Marriage Health with James & Teri Craft
With backgrounds in therapy and coaching, James and Teri Craft help your marriage through issues with communication, intimacy, conflict, or if you're just fighting to fall back in love with your partner. Aside from their certifications, the reason why James and Teri are so passionate about helping your marriage through challenges is because they've walked through the hardest things in their marriage and they wouldn't have made it if it weren't for help.
If you are fighting for your marriage, don’t face this fight alone.
Marriage Health with James & Teri Craft
Bridging Emotional Safety and Sexual Desire in Marriage
Have you ever considered how the echoes of childhood shape the way we love and connect as adults? Join us on an emotional voyage with marriage experts James and Teri Craft, and Dr. Jenna Mountain, a seasoned sex therapist, as we unravel the complexities of intimacy influenced by our past. We tackle the often hushed topic of sexual desire discrepancies in relationships, discussing how the foundation of a healthy sexual connection is rooted in emotional safety. The laughter shared over the common misunderstandings in marriage is interwoven with the serious task of nurturing a genuine connection, reminding us that every effort towards understanding is a step closer to the heart of our partners.
This episode transcends the typical relationship advice, venturing into the deeply personal terrain of reclaiming one's voice and identity. We explore how early childhood attachments can obscure our ability to maintain our presence in intimate relationships, particularly for women who might feel they have lost their sense of self. With Kurt Thompson's insights into our innate quest for connection, we consider the importance of honoring our emotions and engaging in the process of healing. Whether you're navigating a challenging phase in your marriage or seeking to enrich an already strong bond, this conversation offers an affirming nod to the notion that the pursuit of a healthy marriage is indeed a worthy endeavor.
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Are you saying that someone could have a screwed up sex life just because of their childhood trauma and pain? Yep.
Producer:Almost every couple in the entire world deals with this exact same issue when it comes to intimacy or having sex. Me and my partner are on different planets. They have way higher desire than I do, or they never want to have sex with me. What's wrong with them? Most of us feel like we are the only ones, but this is actually extremely common.
James Craft:She may not want to have sex nearly as much as he does.
Jenna Mountain:When it comes to your, lack of sex in a relationship. Sometimes there can be legitimate reasons.
James Craft:I'm wanting to understand if my wife is abusive or neglectful or if I'm just being too sensitive and needy, because that's basically what she's told me You'll see your spouse naked physically, but not emotional.
Producer:We want to get to a place where our whole life is like the best moments of the best dates we ever had. But here is what you need to know. Having a different level of sexual desire from your partner is not the problem. Your problem is this Either one or maybe both of you are carrying this feeling inside of you. You may have never even said it out loud. I don't feel safe. Just because this is a common issue doesn't mean it's not incredibly hard. That's a really, really heavy feeling to carry if you don't have any help to turn to.
Producer:These are the crafts, james and Terry. They don't know how the internet works, anything about YouTube, tiktok or social media, and that's okay, because they know a bit about something else Marriage. In fact, they've helped some of the most influential couples in the world, and they've also helped couples going through the hardest situations imaginable. The reason why James and Terry are able to help couples go through really hard things is because they've been through it themselves and they came through the other side. The greatest marriage podcast ever Marriage Health with James and Terry Craft.
James Craft:I know many couples who have a hard time being naked in front of each other, and it's almost like they're ashamed of it and so they'll cover up, hide, or they'll be behind closed doors, but then they'll turn the lights off and then all of a sudden, experience a sexual connection with each other and having sex with one another. Well, because there's a shame wrapped around this. They don't want to expose themselves. They don't feel comfortable with themselves. So if they don't feel comfortable with themselves, how will they ever be comfortable with somebody else? So what they do is they cover up, they hide, they're ashamed of it, so they back up a little bit. They never enter into that place of feeling safe.
James Craft:Well, if you look at what safety comes from, safety comes from truth. Many of us don't want to be truthful, because if I am truthful with what I'm feeling about it, then you're going to judge me and maybe you will leave me, and then maybe I will be all alone. So what I'll just do is I'll just go through the motions, but never have a deep intimacy with you. What if you were able to back up a little bit and say you know what? I don't really feel comfortable with sex. I feel really awkward. I feel like I'm performing and if I don't do good enough, then you're not going to love me.
