61 | Jay Stringer: Listen to the Voice of Desire, part 2

Here is Part 2 of our conversation with Jay Stringer.

Last week Jay released his book, Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow. Moving beyond the singular experience of sexual struggles found in his first book Unwanted, Desire offers a critically important opportunity to better understand the core longings created in every person. To see desire as good, part of how we reflect the image of God. To be curious about our experiences with desire - how it's been encouraged, discouraged, or even prohibited. 

Jay's book explores desire through the five core longings that show up in all of our lives: The desires for wholeness, growth, intimacy, pleasure, and meaning. Through better understanding our relationship to desire, we can live more fully the lives we were created to live.

Jay lives in New York City with his wife Heather and their children.

#jaystringer #unwanted #desire #storywork #sexuality #masculinity #counseling #coaching #gospel #sexualaddiction #sexaddiction #awaken #awakenrecovery #awakenpodcast #whatwereallywant #wwrw #grace #connection #conversation

Jay's website

Jay's books (Amazon)

Holistic Desire website

Transcript

Opening And The Call Of Desire

Jay Stringer 0:00

Desires are beautiful, they're stunning, but they're also haunting. Like I don't know where my life is gonna go in the next eight years. And that's both exciting and deeply haunting to me if I actually pay attention to honoring the desires inside of me and that sense of it is for freedom that you have been set free. Not freedom from sin, not freedom from an unwanted behavior, but what's my freedom for?

Announcer 0:28

Welcome to What We Really Want Conversations about Connection. Settle in and get ready for a great conversation. Let's talk about what we really want.

Greg 0:40

Hey everybody, welcome back to What We Really Want. This is episode 61, and it is part two with Jay Stringer. It's called Listen to the Voice of Desire. By the way, I didn't mention last week, but that episode title actually came from a quote in chapter 14 of the new book Desire. It's a quote from John O'Donohue that says, May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe. So many of us have settled for the safe approach and found it to be unsatisfying. And so then, because of our trauma and our stories and not living the way we were created to live, those desires have gone sideways. And so as we get ready to get into the second part of my conversation with Jay, I wanted to go back to the time that Bobby and Stacy and I had in discussing the episodes and Jay and just things in general, and let you hear a little bit more about that.

Bobby 1:37

Just, you know, thinking about our desires and how those are God given. And we can listen to those to understand what's going on. I remember in in college, I read a book. It's a guy, he he's a he's a seminary professor, Bruce Walkie. It was called Finding the Will of God. But then one of the chapters was about our desires. And he's like, We we know the will of God because he's given us our desires. There's like Psalm 34, where it talks about delight in the Lord and He'll He will give you the desires of your heart. And I remember reading that and I was like, what? Like that was a revolutionary concept for me. Was like, wait, you mean these desires that I have are actually given by God? Because I was always taught you need to be like, you know, put to death your desire. Suppress your desire, put to death your desires. Have they been perverted sometimes and corrupted? Absolutely. But there's still things underneath that are good at the core. There are good things there. And when I listen to it, like you said earlier about listening to your lust, like when I listen to that, it's telling me something.

Stacey 2:41

We were talking this morning about just different words like arousal and sensual. And I said, I don't know how many people would hear those words and only think sexual. And they and they they mean other things. I mean, there's so much more than just the sex. And Jay talks about that a lot in the book. Like there's just so much more than sex as far as related to desire would be the same thing. I think a lot of times desire is like sounds like a sexual thing.

Beyond Sex: Reframing Arousal And Sensual

Greg 3:11

Well, as you're saying that, I'm just thinking about your position as a as a partner who was betrayed and all the work that you've done. There's a time where hearing things like listen to your lust, be curious about your arousal, like you said, would have been incredibly flooding and re-traumatizing and triggering because you had not yet really firmly established safety and stability, which are just those first things that you need restored or or set for partner healing. But once they have, now you can say, okay, this still scares me a little bit because it reminds me of like there wasn't a a differentiation between curiosity and just going and indulging it. But now I realize I actually want him to be curious because in deeper understanding, that's going to be a part of his work in realizing, okay, when I did this, what I was really going after was that and whatever the that is, some form of healthy connection. So but you know, allow it to take some time.

Stacey 4:11

That even Jay would say would be guided by like a professional, like a therapist.

