Bare Marriage

Episode 283: When the Church Stole Your Sex Life

• Sheila Gregoire • Season 8 • Episode 283

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 What happens when church doesn’t seem safe? Or when, in retrospect, you realize it wasn’t, even if you threw yourself into it at the time? Today Dr. Andrew Bauman joins us to talk about his new book Safe Church, and then Rebecca and Sheila read reader’s stories about how the church stole their sex lives—and what we can do about it. 

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Sheila: What happens if the church steals your sex life and the church isn’t necessarily a safe place for you?  That’s what we’re going to be talking about today on the Bare Marriage podcast.  I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage.  And I am joined today by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach.  

Rebecca: Hello.

Sheila: And we’re going to be joined by Dr. Andrew Bauman in a minute for an interview.  But before we get to Andrew, Becca, let’s talk about our Patreon.

Rebecca: Yes.  Thank you, patreons.  Patrons.  So the website is called Patreon, but the people who give money are called patrons.

Sheila: Are they?  I never know what to say.

Rebecca: And we are never able to get this right.  

Sheila: No.  We really aren’t.

Rebecca: So it’s thank you, patrons, of our Patreon.  

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  So if you like what we do, if you appreciate how we’re trying to change the conversation about sex and marriage in the evangelical church, you can join us and support us by going to patreon.com/baremarriage.  And even if you give as little as $5 a month, it can help fund our research.  And you’ll get to join our exclusive Facebook group.  And if you want to give more money, you can also get tax deductible receipts within the United States as part of the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation.  And the links to those are in the podcast notes.  Also remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you watch it on YouTube or listen to it on any of your podcast apps.  Rate it five stars if you can.  And it just helps other people find us.  Now, Becca, I’m going to be having you back after our interview with Andrew because I asked on social media yesterday for people to share their stories of if they feel like the church has stolen their sex life.  And I just got so many responses.  I didn’t even know what to do about it, and so I thought we could just read through some of them.  And I’ll see what you think.  But let’s bring on Andrew first to talk about his new book. Well, I have someone who is no stranger to the podcast on today, Dr. Andrew Bauman.  Hello.

Andrew: Hi.  Good to see you again.

Sheila: Yeah.  We had your wife—Christy was on awhile ago with her book, Her Rites.

Andrew: That’s right.

Sheila: And you’ve been on a whole bunch talking about porn and lust and men, and you’re a licensed therapist.  You’re a PhD.  You’ve got all kinds of great credentials, and you do a lot of great work around men and sexuality and healing in evangelicalism.  So appreciate your work.  Really appreciate it.

Andrew: Thank you.  Appreciate yours as well.  A trailblazer.  Glad to be here with you.

Sheila: Okay.  So I’m excited about this one.  Your newest book—it’s called Safe Church.  And the subtitle is How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities.  Such a needed book.  And you did a big survey for this one just to find out how bad the problem is.  And yeah.  Really, really needed book.  So if I can just start, you grew up normal evangelical, right?  You were in the heart of it.

Andrew: Yeah.  And normal means fairly chaotic.  I like to say we put the mental in fundamentalism.  My father was a pastor but also had a secret sexual addiction that kind of blew up my world.  He was also vice president of a conservative Christian college in the 80s and got caught living a double life.  And somebody was going to blackmail him, put it in the newspaper because they wanted him to run for political office.  And then he stole from the college to try to pay off the blackmail—that sort of thing.  So it’s normal as in absolutely just chaotic.  So my mom, after my dad tried to get help and kind of nothing changed—after a year, I’m 8 years old.  And my mom moves three kids—single mom—moves us to live near her parents in North Carolina.  And so that’s kind of my origin.  And then later on, I become a pastor.  I also have a 13-year addiction to pornography and then realizing how my theology was very closely aligned with my objectification of women.  And my degrading view of women actually became very in line with an impressive theology that was equally subjugating women.  And so that was kind of part of my origin story, and I speak out against the church not because I hate the church, not because—because the church fathered me and mothered me when I felt orphaned.  I was literally there three, four times a week.  I’ve worked literally in every job.  I remember just the other day I was thinking about when I used to pass out roller blades at the gym.  I was the roller blade guy that was at the gymnasium.  We’d pass out skates.  The church saved me in so many ways.  And that’s why I’m so passionate about this conversation and also I’m so ready for it to be a safer place.  And so that’s a few of the—kind of the whys of my story.  But then also in 2018, I’m reading this study on—it’s called The Elephant in the Valley.  And it was studying sexism in Silicon Valley, a male-dominated space of technology.  And then I was like, “Huh, I’m wondering what that’s like in another male-dominated space.  87% of churches are led by men.”  And so that kind of began to get the wheels turning.  So after 5 years, over 2,800 women responding, 16% had worked 25 years or longer in the church, right?  Another 25% had worked 16 years or longer.  So these are women on the front lines of ministry, and I wanted to study their experience because I’ve been a male in the church.  I worked with all my buddies.  It was a great time except—and the women would serve us as we did God’s work.  And so it’s like wait a minute.  I’ve actually been on the other side of this problem, perpetuating this problem, both in my own porn use and my subjugation of women but also in ministry when I was a youth and college pastor right out of college.  And so I’ve got a real passion for this to actually—okay.  It’s time for me to speak out.  It’s time for me to actually study and listen.  Men, posture of listening.  And the stories are heart breaking.

Sheila: Yeah.  And that’s what your book is.  You’re really telling the women’s stories, and you’re inviting especially men because I think men need to hear this message to listen and care.  That this matters because the church can’t be healthy until women are safe.      

Andrew: Exactly.  Exactly.  And I didn’t want this to be some theological mansplain, right?  Oh, here’s—this is what women—I wanted the women to tell their own stories, and I wanted to be a conduit.  And I wanted to be an investigative journalist, right?  And so that was the posture that I came to the project like.

Sheila: Right.  Okay.  I know some people are wondering what you meant when you said that your theology kind of matched with porn, like it went together.  Do you want to just explain that a little bit?  I know you talk about it in the book, and it’s so good.  But just explain that a little bit.

Andrew: Yeah.  So basically, I talk about it a lot in a pornographic mindset or a pornographic style of relating.  What I’ve found out is that our porn use slowly begins to impact our brain and impact how we related to the world.  And so a lot of times if you’ve taken in a lot of porn, you begin to relate to the world that way.  So it impacts how you read Scripture.  You’re going to interpret Scripture in a certain way that women are just a little bit less than, or you’re going to look at the world through a lens of objectification, of subjugation, of women being just a little bit less than.  So it’s like when I think of my theology is sprinkled with misogyny.  It’s salt and pepper of misogyny, right?  And so it’s just a bit sprinkle.  So I can taste it.  But as I continue to eat, it becomes normalized, and I don’t even know that I’m doing it.  And yet, I’m completely part of the problem and completely harming women.  

Sheila: Right.  Right.  Now there’s a whole bunch of different ways that women are harmed, and you give—you have chapters on all of these different ones.  Some of them we’ve talked about a lot on the podcast like the modesty standards and how that objectifies women.  The abuse stats and how many women are abused in church, abused as teenagers, pastors tell them it’s their fault, et cetera.  One of the ones that we haven’t talked about a lot is just the use of women’s free labor.    

Andrew: Yes.  Yes.  

Sheila: There was one story—I think—what was her name?  Gail, I think it was.  She had been leading worship and music ministry and doing a great job and doing it for free.  And then they hired a man, who didn’t do it nearly as well and was kind of mediocre to replace her.

