we know someone, we naturally worry about them and want them to be okay. We know their family, and we see the toll that this coming out in the open is having on them.
Often the victims just look like an angry mob trying to cancel someone. They may have substance abuse issues, or they may not be as upper middle class as the perpetrator. But the thing is often these substance abuse issues and problems stem from being victimized in the first place. And often victims are chosen because they don’t have the same support systems.
No matter how much you care about the perpetrator, the well-being of the victim should be the main consideration.
5. Do not advocate for leniency unless the victims want itMaybe what the victims really need is justice. And if the perpetrator were really repentant and understood what they did, they would be willing to accept the consequences of their actions.
The victims should guide what punishment or consequences are given, and we should not ask for less. And that means encouraging civil authorities to be involved when appropriate! Do not treat abuse like internal matters, or say that the church should keep things inside. No, when civil laws have been broken, then civil authorities should be involved and we should all cooperate.
6. Care for the spiritual needs of the perpetratorYour focus for the perpetrator should not be to get them off the hook, but instead to shepherd them towards a deeper relationship with God, which will mean repentance and restitution, and acceptance of justice. You do not have to make life easy for them, but you can still be with them to talk, to pray, to guide. That accountability may ultimately mean, however, that they are expelled from a congregation if they fail to own up to what they did. And be aware that abusers often say all the right words without doing any real change. If they aren’t owning up to it, don’t keep meeting with them.
And you can help their family deal with this too, with practical help if necessary (remembering that supporting the victims is still the #1 focus).
7. Remember that trust is rebuilt over time.Finally, when someone has abused their power in some way, and restoration looks like it could be in the cards (it often will never be!), remember that we need one more thing first: time. Before restoration is even considered, all six of the previous points have to have been met: the abuser has to admit everything they did willingly, and tried to make restitution in whatever way possible; the victim has to steer the process and must be supported. But even then we still must give this time.
Especially with spousal abuse, you don’t know if someone has changed just overnight. If they have really repented, they’ll be willing to wait to show it in their character. We’re supposed to be wise as serpents. It’s okay to wait and see.
And remember too that restoration doesn’t mean they necessarily get back what they had before. Some sins disqualify you from church leadership forever. Some sins may mean the marriage should never, ever be restored. We need wisdom here!
I am so sick of hearing stories where the church stands up for the abuser.I’ll see stories of people who have done horrendous things, and the church shows up in the courtroom to support the perpetrator, and no one is there to support the victim. Doug Wilson is famous for doing this for pedophiles in the church he runs in Moscow, idaho, but there are countless stories of it. Julie Roys recently wrote about how John MacArthur and his church supported a pedophile, even after he was convicted, and excommunicated the pedophile’s wife instead.
The Together for the Gospel conference was famous for supporting pastor C.J.Mahaney, even after he was credibly accused of covering up child sexual abuse, and ignored the victims.
And the SBC has allowed those who abuse to stay in the pulpit, while they’ve for decades refused to be held accountable for abuse.
How about next time abuse happens, the church shows up at the courtroom for the victims, too? How about the victim be the focus?
If we want to look like Jesus, that’s what we’ll do. Because otherwise we just look like monsters.
Dr. Cline’s church looked even worse to me than Dr. Cline. There will always be evil narcissists. There will always be sociopaths. But the church doesn’t have to support them.
This shouldn’t be that hard.
What do you think? Have you seen a church support the abuser, or cover up abuse, rather than support the victim? How can we change the focus? Let’s talk in the comments!
Sheila Wray Gregoire Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
Sheila is determined to help Christians find BIBLICAL, HEALTHY, EVIDENCE-BASED help for their marriage. And in doing so, she's turning the evangelical world on its head, challenging many of the toxic teachings, especially in her newest book The Great Sex Rescue. She’s an award-winning author of 8 books and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila works with her husband Keith and daughter Rebecca to create podcasts and courses to help couples find true intimacy. Plus she knits. All the time. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Sexual Pleasure: Why Equality of Effort Won’t Get Us ThereMay 10, 2022 | 25 Comments
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May 13, 2022
On Modesty: We Shouldn’t Sacrifice Teen Girls’ Well-Being for Adult Men’s Comfort
Read through the prophets, and you’ll hear the judgment against nations that sacrifice their kids to Molech, or make children “walk through the fire.”
Children are precious. Children must not be used to assuage adults in any way.
Children’s well-being matters.
Okay, let’s fast forward now to today, and look at the conversation around modesty.We’ve got the first round of edits for our mother-daughter book due on May 18, and Rebecca and I are editing away. But one of the big findings in She Deserves Better (I can’t wait until it releases next year!) is that as bad as you all thought the obligation sex message was in our findings for The Great Sex Rescue, the modesty message is just as bad, if not worse.
The effects of telling a girl that she shouldn’t be a stumbling block for boys; that she owes it to the men around her to cover up–it’s truly terrible.
This hurts girls.
It lowers self-esteem, both now and into adulthood. It reduces future marital satisfaction. It reduces future orgasm rates. It kills libido. It’s just plain bad.
Now, on Fridays I like to post some things that have been happening on social media this week, and I want to focus my update on modesty.First, earlier this week I recorded an Instagram live where I talked about Tuesday’s post–about how it isn’t being unfair to ask men to pay attention to women’s pleasure during sex. It was actually one of my best lives–you can listen here:
View this post on InstagramSee it on Instagram
In that live I made a joke about a new rule that I wanted people to adopt, and people asked me to create a graphic for it they could share. So I did!
I left this caption on it:
If a man says that all men lust, then he’s saying that HE lusts.If he says that yoga pants cause men to stumble, he’s saying that yoga pants cause HIM to stumble.
He is saying that he has the same mindset as a predator. That doesn’t mean he is a predator; but do you want to take the chance?
Don’t let your teenage daughters baby-sit at his house.Don’t be alone with him.Warn other women about him.Some may say: But women should take steps to not cause men to stumble. EXCEPT our surveys of almost 30,000 women now show definitively that these messages do real harm to women. They lower libido; they lower orgasm rates; they make marriage worse.