Greg 4:16

Well, even in the conversation, he says it's all about the timing.

Stacey 4:20

Yeah.

Safety, Timing, And Partner Healing

Greg 4:21

There's a lot that, you know, five minutes in, 10 minutes in, 15 might you might hear something that are like, oh wow, that's really touching on something in in internal for me. I want to go back and listen to that again. Same with the book. This is a very d meaty book. I I think I use the term encyclopedic because each one of these desires, the sections on them could have been its own book. And so if we will allow ourselves to take some time and process what you what you read when you get the book, I think it can be really, really helpful. The more time we spend coming to understand what our experiences have been and how they've affected where we are now, I think that's going to be all the better for us in the ongoing work that we're doing. Okay, so let's get back into it. This is part two of my conversation with Jay Stringer, author of Unwanted and the new book Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow. This is episode 61 called Listen to the Voice of Desire Part Two. And the conversation continues right now.

Jay Stringer 5:22

You and I both know like recovery. Sometimes when I work with people who have been in recovery for a really long time, part of what I see on their face is like something is dim. Like the lights have gone out. And so part of that is they come from a family system, a religious tradition where they were taught to suppress their desires. And you can't do that. And so where it ends up playing out is then you get a desire for an unhealthy behavior, an unhealthy coping mechanism, in you know, a secretive thing. And then you begin to indulge into that desire in secret. And then the evidence that comes back to you is my desires must be bad because they only come out in secret. And then you get into recovery and trying to suppress desire and trying to fear that you're always going to be an addict and you're always going to struggle with something. And it's just like you don't have to go through life like that. Like why are you?

Greg 6:26

So many people, I think, are trying to walk through a process of recovery as their provisional self. I mean, that's a phrase that you use in the book. And one of the therapists that's a close friend and staffs are intensive. His name is James Horn, and he gives a whiteboard talk where we we contrast two different ways of relating to our experiences. One is as a human being, one is as a human doing. And when you talk about the provisional self, that's that's what he's calling the human doing. And so so often the problem is not the behavior or the thing that we're trying to do, it's our relationship with it. That's what we've been saying. That's what you're saying so well in this book. And if people are approaching recovery from the standpoint of this is the next strategy that's gonna get me better through the things that I can do, it, you know, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work because it's not getting me any closer to living out of my true self.

A Dense, Research‑Backed Book To Savor

Jay Stringer 7:21

Well said. Yeah. So the provisional self is like a concept that I learned from the Jungian analyst James Hollis, probably from some others as well. But the provisional self is provisional, it's temporary, it's not your real authentic self, but it's something that you had to develop. So when we talk about a persona that comes from the Greek kind of stage mask, and so as a result of our upbringings, as a result of our traumas, we all develop, you know, provisional personality. So when I think about my own life, my dad was a pastor, and my mom was the oldest daughter of Plymouth Brethren missionaries, like so. We were a deeply religious family, and so image management was kind of everything. Sure. And so my older sister was the classic rebel. She did all the things that pastors' daughters were not supposed to do. My older brother was more the philosophical rebel. He was like reading Nietzsche at 16, critiquing my parents' way of being in the world. Like he was saying things in my family system that just like I was wincing of like, did he really just say that? You can't, but he was right. Like he was something of the prophet.

Greg 8:35

They probably loved that, right?

Jay Stringer 8:37

But yeah, loathed it. And so when I was growing up, I'm seeing this pain with my dad, I'm seeing this pain with my mom, I'm seeing kind of my siblings. And so part of the provisional identity that I developed was just being good. So the the more I read theology books, the more that my relationship with my dad went well, the more that his life seemed to be soothed, the more that I checked in to see how my mom was doing in her loneliness, in her anger, the more soothed she was. And so just when I think about the work that I'm doing in the world with like the integration of theology or psychology and reading people's faces and stories, it's like that was all part of my provisional identity.

Greg 9:24

Yeah.