Andrew: Exactly.  Exactly.  So the statistics, what we found, was that 77.9% of women felt like their opportunity in ministry had been limited due to their gender.  So there is a firm stained glass ceiling in the evangelical church that must be shattered.  And so Gail—and, again, we changed all—everybody’s names so they wouldn’t be identifiable.  But she said, “I was kept from being hired as a worship leader although I had been filling in for the role for over a year.  I had a degree in music and more than a decade of experience.  I couldn’t be hired because I was a woman even though leadership agreed I was doing an exemplary job, I was exceptionally qualified.  The man they hired in my place was far less capable musician, far less capable administrator, and a far less capable music director.”  That’s the story you’re referring to.  So the church is using her, right?  For her gifts, for her skills.  And yet, the moment they found an adequate, even a subadequate replacement, right?  Just because he had a penis, he gets the job which just speaks to so much heartbreak.  I also think of Hannah.  She says this, “I got a Masters of Divinity degree from Harvard, and I still could not find a church in my denomination that would hire me because I was a woman.  So I changed denominations, so I could find a job.”  

Sheila: Yeah.  I know so many—I have a lot of friends like that.  I have friends, who have been ordained and then left their denominations because they couldn’t do anything.  I’m even thinking of a church that we used to go to where they had this female volunteer.  And for 20 years, she ran the junior high group.  And she did a great job.  She was gifted at junior high, and that’s a hard age group, right?  Grades 5 to 8.  It’s awful.  But she ran it. She did all these activities.  She was amazing.  And she was older, but the kids loved her.  So she was really mature, really qualified.  But, of course, they paid the youth pastor to look after the teenage—the high school, right?  

Andrew: Yeah.  Of course.

Sheila: So they got a 23-year-old guy, who, of course, ends up being involved in—yeah.  Abuse and stuff, right?  But they’ll pay him, but they didn’t pay this woman, who had been volunteering doing basically the same job just with a different age group.  

Andrew: Exactly.  And probably doing a much better job.  I heard that so many times from women, who said, “They hired my husband as a youth pastor.  And he’s basically the face of the ministry.  But I did all the work forever, right?  I was the one on the ground actually doing the work, pouring in, being present with the kids, but he came up with the games or something.”  It was like wow.  And it reminds me of the legend, Diane Langberg.  Her quote where she says, “We are to speak truth about our systems,” right?  She goes on to say, “People are sacred created in the image of God.  Systems are not.  They are only worth the people in them and the people they serve.  And people are to be treated whether one or many in the way Jesus treated people.”  And so we are to speak against systems and tell the truth about our systems, but they—the systems, themselves, are not an image bearer of God, right?  These people are, and we’ve got to care about the people.

Sheila: Yeah.  Absolutely.  I thought, as you were telling your own story in the book—when you started ministry, you were in complementarian spaces.  And you didn’t necessarily think much of it, but it started to impact you.  You said that at one point you were on staff at the church, and a well meaning pastor friend after meeting your powerful, goal-oriented girlfriend, Christy, who you later married—he said, “But, Andrew, don’t you want more of a helpmate?”        

Andrew: Exactly.  I think of that story often.  Basically, sitting there and kind of thinking about it and then realizing what I actually wanted was somebody who ran as fast as I did.  I didn’t want some—I knew my darkness as well, my shadow side, of being an Enneagram 8.  And I can dominate.  And I can power over.

Sheila: Fellow 8 here.  Yes.  Fellow 8.  Yeah.

Andrew: And I didn’t want a partner that didn’t have the cajones to challenge me, that wouldn’t stand up to me, right?  That would just be like, “Yes.  Yes, master, whatever you say.”  That’s not good for me.  I needed a strong woman, who would take me on and also have—and run hard and have a lot of goals because I had a lot of goals.  And to me, that is a part of equality in a good partnership that makes a good teammate where you can both run fast and support each other in doing that.

Sheila: Yeah.  But that makes men sound so fragile.  Because if men need someone who is under them who will just kind of say, “Yes.  Yes.  Whatever you want,” and won’t challenge them, then how are—is it just that men can’t handle an equal?

Andrew: You’re right.  Because so many men are fragile.  And I say that in this sense.  We have so much—so many men, who are 12-year-old boys masquerading as full grown men.  And these 12-year-old little boys are unhealed, and they’re acting out of their wounds.  Insecure men will not make good partners.  Little boys do not make good husbands.  Little boys do not make good fathers.  And so there is an epidemic of underdeveloped men.  That does not give them a pass or us a pass not to call them to more.  We have to continue.  But so many women are feeling that, man, I am a mother to an extra child here rather than equality.  So if your husband is threatened by your capacity, by your brilliance then yes.  You’re most likely married to a man boy and not a full grown, integrated, centered man, who has done his emotional healing and done his work so he can actually not be threatened by your capacity.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  Exactly.  Okay.  You asked a haunting question.  You asked many haunting questions in this—in the book.  But one of the ones that really stuck with me—and we’ve done research on this too and see this play out in real life is what kind of church—if I were an abuser, what kind of church would I go to, right?  And think about that because we know that there are pedophiles out there.  We know that there are just men, who want to use women.  We know that there are narcissists out there.    We know that there are just abusive men of all stripes out there.  And if you were an abusive man and you wanted to go to a church where it’s very easy to find victims, what kind of church would you go to?

Andrew: Yes.  Yes.  That’s a great question.  And my mentor, Dr.  Nancy Murphy, wrote an article for my blog.  It’s probably my most popular article of all time.

Sheila: It’s really powerful.  I can share the link to it.  It’s really powerful.  Yeah.

Andrew: She addressed that question just because it’s such a fascinating question because so many times churches can harbor, right?  Harbor abusers because they abuse grace or they, what I call—in the book, I talk about weaponizing forgiveness, right?  So the woman will come in to the pastor and be like, “My husband has been cheating on me, and I caught him.  And he’s been looking at porn.”  One of the women said, “You’ve been a Christian longer.  You should set an example and forgive him,” right?  And so forgiveness becomes weaponized as a place to do that.  So a few things of—to answer your question kind of what churches, right?  One that believes in male headship in a way that really preaches a lot about modesty or preaches a lot about submission in that way that’s a power over.  That’s a huge red flag, right?  Churches, let’s see, where the pastor has not done any type of his own kind of own self reflection work and just spiritually bypasses everything.  Well, God’s got it, right?  Dr. Nancy Murphy talks about a church with a lot of yelling, which is an interesting thing because it would desensitize families and that type of language.  Church that—she writes this.  “A church with an altar call for prayer.”  She writes this.  “I hate myself for the way I’ve hurt you.  (distorted audio).  It reminds me of my grandpa—treated my grandma.”  She’s basically talking about false humility, and I’m going to go and kind of repent.  And I’m going to go do the show, but I’m not actually going to live differently.  And so a church that actually is more concerned with appearances than actually changing the heart and actually humility.  So there’s a lot of—

Sheila: We had 50 baptisms last year.  Look at this huge baptismal service.  Or you know those churches that go, “Hey, if anyone wants to be baptized right now, you come on up, and we’ll baptize you right here and now.”  Okay.  Maybe there’s a place for that sometimes.  But you have to wonder how much of this is church is creating these emotional—these super emotional moments but then there’s not—everything is flashy.  And everybody wants that miracle story, and nobody wants the hard work of actual healing and growth.

Andrew: Exactly.  Exactly.  And so a few other things.  Does your church have open dialogue?  Is your church one that actually wants your voice?  Does it want your experience, or is it trying to silence your voice, right?  As a woman, one thing that I’m looking for is what does it do with your intuition.  Does it curse it?  Does it curse your gut as not to be trusted, right?  Or does it actually invite your feelings and your heart?  Because I believe God lives in your body.  And so if you can trust your body, I believe you can trust the voice of God, right?  Obviously, look at the resources, the type of safe resources versus the terrible resources that you do such a good job exposing, right?  If the church is kind of having—we’re going to do our annual Love and Respect meeting, it’s just like oh.  That’s probably a red flag, right?  And then, obviously, is the church—is it anti therapy?  Is it not excited about counselors because it’s pop psychology or of the devil?  It’s like self reflection work is God’s work.  I truly believe that.  And so a church that has that—and then, obviously, then more practical, does the church implement actually church—safe church policies, safeguards to encourage safety and equity throughout the congregation?  So those are just a few points to what actually creates a safe church.