Women shouldn’t be hurt because of men’s sin.
And men? These messages hurt men too. Our surveys found they result in worse marriages for men too.
So let’s teach our sons that noticing is not the same as lusting. That seeing a beautiful woman does not mean you’ve lusted after her.
Most of the men in our survey who said they struggled with lust actually didn’t show any signs of it. They were carrying shame for NOTICING–and this needs to stop too.
Let’s teach our boys that it is possible to think a woman is pretty and still treat her as fully in the image of God.
In fact, it’s possible to think a woman ISN’T pretty and still treat her as fully in the image of God!
Let’s focus on the whole person, and not the body parts. It’s okay to notice beauty; it isn’t okay to objectify.
And when men do–let’s start seeing that as a red flag. Maybe then all of this would stop.
Yesterday was dominated by discussions about this on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Here’s just one message I received on Instagram:
I distinctly remember being 13 years old and sitting on the front row in church. I was wearing a knee length khaki skirt. During the service I put my cardigan over my legs cause I was cold. Thought nothing of it…until after the service one of the 60 something year old ministers came up to me and thanked me for covering my legs “cause it’s a distraction for the men up front”. I knew it made me feel uncomfortable to hear him say that…but of course at 13 I didn’t really know why and didn’t have the age nor experience to call that out as abusive and harmful. Every single friend I have in the church has had similar experiences. Every. Single. One.
Think about that: she’s an adult now. And she still vividly remembers this experience. She knows what colour the skirt was. She knows she was cold. She knows how she felt.
And every single one of her friends could tell a similar story.
This is what our survey showed. These messages, when given to teen girls, do terrible, terrible harm that lasts a lifetime unless it is debunked (and please read The Great Sex Rescue to start unravelling it!)
What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?What if the messages that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these toxic teachings?
It's time for a Great Sex Rescue. Buy it on Amazon! Where Else Can I Buy It? Now here’s where things get bad: Many men were arguing yesterday that DESPITE the harm done to girls, they should still cover up.Especially on Twitter, I had rather polite interactions with men who seemed like totally reasonable guys, explaining that we were supposed to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper, and men were visual and do lust, and so women and girls should dress accordingly.
When I said, “if we’re to be a sister’s keeper, and if we know this message does harm, then when does she get to matter?”, the response from several was, “that’s certainly sad, and we don’t want that to happen, but it needs to be understood how men are.”
So once again–men’s comfort matters more than women’s well-being.Please, remember what we found.
When girls are taught this, they have:
lower orgasm rateslower libidomore sexual painworse marriageslower self-esteem (which leads to other negative outcomes)Yes, the modesty message was tied to vaginismus, too.
So we’re totally okay with women having difficulty orgasming, experiencing sexual pain, having more emotional turmoil in their life, not experiencing the gift of sex to the fullest–as long as men are protected from cleavage?
And let’s remember that these messages hurt men too!I mean, the fact that the messages hurt women should be enough, but obviously it isn’t for many. So let’s remember that teaching boys that “all men struggle with lust, it’s every man’s battle” hurts men in the long-run as well. You can see the results in our book The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex, but it led to worse sex and worse marriages for men too.
I had another man on Facebook tell me that if pastors don’t understand that noticing and lusting aren’t the same thing, we shouldn’t ostracize them for teaching on modesty wrong.His logic was: Following my rule would just shame these pastors, and we should instead educate them.
But here’s my question:
How many more girls have to be hurt until they matter most? When does girls’ well-being get to be the focus? When do we get to care about girls?
When do we get to talk about the harm done to girls without hearing, “BUT THE MEN!”
I remember having this exact conversation with a very, very big name marriage author before The Great Sex Rescue came out. He agreed with everything in the book except our take on lust. He felt that all men DID struggle with lust, and women needed to understand that and adapt to it. And when I kept pushing him, saying that “this message actually HURTS women”, he said that was too bad, but it was the truth.
Except it’s not the truth. As we found in our surveys of men, all men do NOT struggle with lust, and about half of those who think they do appear to be struggling with noticing rather than lusting. Only about half of men actually struggle with lust. So a heck of a lot don’t, and we should stop presenting this like it’s normal.
I guess I’m just sad today because it seems that no matter how much data I share about the harm done to girls, I get so many men telling me it’s sad, but let’s remember the men….
How about we remember the 13-year-old girl in the khaki skirt trying to keep warm who was shamed by an elder and still remembers all the details a lifetime later?
Let’s stop sacrificing girls like her to Molech. Please.
I want to share another message I received yesterday about the “all men struggle with lust” message.
Just before I go, I thought this was important to mention too.
A woman who had had abusive relationships before she married a good guy wrote:
Someone gave us the every man and every woman’s battle books as a wedding gift.
I was horrified at what I was reading because, again, it was solidifying this idea that men can’t be trusted. In the toxic relationship I had been in before, some of the emotional abuse had involved negatively comparing me to other women. I was extremely sensitive to how I would never measure up and was always threatened by anyone that my husband might see and lust after. It was miserable for me and it’s been miserable for my husband.
As I read the chapter in The Great Sex Rescue about wondering if my spouse only has eyes for me, I sat and cried. Part of me feels so sad when I look back and see how these damaging messages have affected me as a person. The rest of me just feels anger that this is what the church and Christian media has been teaching. I sat down with your book and my husband last night and we read through that chapter together.
I apologized to him for how my incorrect thinking and view of him has affected him as my husband and us as a couple. As he shared his heart and experienced through the years, he got emotional too. I asked him to help me as I begin changing what I always thought was true. We are beginning to work out what that’s going to look like for us and what we want to change. It’s going to take work, but I so desperately want to be free of the ideas and beliefs that have caused so much damage.
Please, let’s stop sacrificing women and children to Molech.
Please.
How can we make it so teen girls matter? How can we stop sacrificing girls? How do we institute my “rule”? Let’s talk in the comments!