Recovery As Provisional Self Vs True Self

Jay Stringer 9:24

And I'm good at what I do. And yet at the same time, there's a sense of do I want to just play utilitarian purpose? And that's where I've gone back to some of these other childhood desires, where on one hand, one of my early childhood desires was like special forces. I had uncles that were in delta teams, in clandestine services. And so when they would tell stories, that was like life for me. That was like bread and manna coming down from heaven in a very religious, empty home was like adventure stories, like secretive work with highly trained people doing work in the world that you'll never understand. And, you know, that's part of what retreats and intensives offer is being trained well and doing work in the world. But there's also a kid in me that like loved to dress up and sing and dance and like was much more free with my body than I am now as a Swede Presbyterian background. So part of that sense of even going back to my childhood desires is there is a kid that doesn't want to just be in a chair being useful to people and insightful for people. There's there's a there's a boy inside me, there's a man inside me that actually needs to become far more alive than I am. And I think that's been the midlife chrysalis that I'm in is I'm in a goop right now. And it's part of it is I I could keep being a therapist, and I probably will be. I could keep writing books on these types of topics, but it's also the sense of I don't know if that's where I'm being led at this point in my life. And so desires are beautiful, they're stunning, but they're also haunting. Like I don't know where my life is gonna go in the next eight years, and that's both exciting and deeply haunting to me if I actually pay attention to honoring the desires inside of me and that sense of it is for freedom that you have been set free. Not freedom from sin, not freedom from an unwanted behavior, but what's my freedom for? Yeah, messes with me.

Family Story And The Mask We Wear

Greg 11:37

Yeah. I want to ask you about people's reactions, responses when they read books like yours. And this is a little bit of a hard shift, but just as you've been talking about it, I'm I'm thinking about the things I hear from the men and women who are part of our community, and they're just at such various points on the timeline of healing. When you write a book like Unwanted or a book like Desire, those are so comprehensive in the scope of what you're delving into that it would be very easy for a reader to just say, Oh, well, this is my this is my field manual. As long as I have this book, I'll be good. Right. And so you could be trying to implement the things in a helpful book from that provisional self, because there is a temptation to just isolate and not not do the very critical part of connecting it at vulnerability. And so talk about the value of somebody reading a book on its own versus reading a book and processing that with a helping professional, like a therapist.

Midlife Chrysalis And Haunting Longings

Jay Stringer 14:13

Yeah, I mean, part of part of this is that we we can't see our own face well. Like, yes, on Zoom, on you know, a selfie, in some ways we see our own face way too much. But we're also not good at being able to read our face well, our story well. So that sense of when I think about most of the areas of my life, I don't read my life well. I need my good friends, I've needed therapists to point out to me what's going on. So a classic story is like that of Joseph, right? Some people look at their life and they're like, I've been in a freaking ditch and I hate my life, and I'm miserable, and I'm broken. And it's like, my dear God, you are one of the most gifted, astounding individuals I've ever met. You have a coat of many colors, and that has cost you. You have been envied and hated in your marriage. You have been envied and hated among your friends and neglected. So the story that you're telling yourself is that I'm broken because you're in a ditch, but you've never asked the question of why did you end up in the ditch? Who put you there and why did they put you there? And that's the benefit of going through this with a professional, going through this with someone who has grappled with their own failure and their own beauty, and both are important. So, yeah, it when you approach this book, there's gonna be topics, there's gonna be concepts that you have to say wisdom is all about timing. So it's not that any of it is not wise. I mean, I I I did my own original research on this. We did 200 to 300 peer-reviewed studies on this. Like, this thing is packed with research-backed information. That doesn't matter. It's about wisdom, it is always about timing. Wisdom is always about context. So you can use data to manipulate a story, you can use data to eliminate needing to deal with a story. But that's what I was trying to do with desire is these are not a la carte menu options that you get to pick or choose. You can't just choose to be a Joan of Arc in your field and have a great podcast or a great book or a great mission. Because what happens to those people is their marriages suck and implode. They don't work on their desire for intimacy. Or you get some people that get, you know, they get into recovery and they're all about their story. And they're gonna be a therapy all-star, they're gonna spend $20,000, $30,000 on retreats and intensives, and everything is about their desire for healing. And yet they are not confronting themselves, they're not differentiating and growing a sense of self or stepping into the tension in their relationships or loneliness. So all of us over-index in one of these five realms of desire. So part of what I'm trying to build is no, you have to desire all five of these core longings if you are gonna develop into the most meaningful, connected version of yourself and in relationship to God, to others, and in your career. So it's it's one of those things of one of those five desires might resonate more deeply with a reader, depending on where they are in their journey. But you're gonna need all five if you want to have a life and love that you're actually seeking out in life.