Sheila: Yeah.  So good.  And you wrote a quote by a woman named Mandy Nichol.  This went viral on social media where she said—and a lot of people have made graphics out of this.  “A lot of pastors have to encourage women to stay with abusive husbands.  Because if they taught women how to recognize abuse and leave it, women would be leaving their churches too.”

Andrew: Ah, whew.  That’s well said.

Sheila: That’s powerful right there.  Let’s just zero in on one particular aspect of that because I want to draw the connections for our listeners so they understand why an abuser would be drawn to a specific church.  So let’s just talk about the modesty message for a minute because we’ve done some research on this too.  And that churches that preach modesty messages the women are more likely, as teenagers, to be sexually abused either by adults in the congregation or by peers.  So if the church is preaching modesty, if the church is like, “Hey, we really want to value purity,” why would there be more abuse?  

Andrew: Yeah.  That’s such a great question.  Well, we got to understand—and this is a quote from Emily Allison.  “Good theology bears good fruit.  Bad theology bears bad fruit,” right?  And so if you’re looking at pornography, if you’re looking at over sexualized messages, and some of the statistics—okay.  There’s a chance your pastor could be—he’s at least lived in this patriarchal society that has a lower view of women.  We just have to be aware of that.  And pornography is in the water all the time.  And so what do you do if you are a pastor, who has used pornography?  What do you do with that shame?  Well, so many times it’s projected outward.  So many times it’s, “I don’t want to deal with my darkness.  My shadow.  I don’t want to lose my job.  I got to just push it—I’ve got to make it their problem, not mine.”  And so many times they make it about something else rather than about themselves.  And so instead of making it a problem with your own mindset, how you view women because that’s a lot of hard work, I’m just going to make it about low cut blouses or something, right?  And so it reminds me of this tweet from this pastor in Utah.  I’m sure you saw.  This was awhile ago.  But he wrote, “Dear ladies, there is no reason whatsoever for you to post pictures of yourself in low cut shirts, bikinis, bras, underwear, or anything similar ever.  Not to show your weight loss journey.  Not to show your newborn baby.  Not to document your birth story.  Signed, your brothers,” right?  And there’s just so much wrong with that.  And then the comedian, Dustin Nickerson responded this.  He goes, “Dear Donuts, there is no reason whatsoever for you to be so delicious.  You look so good.  You smell so good.  You taste better than anything ever.  Me eating eight of you and having no self control is on you.  For just being the way you are, for my character flaws, they’re your fault.  Signed, your brothers.”  Just thought that was a hilarious way to expose just the absurdity that we have come to blame women for having bodies and blaming women for our own uncontrolled arousal or sexualization of them.

Sheila: Yeah.  Because it really normalizes the idea that men can’t control themselves, right?  

Andrew: Correct.

Sheila: And so women need to be the sin management tools for men.  And so, therefore, if sin happens, it’s because she wasn’t doing her job.  It’s not because he sinned.  And yeah.  Obviously, abusers are going to gravitate to churches like that rather than churches that teach accountability and that teach healthy relationships between the genders.  Yeah.

Andrew: Right.  I mean it reminds me even going all the way back to the beginning.  Genesis 3:12, right?  If you remember what Adam did to escape responsibility, right?  What did he say?  “The woman You gave me,” right?  “To be with me,” right?  “She gave me the fruit from the tree, and I ate it,” right?  Just completely blaming the woman.  It’s like have we evolved at all.  Have we changed at all?  Or are we still using the same tactics to scapegoat women so that we don’t have to actually do our own work?  

Sheila: Yeah.  Exactly.  I ran an excerpt—well, not an excerpt.  It was like you wrote an article that kind of condensed a lot of your findings for me.  And I ran it on the blog a little bit ago.  And I’ll put a link to that in the podcast notes.  If you’re interested in the book, it’s a great way to just see some of the research.  And I’m sure once you read it you will want to get the book, and everyone should because it’s—we need to read it.  We need to confront it.  But one of our commenters after reading your article, she left this comment, which I thought was so good.  She said, “I worked years ago as one of fewer than 10 females alongside about 160 males in a non church related job.  There were some sexist jokes there over the course of a few years but not nearly as many as I experienced in less than 1 year at an evangelical church mostly by male staffers.  I also experienced some of the kindest and most healthily protective men in the non church space.  Kind and healthy men were almost nonexistent in the church space.  Once I wore a short sleeved top to church with a V in the back that went deeper than most shirts but was still well above my bra line.  And a female that I considered a friend loudly mocked me for showing too much skin.  Another time a married male staffer honestly and kindly complimented my appearance but felt he had to profusely explain that he was not hitting on me.  I know he meant it nonsexually and sincerely, but the fact that he felt he had to so thoroughly explain the compliment really tainted it.”  

Andrew: Wow.  That’s it in a nutshell.  Yep.

Sheila: And I think this is just so many people’s experience.  I know it’s been my experience too where in the work place—in academia, I was really respected and given lots of opportunities to use my brain.  People would seek out my opinions.  And then in a church space, you run drama camps for kids which is wonderful.  I love doing drama for kids.  But it’s just—it’s like you’re—the talents and the giftings that you have don’t matter because you’re slotted in, right?  You’re asked if you want to fill the nursery schedule.  You’re asked if you want to bring sandwiches for funerals.  And God bless the people who make sandwiches for funerals.  I’m just not one of those people.  And we need them.  I am not trying to put—say that’s not valid. 

Andrew: Exactly.  And if that’s your gift—if I could just add.  If that’s your gift, you love to serve, you love domestic, you love being at home, being with the kids, you love—bless you.  We’re not speaking against—I’m not speaking against that, right?  If that’s where you feel like, “Hey, this is what I want,” great.  That’s awesome.  It’s for the women that don’t feel like that’s their gifting.  It’s for the women that—but feel like they’re meant to—they’re supposed to do that or, even worse, this is God’s design for your gender.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And I think what’s so hard is that—and this was my story for so long.  I truly loved Jesus.  I still do.  Truly loved Jesus.  And I wanted to serve Him, and the only place—you have to go to church.  Because that’s where you make community, right?  And you feel like, well, I need to be there.  But then I’m not respected there, and you’re just forever feeling like a square peg in a round hole.  And why is this so difficult when this is supposed to be my community?  And it does.  It wears on you after awhile.  And I really appreciated the stories.

Andrew: Yes.  And that’s why so many women I talked to said, “I can’t even go to church anymore,” which is so sad.  And then they’re like, “But I love God.  I love Jesus more than ever.  But I just feel like I can’t be a part of that because it’s just not good for me.  It’s not good for my spirit.”  And what a heart break, right?  Our churches should be the safest place.  And yet, so many times they’ve been harboring abusers and enabling abusers rather than actually calling us to more.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  And what does the church lose when it doesn’t have women’s voices represented?

Andrew: Mm-hmm.  Well, I think there’s a—it almost feels—again, when there’s insecurity, it feels like a threat, right?  And so I think a lot of men say, “Oh, if we give up our power, then women will treat us possibly the way we treat them.  I’m not signing up for that.  I don’t want to be on the underside of power.”  And that’s not what we’re arguing for.  We’re arguing not for another oppressive class.  We’re arguing for shared power because that’s where we feel like the healthiest relationships are and where God’s image can be most known.  It’s in shared power.  We both bear the image of God.  And I think the evil one, who wants to steal, kill, and destroy, is loving that we’ve silenced half the church and that half of God’s image will not be known.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  Exactly.  So what gives you hope?  Did you hear stories of hope?  

Andrew: Yeah.  What gives me hope is—I mean, one, this is just in my own personal work in the men’s workshops that we do is that every month we have workshops, waitlists, and men are doing the work.  Men are diving in.  And a lot of times women can lose hope.  Or I get the email all the time, “Could you have a dating app, or can I get the names of guys that have been through your workshop that actually have done some self reflection work because it’s so hard to find?”  But men are not just okay with being the oppressive class.  And many are waking up and are actually doing the hard work.  So that gives me hope all the time to see that every month.  Men from all over the country, all over the world, doing this work.  And then as far as women, the hope is so many are starting to speak up.  No longer the norm is kind of silenced.  People are writing about it.  You included.  People are speaking out about it.  This is becoming more and more awareness and then not just awareness but actually action.  