Teri Craft:It kind of puts us in one of two categories One where we feel, if we have a higher desire and we feel like we're not being met there, for whatever reason or not, then we feel neglected. We feel as if we're not being seen, we're not being heard. Is there something wrong with me? Am I not good enough? And then we've got this other side. That's kind of like I'm maybe not feeling safe in our relationship, for whatever reason it is, and then I start to feel hopeless, helpless. Is there something wrong with me? We have real feelings. There's real feelings here on both sides, and there's reasons why we have the feelings.
James Craft:We have to fight for safety. We have to fight for it. Where your spouse feels safe with you, no matter what happens. It feels safe with you. You talk, you communicate, you dream, you discuss, you fight fear and you work through those things.
Producer:Working through those things is easier said than done. Getting to the place where you feel safe or you're even able to change in front of your spouse is so unique to every couple. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. No two couples have the exact same experiences, challenges, trauma. That's what makes this issue so hard to even talk about. Fortunately, we happen to know someone who we believe is the best sex therapist in the entire country today we're talking uh with jenna mountain.
James Craft:Uh, dr jenna mountain, but we know her as friend but also an expert in her field. She's a sex therapist and she knows probably everything you need to know about sex, and so today's going to be a good day.
Jenna Mountain:I'm a licensed professional counselor and a relationship and leadership coach, and my passion is to disrupt the things that are disrupting you. I've been working on that tagline for a long time.
Producer:When we talk about safety, it's easy for us to think about whether or not we feel safe with our partner, but Dr Jenna has been changing countless lives by helping people identify a different kind of safety. They actually don't feel safe with themselves a different kind of safety.
Jenna Mountain:They actually don't feel safe with themselves. Sometimes, if I can get people to start thinking about safety, they immediately just go to that relationship level. And don't get me wrong, that's extremely important, but it's far more complex than that. I think it's hard to get to relational safety if both partners aren't working on their individual safety with themselves.
Jenna Mountain:People pleasers and conflict avoidant personalities who think that fights are bad and mean something bad about me, the person who is always afraid of being left or rejected this is the lack of safety that I'm talking about.
Jenna Mountain:The person who is constantly second-guessing themselves, who doesn't believe themselves, who is angry at their own bodies and emotions for existing, who struggles to tell themselves the truth about themselves. So, on an individual level, it's the person who's overthinking everything, the person who struggles to rest, the person who probably could have sleep. Challenges Like these are some of the symptoms of, or or internal gastrointestinal issues, body aches, headaches I'm not saying there aren't ever, you know, medical reasons for those things to manifest, but our bodies are often screaming because of emotional dysregulation and upsetness that has not been resolved the way it was meant to be. So there are times when we are supposed to go on alert right. Our bodies were built to protect ourselves, but I'm talking about the person who lives there in self-protective mode, who lives in constant fear. Um, you know, I've worked with people who live with anxiety and didn't even realize that their body was braced all the time.
Jenna Mountain:Oh, I've worked with people who, like every time they ate, their stomach hurt and they didn't realize that wasn't normal. Yeah, wow, you know totally lots of, lots of people you know.
James Craft:I know that you might be thinking right now, when my spouse comes towards me and approaches me in that place of wanting to have intimacy with me, you want to come up with so many excuses of why you can't. You're not bad. You might think you're bad. What am I doing in my marriage? What am I doing with this? I'm letting them down. Are they going to go out and cheat on me? And you have fear. That's building up inside of you and I would just say peace, Speak peace over your life, Because some of you right now are carrying a great deal of a burden in your life and trying to make someone else happy and I would ask that you would just take the time to find out. What does that safety feel like for you? Step out on that so that you can actually feel safe for once in your life. Are you saying that someone could have a screwed up sex life just because of their childhood trauma and pain?
