Episode 327: For Men Only by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn Talks Lust and Sex

Welcome to Part 2 of our breakdown of For Men Only! This episode dives headfirst into the sex chapter — and quickly exposes how shaky stats and selective storytelling create misleading narratives about libido and desire. We examine why women’s sexual desire is far more contextual — and relational — than the book admits. We unpack the myth of “on-demand” desire, challenge rigid sex rules like the 72-hour expectation, and explore why libido is far more dynamic — and human — than most advice admits. We also critique popular marriage frameworks that outsource self-worth to partners and rely on oversimplified gender stereotypes rather than evidence-based relational health. Get ready for a candid, research-informed takedown of bad advice — with a clear message: real intimacy thrives on emotional maturity, not scripts.

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LINKS MENTIONED: 

• Our article demolishing Shaunti Feldhahn's "research" on love & respect
• One Sheet on For Women Only 
• Podcast on For Women Only 
• Podcast on mental load
• Our book The Marriage You Want

Transcript

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Sheila
Welcome to 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 if you are watching on YouTube, you know that I am in the second seat because Rebecca is in the first one. 

Rebecca
I am. 

Sheila
Because this is the second part of our deep dive into For Men Only.

Rebecca
Which has been my pet project for a while.

Sheila
Yes, we started last week as we looked at several of the opening chapters from For Men Only and how the book by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn, which is based on some, quite frankly, shoddy research.

Rebecca
Which no one’s surprised by at this point.

Sheila
Yes. Basically told men that all you need to do is reassure your wife that you love her and don't try to fix any problems and everything will be fine. And it never tells men how to actually fix a problem.

Rebecca
Or how to take ownership when they were the problem.

Sheila
Yeah, it's very it's very strange. And it convinces. It calls women swamp creatures or something.

Rebecca
Swamps. They’re swamps.

Sheila
Swamps and convinces, convinces you that men and women are just so totally different that you can never possibly understand what your spouse is feeling or thinking.

Rebecca
And we also talked about the specific ways that it actually messed up Connor and my marriage for the first little bit because he was trying so hard to follow this book because it said that it was research based. And then when we stopped following it, in like less than two weeks, all of our marital problems were like pretty much gone.

Sheila
Yeah. And it was really awkward back then because that was back when I was still friends with Shaunti and so yeah, it was very awkward. But today Becca wanted to save the sex part because it is at the end of the book. And so you needed to hear.

Rebecca
Well, no, the last couple chapters, three chapters that are at the end where it's kind of talking about sex, lust, attraction. All these kinds of things, more sexual dynamics. And so the first half was really like the emotional maturity and health. 

Sheila
Right.

Rebecca
And obviously this also ties in with emotional maturity and health. But gosh darn if we don't have stuff to talk about, you know.

Sheila
Yes, indeed. Okay, so I'm actually gonna hear, I have never actually read For Men Only, I have skimmed it for some quotes for things, but I've never read it the way that you have. And so you are the one who's leading this discussion. 

Rebecca
That's right.

Sheila
Yes. 

Rebecca
We don't believe that everyone has to read every book here at Bare Marriage, because that would be exhausting and psychologically frustrating. 

Sheila
Yes. 

Rebecca
So, but here's the thing. So chapter six in this book is where we get into sex. Okay? And it says this. The title is this “With sex her no doesn't mean you, how her desires are impacted by her unique wiring and why your ego should not be” 
Sheila
Okay.

Rebecca
First of all, I want to say they do some things in this chapter well. They talk about the difference between spontaneous and responsive libido. First of all. They do seem to assume that all women have responsive and that all men have spontaneous more so. But they do talk about the difference about how just because she doesn't feel a felt need in the same way, doesn't mean that she doesn't desire sex, and you can't shame her for having a different response. So giving props okay? 

Sheila
Okay.

Rebecca
Okay, giving props. But here's what they say. I want, first of all, the way this books works, I'm going to show you a different page before I show you this. And for people who are watching on YouTube, the way this book works is whenever they have stats, they show a really cute little graphic. And I actually genuinely like how they do their graphics. No, no shade. I think their graphics look really good. They do cute little graphics of their, of their results. So you see little bar charts. So here we have some results that, have you noticed if you're on YouTube you'll notice there's no bar chart on this page. There's no bar chart. So we hear about the results but we don't see the results. So here's where they're starting to talk about libido frequency and libido differences. Okay? And so here's what he says “Now we do know that in some marriages it's the woman who is pining for more, 1 in 4, according to our survey. So if you are in that situation you are not alone. And of course, some wives indicated that they and their husbands were happily on the same page, to the envy of all. But since we have limited space, we're focusing just on the apparent majority of husbands that want more and better and don't know what to do about it.” Okay, so the apparent majority of husbands who want more and better. There is no bar graph on this page. So I went to the survey to find the question. So here's the question that they're referencing. Okay? “What is the frequency of how often you want to pursue having sex compared to your husband? I want it more often 27.1%” So that's the 25% ish that they said, like roughly 1 in 4. Less often is 44.9% and exactly the same is 28%. So they said “Some wives indicated that they and their husbands were happily on the same page, to the envy of all” that's a whopping third of their sample almost 28%. And then the apparent majority of men who want more and better, 44.9% is not an apparent majority. That is the definition of a minority.

Sheila
Yeah. They're lying.