Sheila Wray Gregoire Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
Sheila is determined to help Christians find BIBLICAL, HEALTHY, EVIDENCE-BASED help for their marriage. And in doing so, she's turning the evangelical world on its head, challenging many of the toxic teachings, especially in her newest book The Great Sex Rescue. She’s an award-winning author of 8 books and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila works with her husband Keith and daughter Rebecca to create podcasts and courses to help couples find true intimacy. Plus she knits. All the time. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Your Kids May Have Attachment Issues; That Doesn’t Mean It’s Your FaultMay 9, 2022 | 26 Comments
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The post On Modesty: We Shouldn’t Sacrifice Teen Girls’ Well-Being for Adult Men’s Comfort appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.
May 12, 2022
PODCAST: Connection Not Punishment: A Better Way to Parent feat. Wendy Snyder
What if there was a much more effective way of disciplining your kids where you connect with their heart and it actually BUILDS your relationship?
Let’s continue our awesome talk with Wendy Snyder from Fresh Start Families today!
Browse all the Different Podcasts
See the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast
Or, as always, you can watch on YouTube:
Timeline of the Podcast
1:10 Wendy joins the podcast!
2:50 Explaining Gentle Parenting
7:00 Gentle Parenting in action
14:30 Sheila’s experience with a tough child
20:45 Emotions are not the problem
24:00 Example for tween parenting
34:15 Strong willed children
44:30 Wendy walks through parenting advice for Rebecca
55:00 Special update + closing announcements
In fact, as Wendy says, she likely says “no” more often! But the point is that you’re connecting with your child emotionally, building a secure attachment, and parenting out of that relationship.
Just like God works with us! It’s such a better way to parent than spanking, and there’s so much research that this actually works. Christians need to get behind this, because to me, this looks like the very heart of Jesus far more than spanking your kids to force them to do what you want them to do.
This was a REALLY fun conversation, and at the end, Rebecca asked for advice for an issue she’s having with Alex not taking off his shoes when he comes in from playing in the backyard. Wendy gave her some tips, and then Rebecca shows us an update!
Wendy Snyder is a Positive Parenting Teacher & Family Coach, helping families parent with great purpose and intention by creating healthy, respectful & cooperative relationships. She is a Certified Parent Educator of Redirecting Children’s Behavior (RCB) and an advocate for families.
Wendy Snyder
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! Things Mentioned in This Podcast: Wendy Snyder’s Fresh Start Families site plus follow Wendy on Instagram!Fresh Start Family Podcast episode 122 and episode 123Sign up for Wendy’s FREE discipline class! And here’s her course for parents of strongwilled kids, and here’s her logical discipline planning guideThe books Wendy recommended: Jesus the Gentle Parent and Heartfelt DisciplineThe book I recommended: Angry Me by Sandra FederThe Mask You Live in DocumentaryRebecca’s book Why I Didn’t RebelSuport our podcast! Join our Patreon and get access to an awesome Facebook group, merch, and more! And support us by buying Knix bras in Canada or in the U.S.
Do you think gentle parenting can catch on in church? How can we keep this conversation going? Let’s talk in the comments!
The Attachment SeriesPOSTS:The 4 Attachment Styles and what that means in parenting and marriageDo We Have to Tell Kids They're Dirty Rotten Sinners?Your Kids' Attachment Issues Doesn't Mean It's Your FaultOur 5 Love Styles and How This Affects MarriageHow to Start Identifying Your Own Emotions and Learn to Express them (coming soon)How to Help Kids Identify their Emotions and Express Them (coming soon)PODCASTS:PODCAST: Attached to God--how does our attachment style to God affect our relationship with Him?PODCAST: What is connected parenting (last segment of podcast) plus how research around spanking is misused!PODCAST: How can we raise securely attached kids?PODCAST: Our Love Styles with Mila and Kay Yerkovich (coming soon)
Sheila Wray Gregoire Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
Sheila is determined to help Christians find BIBLICAL, HEALTHY, EVIDENCE-BASED help for their marriage. And in doing so, she's turning the evangelical world on its head, challenging many of the toxic teachings, especially in her newest book The Great Sex Rescue. She’s an award-winning author of 8 books and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila works with her husband Keith and daughter Rebecca to create podcasts and courses to help couples find true intimacy. Plus she knits. All the time. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Should Matt Chandler Be Joking about Whipping His Kids? Plus Fill Up Your Podcast Queue!May 6, 2022 | 65 Comments
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May 11, 2022
The 5 Love Styles and the Attachment Styles Dance
I’m a big fan of the book How We Love by Milan and Kay Yerkovich. It’s one of the few Christian marriage books that I can recommend wholeheartedly.
How We Love is based on attachment theory. This month we’re looking at attachment theory and how that affects our marriage, parenting, and relationships. I just interviewed the Yerkovichs yesterday for an upcoming podcast (I think on the 19!), and it got me thinking about how the typical Christian advice in marriage circles doesn’t work. And the reason: It doesn’t address the root of the problem, which is attachment.
So today I’d like to take us on a bit of a journey recognizing how our “love styles” as Milan and Kay call them can create an unhealthy dance pattern in our marriage. When we try to correct it using the typical Christian marriage advice, it can actually make things worse.
Let’s start by looking at love styles.Last week we looked at the four big attachment styles. There’s one more in the literature that isn’t talked about as much–the preoccupied attachment style, where they experience deep anxiety about their relationships. But instead of focusing on how to maintain the relationship the way a typical anxious attachment person does, they focus on their own feelings (often anger).
So that gives us five love styles, that look like this:
Attachment Style –> Love Style
Avoidant Attachment — > The Avoider
Anxious Attachment — > The Pleaser
Preoccupied/Ambivalent Attachment — > The Vacillator
Disorganized Attachment — > The Controller or The Victim
Take the Love Style Test at How We Love! Remember that real intimacy requires connection, and connection requires authenticity, transparency, and vulnerability.We have to be able to share our deepest feelings with the one we love, trust that they will still be there and accept us, and then hear their deepest feelings as well.