Greg 17:49

I'm glad you you said that and mentioned the not taking the a la carte approach, because as I was reading through the book, I was just realizing each of those five longings that you address in the book could be its own book. You know, you could write a whole volume on

Jay Stringer 18:06

And I did. And that's the dilemma with this book. Well, I mean, unwanted was like 60,000 words. This one was like 100,000. But I wrote, I mean, I had so many, like but that was part of the challenge of this book is it's a big book. It and it's that's been part of the, you know, unwanted in some ways is easier to understand in terms of you have a core problem, porn or infidelity. Here's a counterintuitive way. But this is like, okay, it if you it's in some ways I've referred to it as the sequel and the prequel. Like this is this is what's needed to change your.

Greg 18:42

And I mean this as a compliment, but it almost has some more feelings of almost being encyclopedic than than unwanted was because there's so much density of data, but also of unfolding that data and just inviting people to kind of take a bath in it. And I I guess, you know, I don't know what your advice is. I think when I recommend the book, I'm gonna be recommending read it slowly and read it over and over and over and just recognize that certain parts of it are gonna hit, you know, you talked about the timing, more where you are right now and where you are right now, some parts of it you might not like at all. Yes. We were mentioning that just with the relational dynamics and the intimacy section and then some of the sexual problem approaches in the pleasure section for couples that are going through sexual betrayal and betrayal trauma recovery, you know, kind of too soon might be the feeling that comes up for them. And I just want to name that and acknowledge it that that's not wrong or bad. It doesn't mean that the content's bad. It doesn't mean your reaction to it is bad. It just may not be the time to really go deeply into that.

Books Help, But We Need Witnesses

Jay Stringer 19:50

Yeah, and part of what I'm trying to build is that, you know, there might be some stuff that's triggering. But again, like I'm not afraid of triggers. I I want to develop a window of tolerance for the trigger. I want to learn, teach people how to move through it. But part of what I'm working with in the sex section is like, I think sex is there to reveal things to us, to provoke us to change and to heal us. But most of us don't like the revelations of sex. We don't like to be provoked outside of our window of tolerance. And for those reasons, I don't think we actually enter into healing sex. Yeah. So to borrow that into you know, betrayal trauma language, you know, there's triage stage, which is, you know, you need the STI checks, you need full disclosure, not staggered disclosure, you need wisdom to walk through that. But part of the revelation of that is not just that maybe I married someone with a secretive sexual basement. It's also the sense of why was I drawn to someone like this? And those are tough questions to begin to ask. So sometimes when I'm working in an intensive with a betrayed partner or I'm working with a couple, that's part of the meaning that we have to excavate. Not to say that you're a co-addic, not to make it your fault, but the meaning that betrayed partners make is central to it. And if you don't find your meaning, you develop an external locus of control and you're trying to manage the world around you to not befriend some of the difficulties and the anguish and the meaning inside. So some betrayed partners will tell me I knew something was up and I suppressed what I knew. I just kept looking the other way. I went mind blind, or maybe I was gaslit. And as we begin to excavate the thread of that, well, maybe they grew up in a family of origin where their perspective, their intuition was suppressed. Or maybe they, you know, we marry people that are familial to us. They feel because they are familial, or they feel familiar to us because they are familial. Same root words. So then it'd be yeah. So that's the that's the sense of the invitation is to be able to kind of recognize what's the meaning. Or, you know, sometimes it's a sense of I can never compete with that, whether it's porn or an affair partner. And then you get into a lot of body shame, or you get into a lot of like my genitals are too small or they're too big, or whatever that might be. There's some sense of shame that comes to the surface with regard to your life. And we really have to address that. And that's the revelation, yeah, and the provocation that could eventually heal us. But whether it's good sex or recovery, we don't like things being revealed about us.

Greg 22:47

And what it I feel like the antidote or an antidote to that shame and what it tries to tell us, and and also what I think shame tries to keep us from zoning in on that would be very helpful. An antidote to that could be the kindness and curiosity that you talk about so much. You know, kindness and curiosity for ourselves, and then even, and again, I'm treading carefully here for our listeners, but even if you are the betrayed partner of someone who whose sexually broken behavior has blown up your world, there is a world in which possibly you could come to a point of being able to even engage his early story with kindness and curiosity. But nobody should expect you to do that from day one because you've just had your life blown up.