Rebecca
They’re flat out lying about what they found. And this is last week we talked about or last I don't know if this came a week after week, but last episode when we talked about For Men Only we talked about how this whole book makes sense if you see it as a way to rationalize the dynamics in their own marriage, that makes this make sense to the apparent majority of men who want more and better, they did not find, there is no way to look at their stats and find a majority. There is no way to look at their statistics of what women said, and found that men had a majority of wanting more and better. 

Sheila
Yeah. 

Rebecca
And you could argue, well, they use this from the other survey, okay, but that's not how they did it in For Women Only and that's not how they're claiming they're doing it here. They didn't say when we asked women, we found that only 45% said that their husbands wanted sex more than them. But when we asked men, we found that 72% said that they wanted sex more than their wives. They didn't say that. What they said was, they used their stats where it was convenient, and then they ignored the rest of them.

Sheila
And, you know, we've said, just as an aside, like, one of the points that we made in The Great Sex Rescue, which is our book that's based on our survey of 20,000 women. And we found, I think, I think it was 57% the husband wanted it more, 19%, she wanted it more and 23% it was shared, that that was our stats. But one of the things we said is that there does seem to be some evidence that evangelical women have artificially lowered libido.

Rebecca
Exactly.

Sheila
And we found that specifically around the belief that all men struggle with lust, that that belief alone artificially lowers women's libido. But when you compare surveys of, like representative samples of the population as a whole, we do see more women with higher libidos than we do among evangelical women. And she's even finding this, too. It's like, yeah, because there are, there's things in evangelical culture which lower women's libido. And a lot of those things are in Shaunti Feldhahn's books. 

Rebecca
Exactly. And when you're writing a book to men now, the rest of the book is assuming that she does not want sex as much as he does, and that only is 45% of their own sample.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
And here's what they actually say about it. We were, oh sorry. And to be clear, they don't say this in the book. They say this on the research handout that's on their website. So people reading the book don't see this right. They have to actually go searching for it, if you're super weird and hyper fixate on a book like I do. “Note we were interested to see that roughly 55% of women said they wanted sex more often, or exactly the same as their husbands, which means the percent who want it less is in the minority. However, we did not have the ability to test whether the husband said the women answering exactly the same were in agreement with that assessment. Therefore, we decided to deal in the book primarily with the women answering less often, since it appears that the majority of men believe their wife to be in that category.” So because men probably might answer differently.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
We're going to change what we say women said.

Sheila
Because women are not reliable narrators of their own stories.

Rebecca
Women are not reliable narrators, and their experience does not matter as much. So it wasn't saying to the men, actually, women want sex. So if you feel like yours doesn't want sex, let’s figure out why. It was. Women don't want sex. Even the ones who say they want it the same amount probably don't actually want sex as much. They just don't understand how much their husbands want sex.

Sheila
Right

Rebecca
Yeah. So here's the thing.

Sheila
And again, we've done a lot of work on this. But one of the big things that we found and there was a really good Australian study we pulled for this, is that women can want sex, but they may not want it with their husbands when their husbands aren't carrying mental load and division of labor. Like when your husband has become a dependent because you're doing everything around the house, then her desire for him goes down but her desire for sex doesn't, like it's solo versus dyadic desire. And so like, yeah, she might say, yeah, I totally want sex, I just don't want it with him because of how he's acting. 

Rebecca
Yeah, exactly. 

Sheila
And that could be a dynamic that's going on too. But they don't address that. They're just assuming oh no, she just doesn't want sex.

Rebecca
Well and then here's talking about how they use their own statistics. We have the next example, okay? So later on they did follow up questions of the women who answered they wanted sex less often than their husbands to figure out why they had lowered libido. Okay? And they gave them a variety of responses. And here's what they say. “Look on the next page at the top three reasons by a wide margin that women gave for wanting less sex.” And then they have their top three reasons. “I think I just have a lower sex drive than he does” is 60%. “I'm sometimes simply too tired or too stressed” is about 60%. “It's not that I don't want to be with him, it's just that at the end of the long day, it is sometimes hard to make the transition to wanting physical intimacy at that moment” was 48%. Okay?

Sheila
And you could choose more than one answer.

Rebecca
You could choose more than one answer. Yeah. So here's what they don't do. They don't really get into the other reasons. Later they do get into one of them. So we'll talk about it later. But what are the other reasons that they asked about that are not mentioned? “I may be less receptive when we are at odds or I don't feel close to him right then. I don't want to be intimate with someone I don't feel close to” Was 29.8% of their sample. A third, I don't know why they didn't include that. They could have easily done the top four. “I may be less receptive when I do not feel supported throughout the day” was 17.7%. “I sometimes have competing interests. For example, at the end of a long day, a bath, a magazine in my pillow seem really appealing too” 34.8%.

Sheila
Again, that's such a badly written.

Rebecca
But it's also a mental load issue. 

Sheila
Yeah. 

Rebecca
“I don't feel good about my body or myself and would be embarrassed to be with him with” 16.3%. “I don't want to do some of the things I know he wants me to do, so it's better to avoid the whole situation” Was 11.3% of women.

Sheila
Wow.

Rebecca
1 in 10 women of her survey reported, in essence, being afraid of marital rape and coercion. And that's why they didn't want sex. That does not appear here in this book, that does not appear anywhere in this book. 8.5% said “he's just not good at it, it's boring.” They do talk about making it good for her later. So.

Sheila
Okay. Which they never did in For Women Only. 