If we’re going to be truly known, and we’re going to know our partner, then we need to be able to share ourselves and to receive.
The problem? That requires being in touch with our own feelings, being able to identify them, and being able to let our guard down.
So what happens with these five love styles?I’m going to massively oversimplify here (and you really need to get the book How We Love for the whole picture), but let’s just take a snapshot:
The 5 Insecure Love Styles
The Avoider is more comfortable with tasks than feelings, and while they may want to connect, has no idea what they are actually feeling
The Pleaser wants security in the relationship, and so is very in tune with what their partner is feeling and thinking. They aren’t as in tune with their own feelings, because the aim is to keep the partner around.
The Vacillator also wants security, but it’s expressed differently. They’re very in tune with their own inner life, but often not as in tune with the other’s. They idealize relationships and are often quick to think that something else will fill this gaping hole.
The Controller doesn’t actually want connection, but control. They’re main focus as a child was on survival, and vulnerability is anathema to them. They’re quick to assign blame in relationships.
The Victim doesn’t actually crave connection either, but rather just not being alone. Often very passive, and unable to express their own needs well, they’re quick to accept blame in relationships.
Now imagine that two love styles collide in marriage.In How We Love, Kay and Milan talk about themselves. Kay was an Avoider, and MIlan was a Pleaser. They both loved each other and were very committed to the marriage, but they kept having the same issues over and over again.
Milan would try to connect, asking Kay how she was, trying to have discussions about feelings, wanting to do things together. That pressure would cause Kay to want to withdraw–which would put Milan in a panic and he would pursue even more. And so on, and so on, and so on.
Milan wanted to feel secure by knowing that Kay loved him deeply; Kay wanted to feel secure by knowing that everything was on an even keel and that she was capable of doing her job as a wife. She was focused on task mastery; he was focused on security. The problem? Kay couldn’t “master” the task of feelings because she couldn’t get in touch with them, and Milan interpreted this as rejection.
So what would a couple like Milan and Kay learn if they went to typical Christian marriage advice? Let’s play it out one by one (and we’ll use a different couple’s name this time–say Derek and Lucy):
The 5 Love Languages approachDerek and Lucy eagerly read the 5 love languages and think they have found their solution. Lucy’s love language is acts of service; she wants Derek to help her more around the house. Derek’s love language is words of affirmation; he wants Lucy to praise him more.
So Derek starts taking on more of the mental load of the household, owning the laundry task and the vacuuming task. Lucy notices what Derek is doing and thanks him for it and remembers to praise him for three different things each day.
But Derek still doesn’t feel like he knows what’s going on in Lucy’s heart, and still feels like she’s shutting him out. Lucy still feels suffocated, because while Derek is doing the vacuuming, he’s looking at her like a puppy dog who wants to be scratched behind the ears.
So they turn to the next thing…
The Love & Respect recipe.They go to a love & respect seminar, where they learn that what Derek really needs is respect, to feel as if he’s in charge and to be able to make the decisions in the family. They learn that Lucy desperately desires connection and to be told that she is loved. Derek needs to lead, and Lucy needs to submit.
They try this for three days and it’s a big disaster. Lucy stops telling Derek what she’s thinking, because that would be disrespectful (since a lot of what she was thinking was that Derek was doing things wrong). Now Derek is getting even less of Lucy. But at the same time, Derek starts bringing Lucy home flowers and writing her love notes. Lucy feels even more suffocated; Derek feels even more lonely.
They ditch that, and try…
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So they go to a restaurant with a list of hobbies to talk through. The baby-sitter and the restaurant bill are going to add up to about $100 for the night, but they try not to think about that. This is their marriage, and it’s worth it.
Lucy finds the conversation strained. Derek is excited about every possible hobby they could try together, but none of them feels quite right to her. She’d like to try golfing, but that’s just too expensive. And what she really enjoys doing at the end of a long day is just watching Netflix and cross-stitch, but Derek feels like when she does that she’s turning away from him. So she’s listening to him list off all the things she can do together, and she feels like her dream of having some time to herself is evaporating.
Derek find her lack of enthusiasm depressing. He gets her to agree to going on a hike on Saturday morning with the kids (she refuses any more baby-sitting money) and that actually sounds fun.
And it was! They go, and they genuinely enjoyed spending time together, and the kids genuinely enjoyed it too. They decide rather than dinner dates they’ll try to spend more time as a family in the outdoors (that’s cheaper anyway), but they still need a way to connect, just the two of them. They feel like they’re having more fun, but they still don’t feel like they know each other well. So they try…
Have sex for seven days straight cure.Maybe the problem is just passion! If they had more sex, maybe they’d feel more connected. After all, that’s what Love & Respect said that Derek needed–sex to feel connected. Lucy wonders if she just gave Derek more sex if he’d stop suffocating her all the time.
So they have sex for seven days straight. They do laugh a lot, and Lucy does orgasm regularly, so that’s not an issue.
But it leaves them feeling rather empty. The sex was fun, but Derek feels that Lucy is still walled off. Lucy feels as if she put in all of this effort and Derek still isn’t happy. What’s it going to take for him to just be satisfied with her? Will she never be enough for him?
So they decide to turn to the spiritual…
Remember that marriage is meant to make you holy, not happyThey do a marriage study together that looks at the purpose for marriage; that they are two different people, doing life together, for a bigger purpose in God’s kingdom.
Marriage is meant to refine you, and it’s meant to be a lifelong commitment. It’s meant to show you your weaknesses and to point you to how you can be selfless anyway.
They leave the study feeling even more committed to each other and to God…but a little sadder. They were already committed to each other. They already knew they were in this for the long haul. They were just hoping that marriage wouldn’t be hard their whole lives and that they could overcome this. Instead, they feel like they’re supposed to embrace the fact that it’s hard and celebrate it. They figure this is as good as it’s going to get.