Sheila: Right.  And in your personal life, you’ve got a very powerful wife.  You’ve got kids.  How have you changed the way you related to your wife and your kids as you’ve done your own work yourself to try to model to your kids what they should be doing?

Andrew: Yeah.  When we moved from Seattle, one of our first things was we wanted to find a church that was led—minority led or led by a woman.  So my kids have heard so many sermons with women pastors even—I think they’re more surprised when they hear male pastors speaking.  And we’ve taught equality.  Yeah.  My wife and I share responsibilities of—around the house of who is doing this.  I am the laundry guy.  So I have hemorrhoid piles of laundry all the time that I’m working on to try to get them—it’s just like—it’s exhausting all the time.  My wife works—does the kitchen cleaning.  We’re shared household.  We share—and we have different skill sets, right?  And so I’m better at some things, and she’s better at other things.  And then we tag the other person to be the team captain, and we then submit mutually to each other.  And our kids see that.  And we’re hopefully teaching them what mutuality looks like rather than some of the damaging roles—gender roles that I grew up with.

Sheila: Yeah.  I love that.  So, Andrew—okay.  So the book, again, is Safe Church: How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities.  And it goes over all the different areas, the big areas that women said, “Hey, this is a problem for me,” but you also go over the biblical texts that are often used to keep women down.  You go over the problem of abuse in church and how we can fix it.  And you go over what good church policies would look like if we want to be safe.  So it’s really a comprehensive book.  It’s wonderful.  It’s easy to read.  Lots of stories.  I highly recommend it.  So we’ll put a link to that in the podcast notes.  We’ll put a link to the work that Andrew does at your—do you call it a clinic?  Or what do you call it?

Andrew: It’s the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma.  Yep.  So the CCC for short.  And yeah.  We run workshops every month. North Carolina.  And then next week is on the west coast.

Sheila: Awesome.  Yeah.  Really, really helpful.  So I will put those links and links to Andrew.  Andrew is really big on Facebook.  So we’ll put your link to your Facebook page.  It has not been stolen yet unlike mine was.

Andrew: Gosh.

Sheila: We’re rebuilding.  We’re rebuilding.

Andrew: Brutal.  Brutal.  I try to do that blue check thing.  Hopefully, that helps from—after you got yours jacked, I was like I need to start paying so I can try to safeguard this.

Sheila: Yes.  Yes.  That happened last summer.  So if you’re following me now, it’s okay now.  But yeah.  Yeah.  Ugh.  Anyway, but thank you, Andrew.  Thank you for just being such a great voice.  I know so many in our patron group are constantly sharing your stuff and referring to you.  And you’re just really an encouragement, I think, to women to know that men are speaking up.  Because as someone else said in my comments yesterday, sometimes men need to hear it from another man, right?

Andrew: Yeah.  Well, if there’s a fundamental hatred of the feminine, then it actually doesn’t matter how many.  And yet, women need to continue to speak up and continue to be leaders and guide us, those who are blinded.  But many times it takes men to confront other men, and that’s why I constantly say whether it’s domestic violence, whether it’s this—this is a man’s job because we are the, primarily, ones who are perpetrating it.  And we need to be the ones that stop it.

Sheila: Yeah.  Well, thank you for your work, Andrew.  Really appreciate it.  

Andrew: Mm-hmm.  Thank you.

Sheila: I just hope that people get the vision that church doesn’t need to be like that.  

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  Exactly.  And I also think—this is something that Joanna and I talk about all the time because we are the ones in this group who are in the midst of raising kids as we’re doing the whole deconstruction and realizing the realities about many churches.  And that’s a really tricky spot to be in, right?  I see a lot of conversation around this.  And what Joanna and I often talk about is what do we do for our kids, right?  And what we always go back to is, quite frankly, the statistics.  And we’ve talked about this a lot in the Patreon group where it’s like, yeah.  The statistics show that there are churches that are genuinely harmful.  And then there are churches that are genuinely helpful.  And so don’t let yourself waste away at a harmful church because, well, the leadership are nice people.  They might change.  Or but we have good community of people, who are sexist, right?  Don’t let yourself waste away, and don’t let your kids be poisoned by a harmful church.  Find the ones that are actually helpful.

Sheila: Yeah.  And if they’re small, go to them.  Bring your friends.  Infuse the small, healthy ones with more people, and we’ll see them grow.  Let’s get the good places growing.  Okay.  I want to talk about how the church can steal your sex life.  And I woke up super early this morning.  I was up at 6:00.  And I just checked my direct messages, and I think I spent an hour and a half reading through messages because I asked on social media for stories.  And they were just heart breaking.  And we’re going to bring some of them up in a minute.  But I want to do something funny first.  I think Joanna sent this to us.   

Rebecca: No.  No.  No.  We had a patron post it.  I think it was Randy.  I think it was one of our patrons posted this.  And it was sex advice from monks in 1300.

Sheila: Yeah.  So there’s this guy.  I looked it up.  So this guy named Alfred wrote this book.  What was it called?  The Secrets of Women.  And it got translated, I think, in the 1800s in Germany, and it sort of came back into vogue again.  And people have been studying it.  But it’s quite misogynistic, okay?  The overall thing.  And there’s a lot of academic literature looking at his view of women.

Rebecca: I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  Who are shocked that in 1300 we were misogynistic.  Like what?  No.  That’s—yeah.

Sheila: But the sex advice was super funny.  And I thought—would you like to read it?

Rebecca: I would love to read this.  Okay.  Just warning.  This is a long passage.  Okay?  And it’s from the 1300s, so it’s real weird.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Oh, it is.  Oh, it is.  

Rebecca: Are you ready?  

Sheila: Yes.  I don't think anyone is ready.  But go ahead.

Rebecca: Okay.  “Since so many imperfections result from irregular coitus, this act should be performed only for the purpose of having children.  Further, medical authorities tell us that it is good to know the proper manner of having sexual intercourse, which is as follows.  The man and the woman should be of compatible complexions, temperate in their qualities, and moderate in food and drink and in the other six nonnatural things, that is, motion, quiet, sleep, waking, and the rest.  Their food should be digested, and its superfluities should be expelled; then after the middle of the night or before daybreak, the male should begin to excite the woman to coitus.  He should speak to her in a jesting manner, kiss and embrace her, and rub her lower parts with his fingers.  All this should be done to arouse the woman’s appetite for coitus, so the male and the female seed will run together in the womb at the same time.  For, absolutely speaking, women emit their seed later than men because of their coldness, and this often prevents conception.”  This is serious, Mom.  The coldness.

Sheila: The coldness of women.

Rebecca: “Then, when the woman begins to speak as if she were babbling the male ought to become erect and mix with her.  At this time, the woman must remain absolutely still lest the seed be divided and a monster be generated.”  

Sheila: And it goes on from there.  

Rebecca: The best one is they have different advice for if you want to convince a male or a female.  It’s great.  

Sheila: But I mean what’s so funny about this is it actually describes women getting aroused.

Rebecca: It’s so much better sex advice than is in the current—it’s like I’m sorry.  You’re telling him to flirt, to lay down some mad game to get her aroused and possibly bring her to orgasm first.

Sheila: Yeah.  I think that’s what the babbling thing is.

Rebecca: You don’t start having sex until she’s babbling.  I’m sorry.  Meanwhile, Emerson Eggerichs is out here being like, “There’s no way to know if a woman is aroused.”  A monk, who is supposed to be celibate in the 1300s, knew how to get a woman aroused.  

Sheila: So there you go.  So just different views of the church has had on sex.

Rebecca: Well, and it’s also so interesting because they were so concerned about generating a monster, and they had so little understanding of science and how conception actually worked and anything like that.  And it’s very interesting seeing what different perspectives have been.  But it’s very funny.  But I do wonder if you have a culture where childbirth is scary and a lot of people die and everyone is kind of dirty all the time, yeah.  You have to focus on arousal, I guess.