Rebecca
“His equipment isn't big enough” was 2.8%. “He's not attractive or desirable” as 3.5%, 16.3% said “it's not enjoyable or frustrating because I don't experience physical pleasure or don't expect to climax each time”. 9.2% said “it's not enjoyable or frustrating because of physical problems or pain” And I will say they do talk about that. They only talk about erectile dysfunction. They use that stat to talk about erectile dysfunction, not pain.

Sheila
Wow.

Rebecca
And then uh and then yeah, that's that's the other thing that they don't, they don't actually mention. So they mention later on in the chapter. So as we're reading that I do want to mention the ones they do mention are the stuff about, like, you have to make sure she's also climaxing  pretty much. But they don't actually say that. What they say is you need to help her warm up.

Sheila
Yeah. And it's interesting because In For Women Only, when they're talking about sex, they're saying like, if you can't feel pleasure, go talk to a therapist as opposed to like, tell your husband what you want.

Rebecca
Yeah, exactly. And now, do I think they do a good job of it? No, they don't, but they do at least mention, hey, like, there is a normalized expectation here that the woman should be enjoying sex physically when it is happening. And so I don't want to take that away from this book.

Sheila
Yeah. It's just it wasn't in For Women Only.


Rebecca
Yea, it wasn't in For Women Only at all. But in this one it is like they have a whole section about how the truth is like for example, “truth five is this, she wants pleasure as much as you do, and if it's not happening, she may be reluctant.” And then he says, this is a hard thing to talk about, but like dudes, you have to kind of deal with this. And does he go into it? No. Does he talk about like the way that, like, she should kind of be like, the priority? Not really. No. But at least they were expecting that she should be experiencing physical pleasure. So I don't, I don't want to talk about this book as if we're assuming that sex is bad for women, because this book does not assume that sex is bad for women.

Sheila
Okay. So props to them for that.

Rebecca
Yeah, exactly. But like, they found that 1 in 10 of women who said they had the lower libido, which is who they're assuming they're talking to, is men who have a higher libido. Right? That's 1 in 10 of the men who are reading this book might need to be told, hey, you can't pressure your wife into things. Hey, maybe you destroyed her libido by raping her or coercing her or doing things that she's really uncomfortable with. Doesn't even, not mentioned in this book, as far as I could tell.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca
So then we get into the part that started this whole thing.

Sheila
Okay.

Rebecca
So in the sex chapter about how her no is not saying no to you, this is what they say. “Truth number three, that men need to know about women in sex.” Okay? “Your body, no matter how much of a stud you are, does not by itself turn on her body.” That is just given flat out. When only 3.5% of the lower libido women said that it was because of physical attractiveness. Said “your body, no matter how much of a stud you are, does not by itself turn on her body”. I'm like, okay, that is a take.

Sheila
That is a take.

Rebecca
And that is, that is just given as a definitive statement. 

Sheila
Right. 

Rebecca
And then they give.

Sheila
This and there is no citation, like, their study did not find that.

Rebecca
No, they didn't find that at all. They did not find that at all. And then they give this really weird example from this couple. Okay? “Listen in to an actual conversation one long married couple relayed to us. She delivering the shocking news. ‘There isn't one thing about your body that makes me sexually attracted to you and want to go to bed with you’. Him disbelieving, ‘I thought I was sexy and good looking. You always told me I was’ she calmly, ‘you are. But that has nothing to do with why I want to have sex with you’. Noting his blank look, she continues, ‘really, nothing about your naked body makes me hot. That is, until after we've sexually involved’. He sputtering. ‘But I, how?’ she reassuring ‘babe, I like you and I like your naked body. It's sweet actually, and you're mine. But it's not like my body is lusting after yours’. He grasping. ‘What? What about me and my black leather jacket? You always come up to me and growl. Are you saying..’ she, ‘Nope. Not even you in that jacket. You look totally hot, mind you and I do want to be with you, but I'm just telling you, physically, my body does not become sexually aroused one bit.’”

Rebecca
And I'm just like.

Sheila
What's the purpose of that conversation?

Rebecca
What's the purpose of this conversation other than, like, some weird emotional battering of this poor man? 

Sheila
Yeah, that’s weird.

Rebecca
But also, this is weird. And I'm like, I'm sorry if you tell a dude your body’s sweet.

Sheila
It's such a weird thing to.

Rebecca
I'm just like. Is this man okay? Like, I'm picturing, like, can you imagine if, and I hate it when people, but genuinely, imagine if the roles were reversed. The reason why patriarchy exists and why it continues, is because we have trained and expected men to not be emotionally aware of what they're going through, to not allow themselves to have emotional reactions to things and to not want, quote unquote, girly things. Okay? This whole thing about how men don't need to be attractive, men don't need to have people like, think that they're pretty, is a patriarchal thing. 

Sheila
Yes.

Rebecca
Men do want to know that, like, their beloved looks at them with love and admiration and desire in their heart. That is natural, the same way that women want it. But men are told to tamp that down because it's stupid and girly, right?

Sheila
Yeah. 

Rebecca
But can you imagine telling, like, okay, imagine that you're a parent and your son, your high school son is dating a girl who's like, I don't know, I just don't find you attractive that way. Like, yeah, I love you. But, like, I don't find you attractive and like, no, your body is just kind of mehh. And, like, I just. I'm never going to find you attractive. Would you want. Would you want him to be dating someone who spoke to him like that? Like, that's also my thing, is I'm like, this is sad. This is sad. And it's also not true. A lot of women are sexually attracted to their husbands.

Sheila
Oh, yeah.