Jay Stringer 23:29

Absolutely. I mean, I think that's again, wisdom is about timing. So when I work with people that have betrayed, that have a lot of secretive, compulsive behavior, you know, part of the language that I do is like, you know, we're going to go into your past. And we're not doing that to excuse things. We're not doing things to blame people. But like honesty is a muscle that will develop the more that you use it. So if you can't be honest about your mother and father, I already know that you're not going to be honest with your wife and with yourself. If you don't grieve your trauma, your heartache as a young boy, as a young girl, I already know that you're not going to have empathy and kindness towards your spouse. So that sense of the mirror neurons and the gray matter that forms as we begin to grieve and we see ourselves with compassion should be moving us eventually to see our partner with much more grief that there should be tears. So I always tell, you know, after people are coming out of an intensive, I'll say, What you need to tell your wife or your husband who's betrayed, you know, I've learned so much in this intensive. And, you know, give them choice. Do you want to hear what I've learned? Or would it be more helpful for you to step into me needing to take integrity and see you? Because I'm seeing you and your pain and your heartache and your story in a very different light than I did before. And what I find is just given the choice, they're curious about the past.

Greg 25:04

Yeah.

Jay Stringer 25:05

But then that the movement needs to be now I need to build a bridge from my childhood trauma to how I show up in our marriage. Because if you don't, you just keep handing over your partner a laundry list of needs and attachment wounds without ever really developing empathy or strength. And that's what I kept finding after Unwanted is people were they had great insight and a different, more curious approach, but they weren't developing into the types of people that could truly outgrow porn or could truly develop intimacy after betrayal. So that's part of the density of this book is like this is gonna be a journey to develop who you are. It's not just an insight, it's not just understanding a different perspective. It's you, it's very intentional work to develop the life that you say you want.

Wisdom, Timing, And The Five Longings

Greg 26:01

Yeah. If I was gonna congeal something that you have been talking about down to something really brief, I mean, what I'm hearing you saying is that information alone isn't enough to heal us. I mean, it's got to serve the deeper purpose of understanding and transformation. And so, you know, if you're if another one of those things you're using books like yours for is to beat your spouse up with, you know, because now I've got better vocabulary for for my hostility towards you, then that's not what it's for either.

Jay Stringer 26:30

Exactly. I mean, we get this a lot where it's like you'll read like certain studies from, you know, men will have a reduced chance of prostate cancer depending on how many orgasms they have. And then you'll get people being like, read this, read this. And it's like, see, I should be going to porn. And so, or some people, you know, you can use data and insight in any way that you want to. And so I think that's you have to have some sense of how do you manipulate the world around you, whether you're betrayed or whether you are struggling with something. And you know, manipulation comes from you know, manos, hand, Spanish, in Latin. So that sense of how are you using your hand to influence the outcome of something? Yeah, we're all doing it. So let's just name it.

Greg 27:22

So speaking some more about kindness and curiosity, people who aren't used to doing that, who aren't used to engaging their stories or their experiences from a place of anything other than judgment, do you find in all the work you've done with clients and in the research that it's more difficult for people to start engaging with kindness and curiosity, or for them to continue being able to do that as they move forward?

Jay Stringer 27:49

I think there's a critical window where that paradigm shift of like being curious it really matters, and there's a lot of resistance to it. So one of the concepts that I love is from you know Lacan. And Lacan would talk about he was a French psychoanalyst, and he would say that every person has a symptom. And in the French, it's symptome. And then he also says every symptom is a saint homme, and that's the French phrase for holy man. So for Lacan, every symptom of your life, depression, anxiety, a bad back, porn use, it's the holy man in your life that's trying to get your attention. And that is so important that people develop a very critical period of their life where they're like, they really get that concept. So the problem in my marriage is actually working well to reveal something. This is the notion that the obstacle is the way, embedded within the fantasy as the roadmap to healing and growth. So that is so crucial for people to just kind of get. And most people see themselves with a lot of judgment and a lot of accusation and condemnation. But just because you've done that once doesn't mean that you're doing it well in other areas. So I have become, you know, really curious about my sexual life and difficulties that I find myself in in marriage and where my mind goes. The much harder work for me as a man, which might be more my third book or fourth, is like addressing what it means to have a body, what it means to be male in my eating disorders and my relationship to food. Food has been so much more of a civil war for me than porn. Porn was so easy compared to body image in my particular story. You would have to know more of my stories and my soothing and my attachment patterns. Yeah. But what was really easy to do with unwanted in porn use has been so much more difficult to engage with my own face, to engage with my own body with this. So even though I've learned something and I think I parent better as a result of this, I engage people better. There are still areas of my life that I lack the same level of curiosity. So I think there's critical threshold, but it's always difficult. And again, back to that notion of I I don't read myself very well when I'm in a place of shame or in a place of contempt or in a place of arrogance. I need other people to be again to reflect back to me what they're seeing, what they're feeling. So it does get easier, it doesn't get easier. So is that your experience, or would you put it any different?