What if there’s another way that gets to the root of the issue?What these five typical Christian marriage cures have in common is that they’re all focused on the marriage relationship. But we enter marriage with our whole histories, and the love styles that we had imprinted as children.
What if, by learning our love styles, we could also learn the path to growth for that particular style? And what if we could help the other grow?
That’s what happened with real-life Kay and Milan, and they’ve been teaching this ever since. I really love this approach to marriage issues, because I think it gets to the heart of what we’re really looking for: healthy connection. It addresses why you, individually, may have difficulty with healthy connection in a different way than your spouse may have difficulty. And it shows how you can overcome these and develop a secure connection with each other instead.
And it’s got nothing to do with gender assumptions, because both genders can have any love style. It’s just about you.
I highly recommend the book, and we’ll be looking this month at how we can put some of those growth tools into practice!
Check it out on Amazon! It really is an awesome book! And I hope it helps reframe some of your recurring marriage issues, too, so that you can deal with the root of it.
What do you think? Let’s talk in the comments!
The Attachment SeriesThe 4 Attachment Styles and what that means in parenting and marriageDo We Have to Tell Kids They're Dirty Rotten Sinners?Your Kids' Attachment Issues Doesn't Mean It's Your FaultOur 5 Love Styles and How This Affects MarriageHow to Start Identifying Your Own Emotions and Learn to Express them (coming soon)How to Help Kids Identify their Emotions and Express Them (coming soon)PODCAST: Attached to God--how does our attachment style to God affect our relationship with Him?PODCAST: What is connected parenting (last segment of podcast) plus how research around spanking is misused!PODCAST: How can we raise securely attached kids? (Coming soon)PODCAST: Our Love Styles with Mila and Kay Yerkovich (coming soon)
Sheila Wray Gregoire Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
Sheila is determined to help Christians find BIBLICAL, HEALTHY, EVIDENCE-BASED help for their marriage. And in doing so, she's turning the evangelical world on its head, challenging many of the toxic teachings, especially in her newest book The Great Sex Rescue. She’s an award-winning author of 8 books and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila works with her husband Keith and daughter Rebecca to create podcasts and courses to help couples find true intimacy. Plus she knits. All the time. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts PODCAST: How to Misuse Statistics for DummiesMay 5, 2022 | 11 Comments
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May 10, 2022
Sexual Pleasure: Why Equality of Effort Won’t Get Us There
I use Tuesdays either to take a day off from writing the blog, or to share something super quick that’s on my mind and I just want to write it out.
I’m hoping this will be super quick–but we’ll see!
Basically, here’s the issue: I’ve had some pushback on different social media platforms and in emails/reviews lately that what we’re calling for in The Great Sex Rescue isn’t fair and isn’t biblical.
Why? Here’s the general argument:
The Bible tells us that we’re EACH supposed to care about the other person. And yet in The Great Sex Rescue Sheila and the other authors make everything the man’s fault. They say he has to pay attention to her in a way that she doesn’t have to pay attention to him. They say that if she doesn’t reach orgasm it’s his fault. It’s always his fault! And yet the Bible says we’re each responsible, and we each should be giving to one another. This book isn’t balanced.
All right, let’s do some basic definitions here.
We can have:
Equality of effortEquality of outcomeSometimes those things may coincide, but often they don’t.
Here’s my question: Which one are we prioritizing? Equality of effort, or equality of outcome?
In the case of sexual pleasure, equality of outcome would mean that both people experience pleasure and reach orgasm.To me, that’s the goal. Both of us are capable of sexual pleasure; both of us were created with a sexual drive; women were created with no refractory period and with a body part that is only for sexual pleasure. So the aim should be that both reach orgasm.
Now, here’s the tricky bit:
Equality of effort usually means that equality of outcome will not be achieved.
Why?
Because the amount of effort that it takes for him to reach orgasm will usually not be enough for her to reach orgasm.And that’s the way our bodies were created.
That’s why we have a 47 point orgasm gap, where 95% of men almost always/always reach orgasm, compared with just 48% of women. When men go into a sexual encounter they’re pretty much guaranteed an orgasm. When women go into a sexual encounter, they’re not.
Men’s bodies were made so that the act of intercourse alone is usually enough to bring on orgasm; women’s bodies were created so that only a minority of women regularly reach orgasm like that. Most need a lot of foreplay first, or they find other routes to orgasm more reliable.
It’s like this: men start off with an orgasm advantage, and women start off with an orgasm disadvantage.
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Tell Me More about It! I Need that Now! If we want equality of outcome, then, it means that men are going to have to put in more effort. That’s just the way it works.That’s not me being sexist. That’s not me putting more of a burden on men. That’s not me letting women off the hook. That’s just the way it works.
Yes, women still need to communicate what they want. Yes, women still need to slow down and allow themselves to enjoy it. Yes, women still need to deal with any trauma in their pasts. Yes, women still need to deal with any negative messaging about sex that they have heard throughout their lives (and The Great Sex Rescue will help with that immensely!).
But for her to reach orgasm, he’s going to have to put in major effort.
One of the problems I had with Tim Keller’s book The Meaning of Marriage revolved around this concept. He writes about how sex was stressful as they were aiming for orgasm, and often they’d both end up disappointed. So instead, they both decided to just focus on what they could give, rather than what they could get.
But as I’ve said before, if they each focus on what they can give, he is still pretty much guaranteed an orgasm, while she is not. In order to orgasm, she actually has to focus on what she can get. She has to practice mindfulness and focus on her own pleasure. That’s why researchers have found that for her to receive pleasure, one of the most reliable indicators is that they’re both focused on her.
It is not unfair to ask the person with the advantage to put in more effort.Does that sound unfair? It might. But again–what’s the aim? Is it equality of effort, or equality of outcome?
If we focus on equality of effort, we can say that we’re each called to be selfless, and that includes women. So if women are selfless and they don’t orgasm, that’s okay, because that’s biblical.
Is that really okay?