Rebecca
A lot of women lust after their husbands, even when they're not actively in the middle of sex.

Sheila
Yeah, well, I, when dad and I did that, your dad and I did that podcast a couple of weeks ago on the who bears the mental load for sex and how women are the ones who bear it. And we talked about the double standard of how attractive women have to be, but men don’t have to be attractive. And I looked up a whole bunch of studies. I didn't, I didn't share them because we didn't have time on that podcast. But there are so many studies about how attraction for women is really nuanced, but it does play a role.

Rebecca
Exactly.

Sheila
Like it does play a role.

Rebecca
Yes, it's like, attraction might just simply look slightly different. That does not mean that we are not physically attracted and do not experience physical desire at a visual experience.

Sheila
Yeah. And there are, then there's the meta analyzes which show that women are visual. As visual as men, it's just, it doesn't register in the same way and it's for different things.

Rebecca
But like the fact of the matter is, like, a lot of women do look at their husbands and experience lustful thoughts. That is the thing. And just to say, like this conversation just made me so freaking sad. I was like, imagine this poor man being like, this woman just looking at him like, imagine your husband. If you were looking at me, like your body does nothing for me, I love you. And so I'll have sex with you. But your body does nothing for me and us just, we're supposed to be fine with that. That is patriarchy. Expecting men to be fine with being talked to like that because we expect them to not have emotions. 

Sheila
Yeah

Rebecca
Like that's what I can't get over with this is, I'm like, this is perpetuating patriarchy because we're expecting men to be told these kinds of things and just kind of take it on the chin. And I'm like, you get to feel hurt. You get to feel rejected, like you actually do. If your wife is talking to you like this.

Sheila
And they're presenting this as normal.

Rebecca
Yeah. Like I just, I find it really weird. And again, things are nuanced. We are not all going to look the same year one in marriage and year 47 in marriage. We are all, some of us also, we are just built differently than other people. Some of us are going to be more or less attractive than other people. That is simply true. But like it is incumbent upon us to help our spouses whom we love, feel desired and to frankly be desirous of them, like figure out why we're not responding that way, like figure out what's going on or how we can be attracted to that person. And because that body houses that person, you also like, it's just it's just I found this so sad.

Sheila
Like the poor man.

Rebecca
And I just see that. And I'm like, I'm picturing a little 12 year old boy asking a girl to a dance. And that excitement and that heart is still in that 43 year old man whose wife is telling him, no, I don't even like you in your nice little black leather jacket. Then it's like, but you growl at me and it's like, yeah, it's all fake. It's like, it's so hard. And I'm not saying you have to experience the same kind of like fizzling, sizzling attraction you do when you’re first dating. No one really does in like the later years. It changes.

Sheila
Yeah, the butterflies change. Yeah.

Rebecca
It absolutely changes because we become used to each other. That is just how our brains work. Our brains react that way to novelty, right? But this just seems really cruel. Yeah, it just seems so cruel.

Sheila
And they're normalizing it. They're saying this is normal.

Rebecca
Yeah. And it's just like, anyway, I just I just find it sad. And I just wanted to be like the poor men. Yeah. Like. And I'm so rarely the poor men. But this whole book made me be the poor men. Like, it's actually kind of silly. Like, I read this book and I'm just like, the poor men. And this is supposed to be a book for men. And I'm like, I think the men are not okay. Like, I do not think the men are all right. I feel like, I think there's a male loneliness epidemic in marriage, like this is. But then. But then we get into this, this gem of a line. Okay? “One woman explained it to her husband this way, all of my power to turn you on is how I look. But where you have power and where I don't is how you treated me today. It's all emotional.”

Sheila
Okay, so she doesn't have that. So he wants sex no matter how he treats her.

Rebecca
And how she treats him.

Sheila
How she. Yeah.

Rebecca
And all her power is in how she looks. Yeah. In the relationship.

Sheila
Okay.

Rebecca
All her sexual power is about her body. Because. And what picture of sex does that give you?

Sheila
Yeah. That’s a pornographic.

Rebecca
Like that's a porn photographic. Like, it's where it's just about her body.

Sheila
And we need to, we need to say like in For Women Only there is so much talk about how you need to stay attractive for your husband and how like, and how I think her husband, like Jeff, questioned her when she took a donut for breakfast. Like, just not.

Rebecca
Yeah, I actually compared the two surveys. So in the survey I'm going to read exactly what I wrote. So I don't say it wrong. In the survey to men, they asked multiple times if they would still love their wife if she was overweight. And the survey to women, the men's appearance or weight was not mentioned once. The only mentions of physical attractiveness were still about the woman. The only thing was when the lower libido wives were asked why they had the lower libido women were able to say, I don't find him physically attractive. That was the closest that we got to talking about the man's physical attractiveness and whether or not she would still love him. So it was mentioned repeatedly about the woman's physical attractiveness in both the questions to women and to men. But the men's physical attractiveness was not actually talked about in the survey to women.

Sheila
Yeah. So they’re assuming that men really care about appearance, and they’re assuming that women don't.

Rebecca
And they haven't actually.

Sheila
Tested, but they never tested. It reminds me of their survey for teenagers where they asked boys if they wanted to marry a virgin, but they never asked girls if they wanted to marry a virgin. And they made a huge deal about how girls, you need to understand that boys want to marry virgins, but they never asked. Like they never asked the same thing.