Triggers, Window Of Tolerance, And Sex

Greg 30:46

I think, yeah, I think it's been pretty similar. I I think I definitely felt like there was a point in my years of becoming more healthy and healing from my old stuff where kindness and curiosity moved from a place where it was more up here, more of like, oh, that makes sense, you know, much more of a cognitive uh, you know, you use the word hack earlier, you know, maybe this will work. And now, like experientially, I'm starting to know, okay, this is what those words mean. This is how I know when that's happening. One of the things that that required of me was something that was very unnatural for me, which was slowing down enough to pay attention to things because I just I tend to move at a lightning pace. That's uh I think it's part of how I'm made. I think it's been a very effective protection strategy over the course of my life. But when I'm able to slow down and say, okay, not just like check that off, that makes sense, but really sit with it and let it soak in, then it does change my relationship even with kindness and curiosity. It's not something I'm checking off the list, it's something I'm learning how to have a relationship with.

Jay Stringer 31:59

Yeah, that resonates deeply. Because I I in that moment of reflection, there's there's surprise. Like you, I just don't know what themes, what stories, what creatures will come to me as I engage that. So I mean, just part of you know being discipled in the age of the internet, you want answers really fast. Yeah, you want to work through all this stuff. And I think that's where the you know, that Beowulf story has mattered a lot to me, where it's like, okay, I address porn, but now I'm dealing with Grendel's mother, which is food. I'm dealing with porn, but now I have to deal with Grendel's mother. But it's these things take time to get quiet, to be able to understand what is the meaning here. And yeah, we need curiosity, yes, and we need spaciousness and time. So I think that addition of space and time is so crucial.

Greg 32:53

Well, as I was reading the book and finishing today the with the fifth uh longing, which is a longing for meaning and purpose. I I just love that you ended with that because it's such a hopeful trajectory to encourage people to to finish the book, but really just kind of start what comes after the book. And I loved some of the stories. I was wondering if you could just tell us for a minute about how cinnamon rolls can be a means of discovering your purpose.

Betrayal Trauma, Meaning, And Shame

Jay Stringer 33:24

Kenji, yes. Yeah. So Kenji was, and again, I'm making stories up, hybrid, but you know, client in New York City that I worked with, and one of the things that you will find in Manhattan is sometimes people like when children are born, they can get on preschool lists. And so this sense of like, you know, even during pregnancy, during utero, you're trying to like jockey your way up into elite schools and these $70,000 institutions, and then hopefully get on the Ivy League. So a lot of kids are under that pressure. So Kenji could remember growing up where he just like wanted to get a cinnamon roll. And essentially his parents got like an Uber Eats delivery because they didn't want to take four or five hours for him to really learn this process and to go through it. And that sense of desire of kind of realizing, you know, he had another childhood story that came to mind for him in this theme was they were like traveling down on I-95 down to Hilton Head or some beach, and they hit traffic. And so basically, his dad called in his his assistant, turned in the rental car, and then they got flights back instead of driving. And so it was just like everything was an inconvenience for this guy. Like you you just optimized and there was a workaround for all of them, exactly. Yeah, but no sense of like being able to taste, of being able to make something with his hands. And so that, you know, the the cinnamon role in learning how to bake a cinnamon roll became this like unexpected inflection point for his life. Like he went back to a childhood desire that had been denied to him and started recognizing that it's about a cinnamon roll and deliciousness, and you take it out of the oven and it's gooey. But far more than that, it was like falling in love with a process of learning, of kind of being able to, in a way, waste four or five hours of his life and not have to optimize it. And that's what I think we're dying for in this day and age is you know, Lady Bird Taco. Like, what's the story behind? How did they make that? It's stunning, it's so good, but it doesn't just happen in an instant. Like you have to work a particular craft. Or when I think about Beethoven or Mozart, we we don't say that they labored at the piano for their life, we say they played. Yeah, and when I watch John Batiste, I'm just like, this guy is freaking possessed, and I want to come alive and full of joy. Yeah, and that's the provisional self of like I'm trapped in therapist insightful image management, and I'm not free to be like Batiste and play in my life. And so for Kenji, it was a cinnamon role. For some people, it might be a guitar, and you don't have to be your passion, doesn't have to become your income. I mean, it could be eventually, but just some sense of like where are you alive? Where do you feel passion, vitality, pleasure, goodness kind of pulsing through you? And so I I love Kenji's story of the cinnamon role because it's like for him, repentance was not about not looking at porn or not doing something destructive. I think his story was much more drinking and binge drinking. And sometimes we think repentance is just stopping doing something bad. But one of the best definitions of repentance that I heard from Dan Alender is that repentance is turning to the party that God is throwing in your honor. So repentance for Kenji is this invitation to enjoy a cinnamon roll.