Right now men can put in almost no effort and still orgasm, and women are being told, “he needs this. Don’t deprive him.” My message instead is, “Sex was meant for both of you. It’s mutual, intimate, and pleasurable for both. So do what you can to make sure it’s a passionate experience for both of you!”
That may mean he has some work to do. But I’m not the one who put the clitoris where it is. So perhaps the issue isn’t with me, but with God.
And PS: Maybe they need to reread The Great Sex Rescue! Or take the Orgasm Course if this is a real problem. Or read The Good Girl’s/Good Guy’s Guides to understand the sexual response cycle better!
What do you think? Let’s talk in the comments!
Sheila Wray Gregoire Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
Sheila is determined to help Christians find BIBLICAL, HEALTHY, EVIDENCE-BASED help for their marriage. And in doing so, she's turning the evangelical world on its head, challenging many of the toxic teachings, especially in her newest book The Great Sex Rescue. She’s an award-winning author of 8 books and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila works with her husband Keith and daughter Rebecca to create podcasts and courses to help couples find true intimacy. Plus she knits. All the time. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts ATTACHMENT SERIES: The 4 Attachment Styles and What They MeanMay 4, 2022 | 26 Comments
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The post Sexual Pleasure: Why Equality of Effort Won’t Get Us There appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.
May 9, 2022
Your Kids May Have Attachment Issues; That Doesn’t Mean It’s Your Fault
He was only a month old.
We learned when I was about 5 months pregnant about his heart condition, and that things would be very touch and go. We spent the last four months of the pregnancy petrified of what was going to happen, and so scared of losing him.
For the next few months I was in a grieving haze too. We tried to keep Rebecca’s life as normal as possible, keeping her routine as much as possible. Keith took a few weeks off of work and we went to the zoo and some big parks and tried to make some memories with her. But we were a mess.
I became pregnant with Katie just two months after he passed away. I was so scared all through her pregnancy that I would lose her too. And I knew the dangers to her of me trying to make her take her brother’s place. I tried so hard to love her for her (and I think I more or less succeeded). But there was absolutely no way that I did that perfectly.
Rebecca and I have talked about how she missed some developmental milestones between one and two years of age.Maybe she’ll talk about it on a podcast coming up, because she understands developmental milestones better than I do, but the stuff that you’re supposed to have down pat before a year of age she learned with flying colours, and the stuff that you solidify after age two she learned with flying colours, but the stuff between one and two she’s often had issues with, likely because that year was the most stressful of our lives, and Keith and I just weren’t focused on her. We were focused on her brother and we were focused on ourselves.
And really, it couldn’t have been any other way.
The fact that Rebecca’s development and attachment was affected was not my fault.
But that doesn’t mean that it WASN’T affected. And I think part of being a good parent is helping your kids acknowledge where their well-being and their lives may have been messed up, even by things that aren’t your fault.
We live in an imperfect world, which means that no one is going to escape without some sort of attachment issues from childhood.Sometimes that can be due to a parent’s selfishness or maliciousness or laziness, but often it’s not. Often parents are doing the best they can do, but other things come into play.
A sibling’s illness or deathA grandparent’s illness or death right around key developmental times in a child’s lifeThe marriage breaking up and the mom (or dad, if he becomes the primary caregiver) have to deal with the grief of that and the legal fights while also working to support the familyMoney issues mean that primary caregivers work long hours and find themselves exhaustedYour own illness, anxiety, or depressionMarriage issues between the parents even if a divorce doesn’t occur–a parent’s affair; discovery of porn use; even abuseMoving away from your support system and being exhausted and lonely yourselfGoing through outside trauma, like accidents, betrayal, or sexual abuse from those other than the main caregiversAnd I could go on. And on. And on.
Because sometimes life is really, really difficult and it isn’t your fault. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect your kids.
We need to get to a place where we can acknowledge that our kids may have been affected by things we went throughA woman commented on social media last week that my series on attachment, where I went over the four different attachment styles, can shame moms with post-partum depression. That was never, ever my intention, and I certainly don’t want anyone to feel like I am saying that it’s your fault if your child suffered in those days.
What I hope we can do is separate the conversations of attachment styles and attachment injuries from fault.
I mean, think of the trauma that the children from Ukraine are currently going through. That is going to affect them, and that is also not their parents’ fault.
Just because your child has issues that the need to deal with does not mean that we should feel guilty or that we are to blame. Sometimes life just happens.
I think the reason that we feel it’s our fault is this idea that we’re supposed to protect our kids from everything.If something negatively affects them, then, it must be our fault.
Since that’s too horrible to believe, then it’s easier to say, “any discussion of how my stress/job insecurity/divorce/mental illness etc. affected my kids is off limits.”
But part of being a good parent is allowing your child to talk about the things that affected them.I believe that I have raised my girls to be able to do this openly, and not just about Christopher. Keith and I had issues with yelling; we did it far more that I’m proud of. I wasn’t always as organized as I wanted to be, and that certainly affected our daily lives. So many things I can point to where I didn’t do an awesome job.
But you know what? I did good. I wasn’t perfect, but considering our circumstances, I did pretty well indeed.
Are you terrified to give your kids “the talk?”We want to help. So we created The Whole Story: an online video-based course to help parents tell their children about sex, puberty, and growing up.
Let us start those awkward conversations, so you can finish them!
Learn More! Can we celebrate being a good enough parent rather than a perfect parent?One of the big things that differentiates families of emotionally healthy kids with families where they’re not emotionally healthy is the ability to talk about the parents’ mistakes or the children’s pain. Sometimes the children’s pain isn’t even caused by the parents, but think about how many kids who have been the victims of abuse have been pressured to get over it, simply because the parents can’t handle thinking about it anymore and want to put it out of their minds.
Or we’re so focused on our own recovery from substance abuse or mental illness or even a destructive marriage that we can’t talk about what that recovery period may have done to our kids.
Sometimes you’re dealt a really difficult hand. Maybe you yourself had very anxious or avoidant attachment, as we looked at last week. Combine that with marrying someone who is also distant, add serious money issues into the mix, and maybe a grandparent dying, and it’s really a miracle you got through anything at all!