Rebecca
Yeah, exactly. But like when it comes to this idea, like all of my powers in my body and all of your powers in how you treat me, I'm like, so are we just saying that men are not turned off by being mistreated? Like, are we saying.

Sheila
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

Rebecca
Men are separated emotionally from sex, like, because, yeah, this is just once again, this was, first of all, not found in their surveys. This was not asked about in their surveys. They are not coming at this from any evidence, except for apparently their friends who are terrible, in terrible marriages, like their examples are all coming from weird examples like that, like a long time family friend being like, I find you not at all attractive or their arguments about something or.

Sheila
Well, I think it's perpetuating the stereotype that the way that men feel close is by having sex. So as long as we're having sex, I'm going to feel close to them. I'm going to feel connected. So I don't really care how you treat me. As long as we have sex, I'll feel close, because that's the only determinant of whether we're close or not. And that is actually not at all true.

Rebecca
No, it's not. Exactly. And they do address that, that just being having sex does not mean that you're close in this book. They do some things in the sex chapter really well. And I am going to read one of the things that they do well okay.

Sheila
Okay, okay.

Rebecca
Under the truth number five about how she actually does want pleasure they have this one woman wrote to Shaunti “men think women aren't as interested in sex as they are, but some men need to know that their wives are just not experiencing sexual satisfaction. Although they might be enjoying the process, they may not be finishing it. This is a difficult subject, and many women don't want to talk about it because they don't want to depress their husband or make him feel inadequate, so they protect his feelings at the expense of their own. But if a woman isn't crossing the finish line, running the race just isn't going to be as important to her, which only makes it easier to find excuses to sit it out.”

Sheila
I have so much to say.

Rebecca
Yes. So they knew?

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
They knew. And they still didn't change their books.

Sheila
Because in For Women Only, she says that if it isn't possible to physically respond to your husband, let your words be heart words like tell him he's doing it well. Affirm him. It never says like, speak up and tell him what you need. It just says, hey, if you're not experiencing pleasure, go see a therapist.

Rebecca
Yeah, exactly.

Sheila
Right. And like, it's like the number one predictor of whether or not a woman reaches orgasm is the amount of foreplay. And she's like, no, just go see a therapist. And but but with your husband, make sure that that you, you know, he still feels he doesn't feel rejected. Make all of your words be affirming. And it's like, yeah, the reason that women don't speak up is because of what Shaunti told them. And also, I just want to say something. Okay? Okay. One of the things that you're taught to do when you start public speaking is like, let's say that, let's say that you're you're going on to speak and you have a cold. All right? And so the tendency is to say, okay, look, I do have a cold. So if I cough through this presentation, I'm really sorry. You're actually not supposed to do that. Because as soon as you do that, everyone is listening for the cough and they're all thinking about how you're sick, so you're just supposed to go on and just give the presentation. Like this, this is something that we just sort of learn when you start speaking, okay? Because as soon as you prime people to think something, they're going to think that way. And so how do they frame this? Read that thing again about this is a difficult thing to talk about. Right? Why? Why is this a difficult thing to talk about?

Rebecca
It is difficult because it's awkward and that's okay to acknowledge it. But they say it is difficult. But also like you have to do it.

Sheila
Yeah. Like I don't know. But I don't think we've ever talked about this as a difficult topic. I think in all of our books.

Rebecca
I think we do, we say all the time. It's awkward. You have to do it anyway.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah. I guess.

Rebecca
We acknowledge it

Sheila
But like but like I just I just find that really a strange way to frame the whole thing.

Rebecca
Yeah, I don't know. I think that it's okay to acknowledge when things are hard. I think it's okay to acknowledge. And sure, you might be.

Sheila
But okay, maybe we're taking it differently, because I thought they meant this is a difficult thing for you and me, the reader, to talk about. You're thinking they meant this is a difficult thing for, for for for the the couple to talk about.

Rebecca
Yes. That's what I think they're saying.

Sheila
Oh, I think I thought they were talking to the reader.

Rebecca
Oh no no, no I think they're, they're talking about it. I think they're talking about it for the husband.

Sheila
Oh okay. I thought, I thought it meant this is a difficult thing for us. Like for me to tell you.

Rebecca
Oh, no, you are correct. “Truth number five. She wants pleasure as much as you do. And if it's not happening, she may be reluctant.” Okay, “this might be difficult, but face it, we must.” Yeah. Okay.

Sheila
Yeah. See?

Rebecca
Yeah. Okay.

Sheila
Yeah. So so so so they're saying like. Look, guys, I know this is hard to talk about, but then. But then you're framing the whole thing as this is something which has never occurred to you. And this is difficult to talk. No, this should be normal. It should be normal for us to say, hey, she needs to be reaching climax.

Rebecca
Yeah. It's like, it's of course it's going to be awkward within the couple, but this shouldn't be like an awkward thing for someone who talks about this topic to talk about. I understand what you're reacting to now. That makes sense. I was like, I don't understand how it can possibly not be awkward to bring up with your husband.

Sheila
Yeah. 

Rebecca
That's not what, I see what you mean. You mean Jeff was saying it's difficult.

Sheila
Yeah, because Jeff didn't say that about anything else in the book.

Rebecca
Not really.

Sheila
No, he's saying so. The only thing that's awkward is telling guys, hey, maybe you're not a good lover. Yeah, because guys just can't hear that. Which is. Which is what Shaunti said in her book too, the guys just can't handle hearing.