Greg 37:14

What do you want to be free for? There it is again. And for people in recovery communities, you know, like Sex Addicts Anonymous has the three circles exercise. And that you're describing outer circle life-giving behaviors. Steve Cuss talks about his life-giving list of the things that really help him feel alive and connected to who he is, his purpose. And that's just so beautiful when we begin to discover this. Yeah. My one of the things that it's on mine is trying new foods. You know, I didn't try guacamole till I was 45 because it looked disgusting. And then I'm like, where have you been all my life? So it's just beautiful. It doesn't have to be a big thing. It's just it's something where a part of me that's been subdued or muffled comes more fully alive.

Jay Stringer 37:56

Exactly. Because that's the sense that unwanted behaviors do to hijack novelty or creativity or mystery. It's like, yeah, there's so much intrigue, so much to be fascinated by in the world. And what why does porn and self-sabotage get a monopoly on that? Like find life.

Greg 38:17

Find life. Yeah, Jay, you've been so generous with the amount of time that you've given for the conversation. And I'm just so grateful for it. Thank you very much. I want to make sure that our listeners know the book has an accompanying workbook, and it would be great to do with other people who are desiring the same relation, new relationship with desire. But also there's going to be a website about the holistic desire survey that you did that people can really dig in and do some of this research themselves to get to know their stories better, right?

Kindness, Curiosity, And Hard Questions

Jay Stringer 38:49

Exactly. Yeah. The workbook is a bit like therapy in a in a book where it's like you've got to like the human heart changes in specifics. Like you have to name details, you have to enter into particularity, you have to do the work. And so the workbook is kind of like this is where you intentionally do the work to differentiate, to develop, to get curious and to write those things down. And then the desire assessment will have a free desire quiz that you it's it's really fun. It's like 20 different archetypes. And so, you know, just imagine like you go, you go through a the free version is 20 or 30 questions, and you'll get a sense of like where are you over-indexed? So you might like love meaning and purpose, and you're that Joan of Arc, but your intimacy is suffering, or we call some people like the cozy partners because they have high intimacy desires, but they don't want to develop themselves or know themselves. And so you're gonna have it hopefully read your mail a bit with like this is your desire archetype. And so that's a free quiz that will be available. And then we're developing a much more robust clinical instrument that will show you where certain desires are overdeveloped potentially, and certainly where they're underdeveloped, and then provide some compass headings about how you can grow your relationship to desire, kind of rooted in the research that we did. So I want this. I mean, it's hard work, it's meaningful work, but I also want this to be some like fun work of being able to architect a future that you're really proud of and that you enjoy.

Greg 40:29

Yeah. Well, hopefully, more people will find themselves seeing a more illuminated path and having more clarity on the way to move in that direction because of this resource that you're putting out in the world.

Jay Stringer 40:39

Yes.

Greg 40:40

Jay, God bless you. Thank you so much for being with us.

Jay Stringer 40:42

Thank you, Greg. Appreciate your kindness and support and feel honored by your words. Thank you for having me.