I hope we can simultaneously show grace for ourselves while also noting where our kids may need some repair work, or even just the right to talk about how things affected them.
Think about how often in the Bible a person’s faults are mentioned and talked about, while simultaneously they’re praised for loving God. We don’t need to gloss over the more difficult parts of our lives. The whole point of our walk with Jesus is grace!
My daughter Rebecca is a better mom than I was.And I’m so proud of that! She did so much research on sleep, and if I had done what she has done with her two kids, I would have had so much more energy to be a present parent, especially with Katie. She and Connor have researched teaching emotional regulation, and I can see the difference in the way Alex (who is 2 1/2) processes his emotions. Rebecca had such temper tantrums, and all I knew to do was time outs. They never worked. What she is doing with Alex is so much better! I love watching it.
I hope one day Alex and Vivian will be even better parents than their mom and dad were. And if something happens that throws the family through a loop, I hope they can talk about it openly.
And we need to let go of the fact that our parents had to be perfect too!Sometimes one of the biggest roadblocks to our own growth is that we can’t grow unless we admit that something our parents did, even unintentionally, may have heard us. The idea of admitting they weren’t perfect or made some mistakes is so terrifying and shameful that we instead blame ourselves for our issues, feeling like we are bad, dirty, or shameful. That seems safer than acknowledging our parents may have been wrong.
But admitting that your parents may have done the best they could–or even that they were sometimes selfish or malicious–does not mean that you can’t also be grateful for the things that they did right or that you can’t also love them.
Often it’s hard to talk about attachment styles because it seems like we’re criticizing your parenting, or your parents’ parenting.What I’m hoping we can do this month as we look at attachment is let go of this dichotomy. It can be both/and. Your parents may have made mistakes, and they may still be good parents. You may have made mistakes, and still be good parents.
It isn’t about blame. It’s about understanding.
Because when we understand why we act like we do, then we can start to address some of the unhelpful coping patterns in our lives that are holding us back. We can address some of the attachment injuries that are still affecting us today and stopping us from enjoying awesome relationships.
That all starts with the ability to name what happened.
I hope we can get there; and I hope we can see that my intention in doing this series is not to shame anyone. It’s actually to help free us!
How can we get to the point where we don’t expect ourselves to be perfect parents? How can we talk about our mistakes? Let’s talk in the comments!
The Attachment SeriesThe 4 Attachment Styles and what that means in parenting and marriageDo We Have to Tell Kids They're Dirty Rotten Sinners?Your Kids' Attachment Issues Doesn't Mean It's Your FaultHow to Start Identifying Your Own Emotions and Learn to Express them (coming soon)How to Help Kids Identify their Emotions and Express Them (coming soon)How our Attachment Styles Can Affect our Marriages (coming soon)PODCAST: Attached to God--how does our attachment style to God affect our relationship with Him?PODCAST: What is connected parenting (last segment of podcast) plus how research around spanking is misused!PODCAST: How can we raise securely attached kids? (Coming soon)PODCAST: Our Love Styles with Mila and Kay Yerkovich (coming soon)
Sheila Wray Gregoire Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
Sheila is determined to help Christians find BIBLICAL, HEALTHY, EVIDENCE-BASED help for their marriage. And in doing so, she's turning the evangelical world on its head, challenging many of the toxic teachings, especially in her newest book The Great Sex Rescue. She’s an award-winning author of 8 books and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila works with her husband Keith and daughter Rebecca to create podcasts and courses to help couples find true intimacy. Plus she knits. All the time. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Should We Teach Kids They’re Dirty Rotten Sinners?May 3, 2022 | 44 Comments
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The post Your Kids May Have Attachment Issues; That Doesn’t Mean It’s Your Fault appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.
May 6, 2022
Should Matt Chandler Be Joking about Whipping His Kids? Plus Fill Up Your Podcast Queue!
That metaanalysis of 160,000 children found that spanking was either neutral or negative, but not positive. Like if you parent well in other areas, you can blunt negative effects, but spanking on the whole is a negative thing. And we had Wendy Snyder on to talk about parenting that connects.
And all of this was yesterday. It’s not like we talk about spanking very often. I’ve done so maybe a handful times since I started this blog in 2008.
Which is why I thought it was really funny (ironic?) that the day that that podcast launched, Matt Chandler, megachurch pastor of The Village Church and head of the Acts 29 network, was on the Focus on the Family broadcast making a joke about whipping his kids.
(It’s just after the 15:11 mark):
Anyway, I know it was a joke, but watch how the four men in the room are really laughing about whipping your kids when they don’t want to sit still for family devotions.
I wonder if we can get to the point where we don’t laugh about whipping kids anymore?
A bunch of podcasts I’ve been on recently!
I record about 5 or 6 of OTHER people’s podcasts a week, and I don’t always get the chance to share them! So here are just a few that have launched lately:
Untangled Faith with Amy Fritz (talking about why I revised The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and talking about The Good Guy’s Guide to Great SexPure Desire Podcast–Keith and I join to talk specifically about a healthy view of sex, and about sex addictionsEverything is OK Podcast–I join to talk about The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex! Join me on Instagram as I talk modesty and yoga pants!I try to jump on Instagram when I feel like it and I have a moment (it’s never really planned; if it had to be planned I’d never do it and I’d hate it because I’d feel the pressure and I have enough of that already!) and answer some questions.
Lately it was on modesty, so have a listen! There’s a part 2 that’s in my Instagram video feed as well.
View this post on InstagramFinally, I’ll just leave you with praise for The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex!
This was nice to read…
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Welcome to the The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex and the ALL NEW Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex. Get them NOW!And let's make these the go-to wedding shower gifts!
Order NowWhat do you think? Should we be joking about spanking? Do you have any favorite podcasts I’ve been on (other than Bare Marriage of course!) Let’s talk in the comments!