Rebecca
And again, they do handle sex in this book so much better than most of the other books that we've read, which is so bizarre. They really do talk about the fact that there is, they don't use the words orgasm gap, but there is an orgasm gap, right? They talk about how it's only logical if she's not finishing, she's not going to want to start. Right? Like they do talk about that. That's all really, really good. And they do try to do like a weird 2000’s version of the mental load conversation with sex.

Rebecca
Where they say, help her around the house, it helps you.

Sheila
Okay. Okay.

Rebecca
Where are they say, “on the survey, about 60% of women interviewed said that simple helpfulness around the house would increase the likelihood that they would want to make love more, if only because they would have more energy” Right? And so, like, they said, that in essence, “picking up the broom or doing the dishes after a hard day on the job isn't exactly, well, what you were thinking when you were thinking you couldn't wait to get home. But as Gottman found, this kind of sacrificial support can often be more impressive than”

Sheila
Oh, a citation! I'm excited.

Rebecca
Now, the thing is, we have it, but there's no actual citation there as far as I can tell. So they mentioned Gottman. But look, there's no footnotes. There's no way to check. They don't even say what study. They don't say what book. They literally just say John Gottman found.

Sheila
How do people get away with that? 

Rebecca
I don’t know.

Sheila
Okay, this is just an aside. You guys should have seen our editing process for all of our books. Like, we had to have a citation for everything, and we wanted to have a situation for everything.

Rebecca
Yes, it’s good.

Sheila
I remember at one point Keith quoted, like, some ancient Greek philosopher whose I can't remember who it was.

Rebecca
Like the Hippocratic Oath, the no harm.

Sheila
Yeah, first do no harm. We had to find a citation for that.

Rebecca
Yes. For first do no harm. You should have just done, like, citation - the statue at the front of the Bellevue General Hospital.

Sheila
Yeah, like like, I mean, you know, like we had to find a citation for everything or even even, like, when we were just sharing basic medical information.

Rebecca
I had to cite the I had to cite the definition for authoritative parenting. Right. Like these things were like, this is just a word like.

Sheila
We had to cite that, that how often a woman ovulates and how the like, how how conception happens. We had to cite it in our book.

Rebecca
And meanwhile they're like, a recent study by John Gottman, no citation. No nothing.

Sheila
I don't understand why editors were so hard on us. And I'm not criticizing them for being hard on us.

Rebecca
No, we had good editors. 

Sheila
Yeah, like our books, but but they got away with this. 

Rebecca
I know.

Sheila
I don't I don't get it. I really don't get it.

Rebecca
But yeah, but that's the thing. It's like so so yes they mentioned mental load but it is, it's, it's a, it's said that it's a sacrifice, which it's not a sacrifice. You also made the dishes.

Sheila
Yes. You eat.

Rebecca
Like it's not a sacrifice to do your own share. And it is done very much in the sweep, so that you can.

Sheila
Get some nookie.

Rebecca
Yeah, exactly. So, so I'm saying, like they did really well compared to other books, even just addressing orgasm, female orgasm and having that be a very large chunk of this chapter, I was really impressed. And I just want to make sure I'm giving dos wherever they are do, right, like, okay, that is very, very good. But then they have this really weird one that I'm still not sure what I feel about it.

Sheila
Okay, let me talk it through with you. Lay it on me there.

Rebecca
Number six that men need to do like this. Their action steps for the end of the sex chapter number six. “Don't take not tonight personally. Use it as a learning tool. As we've seen in almost every instance, she doesn't mean it personally. It's not the rejection you think it is. And it says literally nothing about her desire for you. Yes, it feels like rejection and it feels personal. But if we can think clearly on this one, we can actually bring more fulfillment to both parties. Next time. Try this. Use her not tonight, dear, as a learning tool to understand why she's saying no. I'll bet your eyes will be open to new ways to love and support your wife that perhaps you hadn't noticed before. You can get off the merry go round of feeling helplessly deprived and actually do something about it.” And I'm like, part of that's good. But also like, is the goal that she never says not tonight?

Sheila
Yeah. Yeah.

00;30;22;17 - 00;30;41;09
Rebecca
Like is there, is there like that to me is a little bit like like, is it. If she said not tonight you’ve automatically done something wrong. I mean if I’m being very honest, for the kinds of men in who are, who are being talked about in this book. I think that's likely correct. But also, I do feel like there's a lot of pressure for women to always be sexually available. And it's like women's bodies are simply not always sexually available in the way that men's bodies are. And I do feel that that's never really discussed in sex books where it's like, you know what? Some women are happy to have sex at any moment of their cycle. Other women have actually like a lot of inflammation and pain in certain times. And so it's like, I don't want to and sometimes we are more reactive to other things going on than men’s sex drives tend to be. That's not a bug. That actually is how we are made.

Sheila
Yeah. Because our body is like libido for women is very tied to perceptions of safety, of safety and low stress levels, because your body is like, oh, we cannot handle getting pregnant. 

Rebecca
And also, like and it isn't always about your partner too, right? Like it feels to me like often when we talk about things like libido, the goal is to get women to men's libido instead of seeing women's libido as the standard and seeing men as the anomaly sometimes.

Sheila
And remembering that women do not always have the lower libido. But, but but in this case, like when women do.