Jenna Mountain:Yep, I've worked with people who have lots of sexual dysfunction, so like, even like mechanically, their bodies don't want to show up to the party, if you will. Yeah, and it wasn't about what was happening between them, but it goes back to I don't really feel comfortable connecting with people at all. It's not really even about my body, but my body is manifesting that like I don't really like comfortable connecting with people at all. It's not really even about my body, but my body is manifesting that like I don't really like getting close to people you know. Or if you had an experience where you're constantly in fear of, like, explosive anger or alcoholic parents or you know not having your needs met, you just start to disconnect to survive that. And it is in the name of survival. Kids have to stay with caregivers.
Teri Craft:Yeah, they don't get it.
Jenna Mountain:They don't get to, just go they have to make it work, and so they will give up parts of themselves in order to stay. You know, just survival connected to the adult. Kurt Thompson is one of my favorite authors, that's Kurt Thompson.
Jenna Mountain:And he, yes, he has a famous quote that like, as soon as I say it with any client, like they just get tear filled. But his quote is every baby comes into the world looking for someone, looking for her, and that is the basis of attachment. It's like chills, chills, oh gosh, I know, and I'm like, yes, and so if you can't look back and say that that was your story to some degree again, I'm not looking for perfection then, like you're probably gonna have a little bit of a hang up in the connection, attachment, part of your relationship which can eventually, for most people, manifest in a sexual issue For James and I.
Teri Craft:You know we were so young and so some of that reverberation over and over through time of my feeling very unsafe with myself made him feel very rejected. Sure, that wouldn't even have occurred to me to kind of explore that or have compassion. It was like I'm bad, I'm wrong. I'm not good enough, and now I'm failing and doing more bad in my relationship.
Jenna Mountain:I know it just downward spirals, exactly, personally, in my story. I look back and go. My fear and anger was not a glitch, it was a feature, it was appropriate. That's when I became safe with myself.
Teri Craft:Yeah.
Jenna Mountain:Is to go. Oh, what's wrong with me. I'm so angry and scared and I just need to fix me. Instead of going, no, I need to listen to that alarm system and realize that that's exactly the appropriate response to what I have gone through and that ushers in the healing. Yes, yes.
Jenna Mountain:That I had the right to be angry, that I had the right to be scared, that I have the right to be sad and grieve, that all of that had to get healed and redeemed Right. And that is where I started to get safe with myself, right In the process of acknowledging I didn't feel safe in the world.
Producer:When we don't have safety with ourselves. Yes, our sex life suffers greatly, but there is another devastating effect we experience that usually goes unrecognized we lose our voice. Your voice is a powerful tool to allow you to feel safe. In some ways, all of us lose parts of our voice. To try to make room for the people in our lives, we prioritize others' preferences over our own. We think of their needs more than ours. We consider their emotions more than what we feel. But when this goes a few steps too far, we lose our voice completely, and once we lose our voice, we don't even know who we are anymore.
Jenna Mountain:I mean, a lot of women have been taught that my job is to be palatable, pleasing and keep others happy so that they get to live. And so we're constantly like orbiting around everyone else and we don't even realize we don't have a voice, and it shows up across their lives, absolutely what they chose in their profession, what they say they like, and how their house is decorated, how many kids they wanted to have, the type of marriage that they want, their hobbies, and then sexually, what do I like sexually? What do I not like sexually? And so it's like they're like I, I don't. I'm a shell Wow, I'm a shell of a human who's been filled up with everyone else's answers yeah, I've lost who I am, or I never got to know who I am, and at some point and it could take decades, that's what will walk into my office and be like well, we have sex often and there's no mechanical issues, and but something's wrong with it. You have the woman who just resigns and gives in but is not present.
James Craft:She's not there yeah, so just, it's just an act of sex.
Jenna Mountain:I'm like well, that's the only way she could rest is to disappear. It's like it's a nervous system dissociation which is I just disappeared to get my rest because I physically wasn't allowed to say no. When you get them in a one-on-one conversation and I start asking them questions about themselves, they either cannot answer at all or, a lot of times, out of their own like awareness, they are answering by referencing others to describe themselves. So I'll be like so what do you like to do? Well, my husband likes football, so we're going to go and do blah blah, blah, blah. What do you like to do, right? And so it's like they literally cannot find their own answers and so their answers are not self-referencing, they are other referencing. Well, what do you like about yourself? Well, my husband says that this is his favorite part of me. What do you like about yourself? And they only know how to describe themselves as others describe them.