Sheila: Yeah.  Oh, the funniest thing you shared in the newsletter last week—something else that a Facebook commenter sent me about the Vikings which was very funny.  Do you want to—

Rebecca: Yes.  There was this written letter by some monk as well, a priest or something, from somewhere in the UK, right?  

Sheila: In England.

Rebecca: In England.  Who was just bemoaning the fact that these Danes, these Vikings, with their combed hair, their frequent bathing, and their—how they often changed their clothes to wash them, they were ruining the young women’s innocence by seducing them.  And they were a threat to their virtue.  And it’s just because the men didn’t stink.  And it’s like these women saw attractive men, who were clean, for the first time in their lives and were just going feral.  And the monks were like, “Oh, no.”  And they don’t tell the men to shower.  They’re like, “Oh no.  The clean men are a threat.”  Anyway, it was just really funny.  And that’s from someone whose entire family was the unwashed English pretty much.

Sheila: Yes.  We were.  We came entirely from the unwashed English.  Well, except for—no.  Your father was Scottish.  But yes.  I think they were unwashed too though, weren’t they?

Rebecca: They were very unwashed as well.

Sheila: Yes.  So anyway, if you are not signed up for our emails, I think about 45,000 people get our email every Friday that you write.  And it’s awesome.  So we’ll put a link to that in the podcast notes too.  So these are the kinds of funny things that are happening throughout history where people—where we find these little nuggets of how the church talked about sex.  Andrew shared some of the stats on what women experience hearing in the church about sex today.  And then I just want to share some of the letters that we got.  And what you’ll find as we read some of these stories is just the commonality is women saying they have a lack of autonomy over their own body.  And you just hear obligation again and again and again.  And the toll that that takes on relationships.  So here’s one letter that we got awhile ago from a woman, who said, “A couple of days ago, it was his birthday.    had my period. After we got in bed, he kiddingly and flirtingly said, ‘Any chance I can get a birthday blow job?’  I was so turned off and disgusted by this that I turned him down, and he responded with a hurt response like, ‘Okay, then.  Wow. Just wow,’ as if he couldn't believe I wouldn't sacrifice for him on his birthday.  And it just made me feel like a piece of meat.  I hated it.  Am I being a prude? Am I being selfish?  This has been really bothering me.  About a couple months ago, I also had my period.  He asked me if he could just rub up against me.  That time I said yes.  But it made me feel so used.  Like, what was even the point of me being there?  It was awful feeling. After he said that about the blow job, I told him I'd love to just cuddle with him.  He asked me if it was going to lead to anything else, and I told him no.  And he said, ‘Then, no. I'm not going to cuddle with you,’ he said with scorn.”  And I mean I know a lot of people are thinking, “Yeah.  But it was his birthday.”  Okay.

Rebecca: Well, it’s clear this is a pattern in the relationship though.

Sheila: But that’s the problem.  Yeah.

Rebecca: Yeah.  The problem is this is clearly not a relationship where a birthday gift when you’re on your period is a totally natural part of the relationship.  It’s like oh no.  There’s a pattern here of being used for a masturbatory aid when you can’t engage in coitus, right?  

Sheila: Yeah.  And I don’t think people—that really does make you feel used.  And I have heard this—

Rebecca: If you have a history of that, yeah.  If he’s constantly just trying to use you to get off no matter what.    

Sheila: He’s humping her leg.  He’s a dog humping her leg.  That is what dogs do, right?  And I have heard this from so many people.  And I think it’s because in the church we talk about how evil it is to masturbate.  How evil it is to masturbate that people think, “Well, because I’m using my wife, it is less evil.  So it’s less evil to make someone feel used than it is to do this—to take care of myself.”  And I don’t want to make this about masturbation, but I just find that logic—I hear it all the time.  It is less evil to impose on my wife, to cause her pain, to make her feel like she has no autonomy, to make her feel used, to make her feel like a piece of meat than it is for me to do something myself.  So I would rather project my shame onto her.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  Well, and I think often it’s framed as masturbating is cheating on your spouse, right?  So it’s like—but they missed the whole point of it.    

Sheila: Yeah.  We have a lot of resources that can help people in these situations.  I don’t want to give advice on each of these things because there’s a lot of emails.  And we never know both sides.   

Rebecca: Well, and also you don’t actually know what’s going on.  You don’t want to tell someone something when they’re actually in a bad marriage or assume they’re in a really one when they’re actually in kind of a normal one.  It’s just hard, right?  

Sheila: Yeah.  But I would just say if you’re really struggling with sex, like feeling like you don’t have autonomy over your body like you can’t say no, like you don’t know what obligation is, please read The Great Sex Rescue because that can really help.  If you’re struggling with we just have such terrible patterns in our marriage and we don’t know how to get out of it, I have a series on that that went quite big.  It’s got probably about 15 posts.  So you can start at the first and then read through them all on—it was originally the 4-step plan to get out of a sexual pit.  Now it’s got 15 because people kept saying other things.  And then I had more to say.  So I’ll put a link to that too.  And then if you’re—if it’s not about lack of autonomy, if it’s just—    

Rebecca: Yeah.  If there’s not the pattern, if there weren’t the other times when he was like, “Well, if you can’t do it, then can I just rub up against you,” if it wasn’t that kind of thing.

Sheila: Yeah.  If it’s just like I enjoy sex when we have it, but I never want to have it, we have a Boost Your Libido course.  So if there’s not negative patterns in your marriage, you just have this history of sex being so icky that you just can’t excited about it we have a Boost Your Libido course.  And then if you just have real problems reaching orgasm, we have an Orgasm course.   So depending on where you are, some of those resources might help, and we’ll put links to all of those in the podcast notes.  Okay?  Here’s another one.  Do you want to read this one?  Or do you want me to?    

Rebecca: Sure.  I’ll read it.   “I was raised that my body was sinful, that if I had sex before marriage I would be a slut.  I married way too young, and we were both unprepared for intimacy.  I had been raised, ‘Your husband will know what to do.’  But he didn’t.  And I hadn’t been given the tools to explain what I needed or desired.  I tried desperately to improve our intimate life but was only met with shaming and stonewalling.  I was his Biblically Approved Orgasm Device and as long as he got release, I didn’t matter.  We’re now divorced for various reasons, but the issues in our intimate life definitely didn’t help.   I discovered GSR,”—that’s The Great Sex Rescue—“during our separation.  I don’t think it would have prevented the divorce, but I think it would have given me the language to fully explain what I wanted and needed.  I was expected, if I lived and honored him, to let him do sex his way, which was not good.  He did not listen to what felt good for me and actually gloated if I had any pleasure which ruined it.  Then there was the don't deny him clause.  And when I had vaginal pain, which I did most of the time, he chose to believe I was lying and being avoidant.  And he had the book Every Man’s Battle so he totally justified his tendency to describe women by their breast size.  Ugh.  I feel much safer now that we are divorced.”  Yeah.  There’s just a lot there.

Sheila: And I hear this from so many people.  I got sent so many notes from women, who are divorced.  And I just want to say.  If you’re divorced and you still listen to me, thank you.  We weren’t expecting that when we wrote The Great Sex Rescue.  That so many divorced people would relate to it, but I think so many people read it even post divorce. And like she said, it helped me see—it helped give me language to what I was going through because I think a lot of the shame that women bear in bad marriages is they feel like God is their pimp.  God is the one telling you, “You have to do these things for your husband no matter how it makes you feel.  And God doesn’t care if you feel used.”  And I think reading that that was never God’s heart for sex at all can actually be quite healing when you’ve gone through some trauma.

Rebecca: Or validating that you are right.  It never should have been like that.  You were right for it to have felt wrong.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  And, again, we hear issues with sexual pain.  Those kept coming up in the letters, and we do know from our research for Great Sex Rescue that sexual pain rates are almost two and a half times the rate of the general population in evangelical circles.  