Rebecca
Yeah, exactly. But no. But no. Just in general, like we whenever we talk about libido, male libido is always the standard. And women are always talked about the anomaly. But what would it look like to approach sex in a way that assumed that your libido would ebb and flow with what's happening in your life, and that it actually is non-normative to have the same libido all the time? Because I'll also be honest, men actually do ebb and flow as well with the stress in their life as well, and I just feel like a lot of the stuff that we've gotten into is men kind of sublimating all of their emotions and all their bad experiences into sex because they're expected to want sex all the time versus being told, yeah, it's probably going to be normal for you to experience times when you're more into it and not when you're stressed. I know that's just a thought experiment that I've been kind of, what would it look like to see the female sexual response as the normative one, as a correction to the patriarchal assumption that sex should be on demand?

Sheila
Well, especially because so many of the books and these ones to to be honest, these ones didn't do it like For Women Only and For Men Only don't have the 72 hour rule, at least I don't think For Men Only does For Women Only, does not.

Rebecca
For Men Only really doesn't.

Sheila
Yeah. So so the 72 hour rule is in, its in like Power of a Praying Wife, Every Man's Battle.

Rebecca
Now to be fair, they recommend Every Man's Battle.

Sheila
Right okay. So it's in a bunch of it's in a bunch of other books. The assumption that you're supposed to have sex at least every 72 hours. So no matter what is going on in your life, including pregnancy and postpartum, you're supposed to make sure that he ejaculates. And so, like, his ejaculation is never supposed to change. And I do find that a very strange assumption because, okay, so, you know, we're going, like right now, right now as we are filming this, we are moving tomorrow. Like, if I were to turn the camera around like there are boxes all over my house.

Rebecca
We're doing this. We're recording a whole bunch of podcasts in a row so that we can immediately pack up the recording room.

Sheila
Yeah, because we're not honestly sure where we're going to be recording in a couple of weeks. We haven't set it up yet, so we're still trying to figure this out. So like, like there are times in your life where it's just crazy. Last February, my husband's father died, right? Like, there are times in your life that are craziness. Right before we're moving, I had a 15 day and so did dad.

Rebecca
Sinus infection. Awful thing.

Sheila
Yeah. And your dad had the same. Like life happens and things should change with life because that's how you're being authentic. Like, if your sex drive is not in tune with what is going on in your life, there is probably something that needs to be investigated.

Rebecca
Well, I don’t know, or you might just have different hormonal levels, but I think the thing is that, like there are lots of people who I think I think there's not necessarily something wrong as much as it's not wrong if it does get affected right, it's like, I have no problem. People are like, I could go for sex whenever, doesn't really make a difference, but they also are not ruled by sex. That's totally fine. The issue is that what we often see is that we're expecting men just want sex all the time. And also it's in a book that assumes that they don't care if you're in conflict. It doesn't affect them if they think you're mad at them, they don't understand why you want to talk about things.

Sheila
Which is what we talked about last week.

Rebecca
Last week. Yeah, like they don't really like hearing about your problems. And it's like. So when you put those things together, that's what I mean. Like the corrective to like, you should want sex no matter what or is like, I don't know, it's interesting. But my thing when I read that as I was just like, why is like I'm like, yes. When she says, not tonight. There are many times when used as a learning tool like, yes, she's exhausted. She's been working all day. How can I take things off of her plate? Absolutely. But also, like she shouldn't be expected to say yes all the time. Because even if you're doing everything quote unquote right, even if everything is good, you're still going to have times you just don't wanna have sex and that's allowed. So that's just, I mean, that's what I'm just still thinking that went over. But that's that's more thing. But overall in this chapter I did make the note. It was way better than we've seen before in other sex chapters. And they put a lot of the onus on the guy because it is specifically to men. They tell him you need to have your hygiene sorted.

Sheila
Oh good. Yay, yay for hygiene.

Rebecca
They tell him that he he needs to make sure that she's orgasming, right. Again, there's no advice on how to do that, but that's okay. They can, they then now know that this is a problem and they can go seek other advice like that's fine. I'm actually fine with that. But that's what they are. That's that's the brass tacks sex chapter.Right? And then we get into the beauty chapter. Which is where they also talk about lust. And there's a lot to unpack here because it's very interesting in comparison to the other book and the whole.

Sheila
In comparison to For Women Only.

Rebecca
Yeah. For Women Only, sorry. So this chapter is called “The girl in the mirror. What the little girl inside your woman is dying to hear from you and how to guard your answer well.” Okay. And the subtitle of the subtitle is this “inside your smart, secure wife lives a little girl who deeply needs to know that you find her beautiful and that you only have eyes for her.” And I'm like, I find that a little patronizing personally, because I don't have that felt need in the same way. But at the same time, I appreciate the sentiment.

Sheila
Okay.

Rebecca
Okay, right?

Sheila
Sounds very much like Captivating by Stasi Eldredge 

Rebecca
Yes. Very much. And then throughout this they give all these examples of how like, you know, girls are bombarded and women are bombarded by the culture that tells them you're not enough, you're too big, you're too this, you're too little, you're too that. You're too like, this can be changed, this can be better. Give us money, give us money, give us money, right? And understand that you cannot understand as a man. Like a lot of times, especially back in, in this time when we were in the, the what we called the heroin chic kind of time of the early 2000s.

Sheila
Right, because this was the 2000s.

Rebecca
This is when everyone was, had eating disorders and all this stuff was all over. Right? So in this chapter he talks again like he talks a lot about the pressure that women face and about how men have the ability to be a voice that counters the voice of culture. To their wives, okay?

Sheila
Okay, wait, can I just can I just hit pause for a minute? Yeah. Because I want to read to you from For Women Only. Okay. Okay. So one of the most harmful chapters that women told me about in For Women Only was the chapter on how your husband needs you to.