James Craft:Yes, I'm like but how do you?
Jenna Mountain:see yourself.
James Craft:Exactly.
Jenna Mountain:And so, like they see themselves through the eyes of others, they make decisions through the feelings and preferences of others, and so you just start to pick it up in the dialogue and the way they move through the world. But again, it's so pervasive for some people that like they don't even realize they're doing that. So, to hook it back around to sex. I'm sitting across a lot of times because of all the reasons at large across from a woman I'm like well, what do you like?
Teri Craft:And she's like I don't know and I'm like well, what do you like?
Jenna Mountain:And she's like I don't know and I'm like well, how would you and even to start to explore, well, how would you get to know what you like? And she's like I don't know. I mean, it's like this crazy idea for me to look for my sexual voice as a woman, because I have basically been told to serve others in a wide variety of ways that I don't even, I don't even. I have no idea how to engage that question.
Teri Craft:Which, at the end of the day, if you're having a relationship with someone who's who's also longing for connection, you're, you're going to feel so much more from that person if they're showing up in a way that they feel genuine, if they're showing up in a way that they feel genuine.
Jenna Mountain:Yeah, I think a lot of us can find at least a part of us that we've lost to others. I do think it's a really painful process to come into the awareness that I don't know me. No one looked for me. Yeah, enough for me to know that I am worth knowing.
Teri Craft:Yes, so good.
Jenna Mountain:You know, like I always talk about, like I want my kids to, and I'm not perfect at this, but I want my kids to walk into the room and know that I am excited to see them. Yeah, because they're worth looking for and knowing, so that they don't stop looking for themselves. And so when we get to our adult selves and realize that there's a grand part of that that was not given to us, I want those people to know that they are worth it.
Jenna Mountain:That's right that they are worth taking the time to get to know that this is their life, that their life matters, their voice matters, their unique wiring matters, their desires matter.
James Craft:Yeah, absolutely.
Jenna Mountain:And some people will have never been told that.
Producer:Your voice is so absolutely critical for safety, which is so absolutely critical for safety, which is so absolutely critical for your intimacy. But there are patterns that cause both men and women to lose our voices, to bury the emotions that keep us from being authentic and intimate with the person longing for connection to us A lot of what is coming out in research and clinical work.
Jenna Mountain:A lot of men express their sadness as madness and a lot of women are expressing their madness as sadness when we really need to step into it.
Teri Craft:I love that Wow.
Jenna Mountain:So, you have a lot of like like unprocessed and repressed sadness for men, so good. But you're not allowed to do that, so you get mad. And then for women, we're not allowed to be mad because we have to stay palatable and serve the world as human givers. And so we have a lot of madness that we can only express through sadness, because that's an acceptable one for women. We can be broken and sad, but we can't be angry and mad, so you have a lot of that swirling around we're all like Nancy Houston fans here, and not only that, just we love her.
Teri Craft:But um, I can remember the first time she got me connected with my anger and I'm, and I'm, I'm literally in a program with we're in a circle circle with a bunch of other, you know, pre-therapists, yeah, so we're all supposed to know what we're doing or learning what we're doing at the time.
Teri Craft:And and she asked me to deal with some anger and I'm like, okay, so she has me on a chair, nicely, right. Yeah, I'm all like real cute and nicely. So I'm on a chair and I'm trying to like get out. You know, some of these things that have been in there forever, right, and and I'm in my you know, early 40s at the time and I can remember getting up there and my first attempt was I'm really mad at you right now, and goodness you know. And she's like, okay, that was good, it's a nice start, maybe a little bit more there. And I can just remember three times of trying that, three times having to take that mask off, it's hard three times in in a group of a bunch of people saying you can do it, terry, you. There's got to be that.
Teri Craft:If that's anger, if that's anger, we're sad for you and I'm just like and then finally I don't know what came over me. I just was like okay, and I just I remember connecting with my anger that day and it wasn't punitive on anybody else, it wasn't, it wasn't supposed to be.