Rebecca: Something that we saw a lot in our focus groups too that we also hear echoed in this woman’s story is part of the problem is that because sex is such a taboo topic, right?  In many ways.  But also it’s talked about way too much.  So the idea that you are sexual is taboo.  But sex is constantly talked about.  And so you get people getting married super young who aren’t actually attracted to each other.  There are things about the other person they actively find repulsive.  And they still get married because no one knows what arousal feels like or is supposed to feel like or knows what attraction feels like because attraction is all in your head in these churches, right?  It’s like, well, is he a Christian?  Does he go to church?  Are you a good match?  The question isn’t are you on fire.  Do they make you come alive?  Those aren’t the questions.

Sheila: Or can you picture yourself kissing him or picture yourself having sex with him?  And it’s like, well, no because you’re not supposed to.  And so they never ask themselves that.  And then when you actually do, it’s like, “Oh, I never wanted to do that.”  

Rebecca: Well, exactly.  And that’s the—I think that it’s just a big problem that we run into often especially—and I’m somebody who got married really young, okay?  I got married at 20, and I have 0 regrets.  It was the best decision ever because I was me.  And Connor was Connor.  And we knew who we were since 16, right?  And both of us were well traveled.  We had had tons of experiences, and we’re just the kinds of personalities, who, frankly, I’ve been 30 since I was 14.  And same with Connor.  Always been very responsible, right?  But that’s the thing.  I’m not saying never get married young.  But I am saying, as someone who got married at 20, when I hear that someone else got married young, I immediately have my hackles raised.  I’m like I know it was good for me.  I also know that I’m the exception, not the rule, right?  And it’s like why are we getting married so young before we’ve had life experience, before we have really an idea of what we want from our life, before we’ve had the chance to, frankly, date a lot of people, right?  And, again, that is coming from someone who got married at 20 to her first—person she’s only ever kissed, okay?  So I’m not knocking that.  That’s a good thing if it works for you.  But I get nervous when I see stories like this so often where it’s like got married way too young to someone who I don’t even like because I had no idea what I was doing.  

Sheila: Yeah.  And this is what youth groups need to understand is the more you talk about—the more you push purity—the more people think, “Well, I guess I’m just really right with God and holy,” when they don’t feel attraction to the person they’re marrying, right?  They see it as a sign of virtue rather than as a red flag.  Yeah.     

Rebecca: Yes.  Exactly.  We don’t need to push purity.  We need to push wisdom.  It is not wise to have one night stands.  It’s just not.  And I have no problem saying that.  People can get mad at me.  It’s not wise.  Find me literature that says it’s a good idea to have one night stands.  Quite frankly.  It’s not.  And so you can talk about wisdom without it being about who has the least sexual attraction to their boyfriend and is therefore holiest.  

Sheila: Yes.  Exactly.

Rebecca: We talked to more than one woman in our focus groups who said they specifically chose to marry someone they didn’t find particularly physically attractive because they were so scared about how everyone said physical attraction fades.  You have to go for character.  So she’s like, “Well, I’ll go for the solid, stable, more nerdy kind of guy, who they’re not attracted to.”  I’m not saying nerds are not attractive.  I went for a nerdy guy.  Found him attractive.  

Sheila: Me too.  

Rebecca: Yes.  Exactly.  The nerds are in good company over here.  I’m just saying their words.  They said they had the guy, who was interested in them who was kind of more of the traditionally attractive to multiple people.  And they went for the person, who they actively were not attracted to because they thought that would be better for their relationship long term because of the kinds of things that they were warned about in the whole purity—so if someone makes you hot and heavy, don’t go out with them because attraction is temporary.  And it’s like I hate to break it to you.  It’s actually not.  And that’s an unpopular opinion.

Sheila: Now the butterfly feeling does fade.  That thing where you feel electricity when you touch their hand.  That hands.

Rebecca: But repulsion doesn’t.

Sheila: But repulsion doesn’t.  Yes.

Rebecca: That’s the problem is it’s like if you’re with someone and you don’t initially find them attractive but then you’re like—starting dating them and then you’re like, “Oh no.  I’m falling for you,” no.  Now you attract me versus I love you.  And I could marry you.  I still find you not—actively unattractive.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Like I don’t want to kiss you.  Yeah.

Rebecca: Please don’t marry them then.  That’s not actually fair.  And I’m not digging the women who did it because you don’t have a choice.  And they would say the same thing to you.  They would say, “If you are dating someone whether you’re a man or a woman and you don’t—and you actively find them unattractive, do the right thing.  Please do not—just don’t do that to them.  That’s not fair quite frankly.” 

Sheila: Yeah.  You should enjoy kissing them.  You should enjoy thinking about kissing them, thinking about doing more.  You should want that, right?  Okay.  I have a note from a man, and this one is kind of interesting.  It’s longer.  Someone in our patron group who talks a lot about what the church did.  And I thought this was a really good story.  He says, “The church absolutely stole our sex life.  Mine and my wife's.  It's too complex to say it was any one cause, but without a doubt, purity culture and the church harmed, one, my wife by creating a context of fear and shame around sex and a woman's body.  This resulted in an underlying shame around every part of sex that eventually showed up in her body on wedding night as vaginismus.  The church then stole her sex life after this with its terrible teachings to both of us in trying to look for sin and heaping more guilt on both of us rather than focusing on what would have actually brought healing.  In other somewhat unrelated ways, it also prevented us from actually learning how to do conflict well, or make decisions well together so she was taught to hide herself to make her husband shine.  What all this did after 19 years of marriage, was to give her the ick for me.  However, she does love me and is also attracted to me, which means she kind of feels sexual but also has a trauma response about anything and everything.  Here is an interesting story that may shed some light on the weird role guilt and shame can have because of purity culture.  We went to a fundamentalist college in which we were not allowed to touch physically at all.  Not even hold hands.”  Can I just interject for a minute?

Rebecca: You are a grown up.

Sheila: How can colleges have these kinds of rules?  

Rebecca: If you are at college, you are a grown up.  Don’t let someone tell you what to do when you are a grown up.  It’s so toxic.  It is such a red flag other than the law.  Okay?  That’s what’s allowed to tell you what to do as a group up, okay?  If you’re at a college like if you drink you get kicked out, I’m sorry.  That’s weird.

Sheila: Now I mean in the States they can’t drink until 21. 

Rebecca: That’s also weird.  Still listen to that law.  Sorry.  My school was 20 minutes from Quebec, so everyone drank at 18.  I didn’t.  I still waited until 19.

Sheila: Yes.  Okay.  Here, let me keep going here.

Rebecca: Sorry.

Sheila: Okay.  “As two people who really wanted to do what was right, there were a few times when we sinned by holding hands or playing a little footsie, but the worst we did was one time we kissed on a weekend.  And I felt so guilty that I had broken the rules, that I turned us in to the student body leadership and we got fined for that.  I was the first boy she had ever kissed or touched, so tying physicality to extreme shame and guilt and even a monetary fine happened in our bodies.  And I have no doubt this is part of what harmed us in a big way.”

Rebecca: Yeah.  No kidding.  

Sheila: Yeah.  I know.  Isn’t that sad?  Okay.  Then purity culture harmed them, “Two, it harmed me by teaching me that I deserved sex, by failing to actually prepare me for any semblance of her pleasure being important.  We were both virgins when we got married.  So when we finally got married and got together that night, I was excited, and she was terrified.  And I didn’t really have a category for understanding that. Because of my entitlement, my OCD over sin and shame—that’s its own damaging thing from the church—my belief that I was the leader which meant I needed to somehow always be pushing us to heal and figure this out, et cetera, meant I had zero tools for emotional regulation or conflict resolution and that I thought it was my godly right to get what I wanted.  So while she hid herself more and more and resented me for that, I thought she just wanted me to always get my way and that we were both happy.  Though I couldn’t figure out why hated sex so much, especially when orgasm was actually not a problem for her.  Now, 19 years in, I am married to a wife who cannot touch me in any way without a severe trauma response, and it doesn’t look like we will ever really have a good sex life.  And I blame 100% of that on the church because I know I had the intention of wanting to do what was right, but the leaders I listened to and the books I read did nothing but counsel me to actions and behaviors I now know made it worse.  My sex life would not be as messed up 19 years in if the church, one, hadn’t messed us up before marriage, and then, two, had actually helped us heal correctly after we were messed up in the early part of marriage.”  And I just want to say I believe him.  I mean I know this guy a bit from interactions with him. And I believe him that he had good intentions.  And I know other people where their intention was very good, and they did care about their spouse.  They did love their spouse.  They didn’t want to hurt their spouse.  But when all of these teachings tell you that a godly marriage is one where you have sex at least three times a week and that this is something that a man can’t live without and she has to meet his needs or else God will not approve of you, it really does mess you up.  And like he said, his wife got smaller and smaller and smaller and didn’t tell him what she was actually feeling because she didn’t think that was her role.  It’s like complex trauma.  