Sheila Wray Gregoire Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
Sheila is determined to help Christians find BIBLICAL, HEALTHY, EVIDENCE-BASED help for their marriage. And in doing so, she's turning the evangelical world on its head, challenging many of the toxic teachings, especially in her newest book The Great Sex Rescue. She’s an award-winning author of 8 books and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila works with her husband Keith and daughter Rebecca to create podcasts and courses to help couples find true intimacy. Plus she knits. All the time. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts How Do We Make Sure These Two Horrific News Articles Stop Happening?May 2, 2022 | 26 Comments
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May 5, 2022
PODCAST: How to Misuse Statistics for Dummies
But that means that we have to use science well! In the last of our three podcasts with Joanna where we talk stats, we tackle a few more ways that research is often handled poorly, using the research around spanking as one example.
And then we bring on Wendy Snyder from Fresh Start Families to talk about how to use discipline that connects with your child!
Browse all the Different Podcasts
See the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast
Or, as always, you can watch on YouTube:
0:10 Announcements
1:45 “But, I disagree!”
13:00 If you use the data, you have to use the conclusion
19:00 Not understanding math
24:15 Wendy Snyder joins to talk Gentle Parenting
48:45 RQ: My husband uses harsh punishment on our kids!
Two weeks ago we gave a case study of how Josh Howerton misrepresented research and claimed it said things it didn’t say. We looked at how easy it is to jump to false conclusions.
Today we’re looking at a few more ways we can misuse research, including:
1. Saying you “disagree” with a huge studyYour opinion does not trump a very large, well-conducted study. We talked about levels of evidence, with anecdotal data (like your personal experience) being lowest, and meta-analyses and controlled random blind trials being the best. Specifically we were referring to a kerfuffle over the huge meta-analysis about how spanking either has neutral or negative effects that many people were disagreeing with on social media.
2. Quoting the study data but ignoring the study’s conclusions–or omitting some of the data to slant itWe looked at how Emerson Eggerichs did this with Gottman’s work, and how Focus on the Family routinely does this with the results about divorce on kids
3. Misunderstanding basic math and probabilitiesAnd we went through the math of Love & Respect!
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Check them out in the U.S.! Check them out in Canada! What is Gentle Parenting?We then interviewed Wendy Snyder from Fresh Start Families, who has an amazing ministry teaching parents how to connect with your kids as you discipline. We’ll bring her back next week for a whole podcast to talk more about specific scenarios and how to manage them!
Wendy Snyder is a Positive Parenting Teacher & Family Coach, helping families parent with great purpose and intention by creating healthy, respectful & cooperative relationships. She is a Certified Parent Educator of Redirecting Children’s Behavior (RCB) and an advocate for families.
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I then tackled a reader question where a husband wants to use discipline techniques that are actually abusive. Please hear me on this: Protect your kids. This is not about submitting to your husband. This is like being an Esther when there is injustice being done and people are at risk, and stepping up. If that is unsafe to do, please call a domestic abuse hotline. But do not allow your children to be abused if you can help it.
Things Mentioned in This Podcast:Our Patreon! Support us for as little as $5 a month as we work to get our research in peer-reviewed journalsKnix in the U.S. and Knix in CanadaWendy Snyder at Fresh Start Families–plus find Wendy on InstagramThe Gershoff metaanalysis about spankingOur articles on spanking, including Rebecca’s look at the research on spanking and a plea to stop spanking babiesThe problems with the way that Focus on the Family handles research on divorce: Gretchen Baskerville’s article and videoThe Math of Love & Respect and the problems with how Emerson Eggerichs handles probabilitiesOur article this week on the 4 attachment stylesI then tackled a reader question where a husband wants to use discipline techniques that are actually abusive. Please hear me on this: Protect your kids. This is not about submitting to your husband. This is like being an Esther when there is injustice being done and people are at risk, and stepping up. If that is unsafe to do, please call a domestic abuse hotline. But do not allow your children to be abused if you can help it.Things Mentioned in This Podcast:Our Patreon! Support us for as little as $5 a month as we work to get our research in peer-reviewed journalsKnix in the U.S. and Knix in CanadaWendy Snyder at Fresh Start Families–plus find Wendy on InstagramThe Gershoff metaanalysis about spankingOur articles on spanking, including Rebecca’s look at the research on spanking and a plea to stop spanking babiesThe problems with the way that Focus on the Family handles research on divorce: Gretchen Baskerville’s article and videoThe Math of Love & Respect and the problems with how Emerson Eggerichs handles probabilitiesOur article this week on the 4 attachment styles
What do you think? Have you seen people misuse statistics like we’ve talked about? Are you a fan of gentle parenting? Let’s talk in the comments!
The Attachment SeriesThe 4 Attachment Styles and what that means in parenting and marriageDo We Have to Tell Kids They're Dirty Rotten Sinners?How to Start Identifying Your Own Emotions and Learn to Express them (coming soon)How to Help Kids Identify their Emotions and Express Them (coming soon)How our Attachment Styles Can Affect our Marriages (coming soon)PODCAST: Attached to God--how does our attachment style to God affect our relationship with Him?PODCAST: What is connected parenting (last segment of podcast) plus how research around spanking is misused!PODCAST: How can we raise securely attached kids? (Coming soon)PODCAST: Our Love Styles with Mila and Kay Yerkovich (coming soon)
Sheila Wray Gregoire Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
Sheila is determined to help Christians find BIBLICAL, HEALTHY, EVIDENCE-BASED help for their marriage. And in doing so, she's turning the evangelical world on its head, challenging many of the toxic teachings, especially in her newest book The Great Sex Rescue. She’s an award-winning author of 8 books and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila works with her husband Keith and daughter Rebecca to create podcasts and courses to help couples find true intimacy. Plus she knits. All the time. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts On Kissing Before Marriage, Hilarious Reviews, and Horrifying AdviceApr 29, 2022 | 32 Comments
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The post PODCAST: How to Misuse Statistics for Dummies appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.