Teri Craft:It was just all of a sudden I I was able to to look at my anger as, oh, like, that's a, that's a, a part of me, a good and important part yes, that would have helped me back in the day hold boundaries that that anger was there to, to help me adapt to some situations that might have given me more of a voice when I didn't use it. And all of a sudden I connected with and I thought, oh my gosh, there was a part of me that was always hidden behind this mask yeah and can.
Teri Craft:now. I can now access that properly. Yeah, you know, whereas it was kind of the opposite with him. He always connected with the anger. Yeah, at the end of the day, that created a lack of safety between the two of us?
Jenna Mountain:When you have one who can't feel sad and one that can't feel mad, what happens to the power dance?
James Craft:Yeah.
Jenna Mountain:Oh, it was interesting, because if he, can be mad, which is a very powerful expression, but not sad and vulnerable, which is a very open connected. Well, I used to get angry that I couldn't be sad.
James Craft:Yeah, I would just be so angry that I couldn't cry. Yeah, and I was like, why can't I? Because I suppressed it so long that I was like it's not even there.
Jenna Mountain:So I thought a part of me died.
James Craft:I couldn't even access it. I thought something was wrong with me, I'm dysfunctional, I'm broken, and so it just reinforced the message that I felt deep down inside. But don't you?
Teri Craft:think to Jenna's point.
James Craft:I think it accentuated the power differential 100%, because what happened was is then I yeah, you see this complete divide, yeah the gender wounding that I had experienced growing up with just being a female in the world, yep.
Teri Craft:And then I get into a relationship with somebody who can't access and you know those more empathic places inside the power differential went like this made me more unsafe and that's not connecting. Just at a bare basic.
Jenna Mountain:It's not even about the content of y'all's story, just at a bare minimum you're going to have an intimacy issue in my opinion?
Jenna Mountain:No, we lived it. If men are not taught how and celebrated when they do express vulnerability, they don't really know how to entice a very strong part of what most women would describe as what draws them into sexuality. In the sexual arena we talk, the technical term is desire discrepancy, so having different levels of desire for sex. But the truth is I actually and I am sure you guys do too, even though I don't know if you would use the same words I think we have a desire for a lot of things at different levels.
Jenna Mountain:Oh, for sure, yeah, whether it's like how much alone time I need or how much, how much in-person time I need, or how much I need to talk things through, or how much how many words I have versus how many words you have right, we're coming to personality differences. So there's lots of desire discrepancies across relationships.
Teri Craft:The act of sex true sex is is such a it's kind of like this culmination of so many things. Yes, it's so many things. Yes, it's so many things. It's like the waking up every day and having you know that conversation. Yeah.
James Craft:I thought you were going to say you're going to wake up every morning and have sex. I didn't know that. I don't know where you're going, so I didn't know where you were going with this, yeah.
Teri Craft:But for anybody listening, that right there tells you how we're wired differently. Yes, that's right, this is what I pictured Me and I sitting across the table, having a nice conversation With my tea I'm thinking she's hitting on me right now.
James Craft:This is awesome. Yeah, she's telling me she wants it in the morning. That's great, that's right, let's start this day off. Right, that makes me laugh. Wants it in the morning, that's great. Start this day off.
Teri Craft:Right? It makes me laugh. Here's the bottom line Marriage is change when both of the people want to do the work. And now I'm not saying that you shouldn't do the work yourself, even if your spouse doesn't want to do the work, because that's all you can do. So you are responsible for doing what you believe, what the Lord has put in your heart to do, and to walk that. So, if that's getting help, getting support, getting healing, really exploring sort of maybe what are some of the things that you brought into the relationship, the reasons why I can't maybe feel like I can use my voice, to be honest about what's happening inside of me, that's your responsibility and no one can do that for you. That's something only you can do, but you have the power to do it.
Jenna Mountain:We were designed for connection.
James Craft:Yeah.
Jenna Mountain:And you cannot, cannot, it is literally impossible to connect if you are not fully yourself, and so, for the person who may be realizing and or identifying with being a shell of a person and not really knowing themselves and orbiting around others as a means of identity, seeking.
Producer:This is a battle that's worth it. Marriage Health with James and Terry Craft. If you feel like you need someone to come alongside you, a coach or a counselor, reach out to us. The link is in the description.