Rebecca: Well, and also if you are in a—we often say things like, “Okay.  But how could you not notice if she’s not having any pleasure for 19 years?”  She was.  This is what makes it complicated too, right?  It’s like if she’s not saying anything, how is he supposed to know that things aren’t okay, right?  And it’s just—it’s tricky, right?  And this is the problem.  And also you have to remember for a lot of these men is the men who intend well and who actually do want to do a good job are the ones who are incredibly terrified that they will become the man in Every Man’s Battle and hold themselves to impossible standards.  There are a lot of very sexually entitled men, who would not, frankly, turn themselves in for kissing someone because they’re doing so much worse.  This is what’s difficult, right?  There are a lot of people, who are at these Bible colleges.  And everyone thinks people who go to Bible colleges don’t have sex.  That is a lie.  There are wild things that happen at Bible colleges.  And a lot of these boys are just flat out assaulting girls around there.  And they just don’t care, right?  Liberty University has had multiple girls have to stand in front and apologize for getting pregnant when they were raped, and the boy is not forced to apologize for raping and impregnating a student, right?  This is a thing that happens.  And so you have situations like there where you have the guy, who is actually following the rules, that doesn’t actually scream massive red flag in some ways because it’s like, oh, you’re actually holding yourself to the standard.  I can understand how that anxiety around becoming a monster when you’ve been told that’s just how men are, and you’ve been told that this is something that men can’t help unless they get their help through sex.  Remember that religious based OCD around sex, in particular, is actually more common than you’d think.  And it can be genuinely debilitating.  There is a reason that it’s called obsessive compulsive disorder.  It’s not just a—it’s not just, oh, how people joke about it.  It actually can genuinely turn your life upside down.  

Sheila: I would love to look at some studies on this.  So this is Sheila guessing and hypothesizing.  Please do not say that we found this or that we have any evidence for this.  But I would assume that OCD is higher in evangelical communities and religious scrupulosity, which is kind of like a form of OCD where you’re just constantly wondering if you’re sinning and you’re constantly trying to make up for sinning.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  It’s like a description of what the obsessions are.  

Sheila: Yeah.  It’s really—yeah.  It’s really sad.

Rebecca: And remember?  If you say that we found that, we’re going to find you.  We’re going to disown you.  

Sheila: This is something I think we need further research on.

Rebecca: Or maybe there is further research.  We have to go find it.  We don’t know.

Sheila: Yeah.  There you go.  Okay.  A couple more.  I don’t want to spend—we have so many.  Seriously, I spent an hour and a half this morning reading these all.  And I feel very heavy because there’s so much pain out there.  But in a lot of them, it was like—I’ll read you, and then I’ll tell you how some of—how a lot of them are ending.  Okay.  This is just a super quick one.  This woman sent me a longer note afterwards, and I can’t read her whole longer note.  But she said, “Purity culture, so called Christian books about marriage, and ongoing messages from the pulpit and small groups over the years pretty much set me up to expect abuse without me knowing that’s what it was.  I am a Title IX sexual misconduct investigator.  And I still didn’t make the connections between my own experience and consent.”  And I think that’s actually—I thought that was interesting because what she’s saying is in her job she’s working with sexual assault.  But she didn’t see it in her own marriage because of what the marriage books said sex was supposed to be like in marriage.  And super, super sad.  Okay.  How about this one?  This one can be our last one.  Do you want to read it?

Rebecca: Sure.  “I was raised homeschooled, and my main sex education was the Christian marriage books because any other sex education was encouraging premarital sex, right?  So absolutely.  I legit thought that going through puberty meant I was struggling with lust, so I read Every Man's Battle.  Imagine my absolute horror when it was filled with creepy stories of pastors and good Christian men blaming women and girls for their thoughts and actions.  And I was a very curvy 15 year old.  I was so suspicious of adult men after that, always second guessing my outfit or checking that I wasn't too friendly. I also was given And the Bride Wore White: Seven Secrets of Sexual Purity at 11 or so.  I actually thought having a crush was a mental sexual sin.  I even felt guilty when guys would ask me out.  Was I leading them on? Why couldn't they just see me as a friend?  I did these crazy mental gymnastics to try and reason myself out of any attractions I experienced because I thought it was emotionally cheating on my future husband.”  Poor baby girl.  “It's been a long journey reclaiming that part of myself, and I'm still struggling with the ramifications of all those years of hating my body for being curvaceous and hating my sexuality for existing and hating the church for making me feel this way.  So yeah.  I definitely feel like my girlhood and exploration of innocent puppy love was stolen.”  That’s an important point because my thing that I have said—and Connor and I both agree with.  And as we’re parenting is there are things that you label as a parent as bad behavior.  But there are also things that are developmentally appropriate.  And even if you don’t want your kid to do something, if it’s developmentally appropriate, it’s not bad behavior.  It’s just behavior that you work through, right?  But then there’s developmentally appropriate stuff that actually is important for them to do at that age but would be weird for them to do later like the puppy love crush.  The giggling, the flirting—all that.  It’s weird if a 38 year old is doing it.  I’m sorry.  It just is.

Sheila: Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  

Rebecca: If you are doing the same kinds of, “Oh my gosh.  I’m so in love with him” and then it’s like a five-day switch to, “No.  No.  No.  I’m in love with Josh now,” that is—if you’re in your late 30s and you are still experiencing that, just maybe talk to someone and deal with the inner child.  I’m just saying.  This is training wheels for relationships.  You deserve to get to try with training wheels first.  You start with those little tricycles where you can’t fall over even if you try.  That’s your puppy love in junior high.  That’s your oh my gosh.  Writing notes to your friend in Sunday School.  “Did you see that Jonathon smiled at me?  Do you think that he thinks I’m going to marry him some day too?  Oh my goodness.  We will have seven children,” right?  And then next week, “I actually think that I like Daryl now.”  That’s normal.  But what I know from myself growing up in purity culture as well is that kind of thing was treated as it was a slipping—a stepping stone to dating.  And it’s not allowed to be its own phase.  And I think that’s what’s so telling is you’re not allowed to just have puppy love.  It’s like, well, you want to date them.  No.  That was 11.  I was terrified of the idea of actually talking to one of these boys.  We just wanted to fantasize about marrying them.  Because we give the same advice to 11 year olds and to 15 year olds and to 20 year olds and to 40 year olds who are single in a lot of these spaces in the church, there’s no ability to actually go through the normal developmental milestones of making a fool of yourself when you’re 11.  And it doesn’t matter.  Versus not being able to have crushes and stuff until you’re older and it actually might impact you because that’s what I saw a lot of too is girls, who didn’t have any experience with crushes or flirting or anything in junior high and high school, found it very awkward to try to join the dating world when they’re in their 20s.  And they’re like, “Well, now I’m ready to get married, and I didn’t do the whole flirty thing in junior high and high school.  And now I’m on training wheels, and everyone else is on a unicycle.”  

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  I have no idea how to talk to the opposite sex.  I have no idea how to date.  I have no idea how to do anything. 

Rebecca: Yeah.  And not feeling confident in knowing what you have to offer and knowing what kind of person you’re interested in, right?    

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  Exactly.  I also thought it was interesting how she said she thought that she was lusting when she hit puberty, and so she read Every Man’s Battle because that’s what you read when you lust.  So many women said that in their notes to me.  That they read Every Man’s Battle.  And it was a—a number of people mentioned it even in our survey for The Great Sex Rescue.  How reading that as a teenager—a lot of teenage girls read Every Man’s Battle.  And it really seriously messed them up because of how it talks about men.  

Rebecca: Because it’s creepy.    

Sheila: It is.  It’s totally creepy.  Totally creepy.  I also want to say.  If you’re trying to figure out how to handle this well with your kids, we do have a puberty course that talks about puppy love and that talks about what’s appropriate and how these things are age appropriate.  You don’t need to feel shame about it, but let’s also be wise at the same time and look for red flags.  Make sure that this doesn’t happen.  So we have a really good sex and puberty course that can help you talk to your kids sort of ages 10 to 15.  It’s divided into two age groups.  We have it for both boys and girls.  It’s called The Whole Story, and we’ll put a link to that in the podcast notes too.  Rebecca and her husband, Connor, do some of the teaching as do our other daughter, Katie.  My other daughter, Katie.

Rebecca: Not mine.

Sheila: Not yours.  My other daughter, Katie.  Your sister.  And a med student named Daniel Burrows.  So it’s really fun.  It’s like older siblings talking to your kids.  And we get a lot of great feedback from it, so we’ll put a link to that.  I also wanted to say a number of people said that their life didn’t turn out well.  And many people said they were divorced or many are still married but they’re not having sex anymore.  And they don’t know how that’s ever going to change.  But at the same time, they’re saying, “But my kids are going to have better than this.”  And so they are—they’re reading She Deserves Better.  They’re talking to their kids openly about this stuff.  And so even though they, themselves, missed out and they feel like they had a lot stolen from them, they’re making sure that isn’t copied to the next generation.  And I hope that people can find healing.  I hope it’s not like—yeah.  We’re just never going to have sex again, or we’re never going to feel any attraction to each other.  Or sex is always going to be traumatic.  I hope that’s not your story.  And I hope that our resources can help.  But it does make me hopeful when I see that people, even in some of these worst situations, are saying, “But it stops with me.”  Yeah.

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  Can I say one thing?  As a homeschooled mother, I am a homeschooling mother, who was, herself, homeschooled.  I had the benefit of having absolutely feral friends, who taught me everything about sex.  Your kid might not have that benefit.  Seriously, I had friends, who were like, “You’re homeschooled.  You need to know this.  This is what this joke means.  This is what this body part is also called.”

Sheila: Your brother-in-law did that.  

Rebecca: He’s now my brother-in-law.  It’s very weird.  Yes.  No.  If you are homeschooling your kids—because there’s a lot of people who were homeschooled themselves, who deconstructed, who are still homeschooling their kids—that’s where I am, right?

Sheila: And Joanna.    

Rebecca: And Joanna as well.  You have to understand that you are probably going to have to do more than the average parent in this area.  And that is a responsibility that you, as a homeschool parent, are taking on yourself.  And I am not mincing words here because I have seen it even in well meaning homeschooling families go wrong way too many times.  Okay?  Because if you have kids who are not naturally going to put themselves out there and who are very shy and who don’t ask questions and who aren’t going to have raucous friend groups, who are like, “Hey, Rebecca doesn’t know what a that’s what she said joke means,” if your kid is not like that, it is on you to make sure that they  have not only the education but the confidence to, frankly, explore this aspect of development themselves.  That’s going to look different for every kid.  Every kid doesn’t have to look the same.  But you need to be watching for those red flags.  Because when your child is older, if they are writing this story, the buck stops with you because other kids were in school.  And so they had social—in essence, safety nets for their education in this area the way that your child does not.

Sheila: And we’re not trying to say that the public school system is perfect in this area at all or anything like that.  Obviously, there are problems on both sides.    

Rebecca: But the point is you’re a lot more likely to know what an orgasm is if you go to public school than if you’re homeschooled.

Sheila: Yes.  And our surveys definitely showed that.  

Rebecca: So I’m just being very forceful as a fellow homeschooling mother.  This is on you and what your child doesn’t know the buck does, in fact, stop with you because you have chosen to be the one who educates them.

Sheila: Yeah.  And we very clearly found that women, who were homeschooled, had a great—a much, much greater chance of not knowing that female orgasm existed until after the age of 22.  

Rebecca: And that’s to the dads too.  Just statistically speaking, the mom is the one who is doing the homeschooling.  But if you’re in charge of it, you have to be in charge of it.  Sorry.  So I know that’s a big of a downer. 

Sheila: And by the way, knowing a female orgasm exists is protective against abuse.  It’s protective against marrying someone bad.  And it’s really protective about having a good sex life later.  So the younger you know that the female orgasm exists actually the better you do long term.  And so the fact that so many girls, who were homeschooled, don’t know basic stuff about their own anatomy, not just orgasm but even other stuff, really does hold them back.  It really does.  Yeah.

Rebecca: So I’m sorry that that’s a little bit harsh, but it’s true.  And so you have the chance to make sure that it does end with your daughter or your son or whoever it is.  And so make sure that you take that chance.  

Sheila: And so pick up—if you’re a homeschooling mom, please pick up She Deserves Better because it will help reparent you.  And then you can have some great conversations with your daughters.  Check out The Whole Story puberty course for both girls and boys because the buck can stop with us.  And that maybe one day we will have just as good advice as Alfred from the 13th century.

Rebecca: I know.  Isn’t that so funny?  Do not be in coitus until the woman is babbling.

Sheila: Is babbling.  And I want to say too.  I really did feel honored reading all of your stories.  I had many more that we could have read today.  It would take so much time.  And so I hold that sacred.  I really feel honored that you share these with me.  And I just hope that our resources can help change the story for the next generation.  Before we go, question that got sent in on Buzzsprout.  So someone sent us a question.  And when you send in—if you listen to our podcast, there’s a place where you can send us a note.  We can’t see your email, so we can’t reply.  So it’s like—anyway, but someone asked in regards to last week’s podcast about why men cheat.  Is there a way to see the full text from the journal article?  And I just want to say no.  Because we don’t own the copyright.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  So you can get—you can do—you can get—if you have access to a university library database or if you really want to see it, you may have to pay a small fee to be able to be, in essence, a subscriber to that journal.  That’s how it works in academia.  If you really wanted, you can probably track down the authors and ask their—find their emails and ask them.  A lot of them will send it.  But also it may just make more sense to pay a small fee for a month and get access to it.

Sheila: Usually what happens in the journal articles is you can read the abstract.  You just can’t necessarily read the full text.  So when we give links to journal articles in the podcast notes, you can usually see the abstract.  And the abstract will kind of explain the methods that they used and then what the results were.

Rebecca: I will say.  We have a lot of people in our—I mean we have people who pull articles for us who have library—

Sheila: Well, Keith does now.  So Keith pulls articles.  But even in our patron group—

Rebecca: I was going to say is join our Patreon group.  Because if you say, “Hey, yo, does anyone have the full text of this,” odds are someone will get it for you for as low as $5.  I’m kidding.  We should not advertise that.

Sheila: No.  But anyway—but thank you for joining us on the Bare Marriage podcast.  We’re grateful to Andrew Bauman.  Check out his book, Safe Church.  And we mentioned a ton of our resources.  The Whole Story, The Great Sex Rescue, the Orgasm course, the Boost Your Libido course, my blog series on getting out of a sexual rut, and then, of course, our books, The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex.  Give them to any engaged couple’s you know so that they don’t end up with these same stories too.  So we’ll put links to all those in the podcast notes, and we will see you again next week on the Bare Marriage podcast where we’re going to have some special guests with us.  And we’re going to take a look at the book, His Needs, Her Needs.  

Rebecca: Oh, I bet that they’re equal, and that it’s not sexist and that there’s nothing harmful.

Sheila: Absolutely.  

Rebecca: Awesome.    

Sheila: So come back for that.  Bye-bye now.