Rebecca
Remain hot.

Sheila
Yeah, basically. And, and a lot of people wrote to me how traumatizing that was. And I even had some people say to them, say to me, that they wrote to Shaunti about it, and how Shaunti just said, that's the way man are. I want to read you this excerpt from it. Okay? “Seven out of ten men indicated that they would be emotionally bothered if the woman in their lives let themselves go, and didn't seem to want to make the effort to do anything about it. Once I understood this and started making the effort myself, my husband felt safe to confirm.” This is Jeff, she's talking about Jeff, that most guys do indeed struggle with the issue. With some trepidation, he gently reminded me of when, after our son was born, I used to eat a chocolate donut every morning. He said 

Rebecca
So, postpartum? 

Sheila
Yeah. “He said, I know it's awful, but every morning when I saw those donuts on the counter, my stomach would just sink. I'd think, it's never going to change.”

Rebecca
Conner bought me Doritos postpartum.

Sheila
So like he's saying, you know, you can overcome this for your wife, but then that's not what he did.

Rebecca
Well, and he even says this in his own book in For Men Only. Right? “I too think my wife is beautiful. But until Shaunti and I talked about this chapter, I realized I rarely tell her so, it just wasn't something I thought she needed to hear or that I needed to do. And then we talked. Oh boy. All has not been well in the land of the free and the home of the Braves” because he likes the Braves. It's a funny joke. “What I've since learned, and what kept surprising me on our surveys, is that even if a woman knows in her heart that her husband finds her beautiful, she still needs to hear it. And often every day is good.” And I'm like, okay, but how does she know that you're beautiful? If you didn't say it, and you did tell her that the donuts made your heart drop into your stomach.

Sheila
When she's postpartum.

Rebecca
When she's literally just had a baby.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
Like, this is, again, there's like the level of, like, self-awareness does, it's it's bottomed out. It's so bizarre.

Sheila
So it does look though, like For Men Only is better than For Women Only.

Rebecca
There's no comparison. I genuinely think For Men Only is a far better book than For Women Only. For Men Only is still, it's sad, and it betrays a level of emotional immaturity that I don't think he realized he was showing. But it's not, it actively does not do a lot of the toxic stuff that For Women Only does. It does say to men, in essence, like, hey, your wife needs to believe that needs to actually know that you find her beautiful and and believe you when you say that. And you need to do it often, and you need to make sure that you're a voice building her up because she has so many voices tearing her down. That stuff’s fine. He does go a little hard on it. That I think is like a little bit like a, we're venturing into a weird codependency that is normal with like emotional immaturity in relationships where he says this here. Sorry, I'm going to read you the five facts. That he says that it can help men kind of change the way that they view their wives and how they talk about their looks. Okay? “Fact one inside my dear wife, there's a little dancing girl that's still very much alive. Only now she twirls for me.” Earlier on he talked about his five year old daughter is like daddy watch, I’m twirling and every girl has that inside them. Whatever. And now it's for their husbands.

Sheila
Okay. Not every girl does.

Rebecca
But you know what I mean. But you know what I mean. It's fine. It's a metaphor that's not perfect, but everyone understands. If those are the nitpicks we're going to make, we're going to be here for a lot longer. I'm letting a lot of those things go.

Sheila
Okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Keep going.

Rebecca
“Fact two, in our marriage, whether I find her beautiful may or may not be foremost in my mind, but it is an everyday, if subconscious issue for her.” Okay, so she thinks with me and I'm like, I don't think men should be told that because it.

Sheila
I don't though.

Rebecca
So I'm not particularly.

Sheila
I know a lot of women do, but it's not universal.

Rebecca
It's not universal. And and the problem I get very, I don't like how they often talk about how it's subconscious, because then what that's saying is, in essence, it doesn't matter what your wife says. I know better, right? So I will say no. “Fact three. In our house there's really only one mirror, and that mirror is me” Right? So it's in essence, it's like the way that I speak to my wife is how she's going to see herself. So I'm like, I'm not against that one. 

Sheila
Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca
“Fact four. Every day I can reflect back to her the words she so needs to hear. But if I don't, I leave her vulnerable to both her inner questions and external pressures from an intimidating world.” And that one I'm like, I don't love that one. I'm like, because here's the thing again. And I don't mean to be like worst case scenarios, but there are a lot of women with like severe self-esteem issues and severe issues that are not your fault. And it's like you are responsible doing your part. You are not responsible for her inner voice. You are not responsible for what the world says to her. You are responsible for doing your part. And to me, this whole book is emotionally unhealthy.

Sheila
Yeah, like someone who's anorexic and sees themself as fat when they're objectively, unhealthily skinny. That's not his fault.

Rebecca
That's not his fault. Now, if he's also buying her an exercise bike, then yeah, it's his fault. But, like, that's the thing is, I just, I get I don't like whenever I see other people's responsibilities being put on someone else's shoulders because you can help lighten the load. But it is not your fault if they don't do their part.

Sheila
That's a boundary issue there.

Rebecca
Yeah, exactly. And then “Fact five. In my hand I hold a hammer.” So in essence that point goes into all this about lust. About how he can be the one to cause a lot of damage, with how he either disregards how his wife looks or by how she sees him looking at other women.

Sheila
Right now, what I found so interesting in For Women Only, and this is what really, really bothered women about that book in particular is in that particular chapter about staying beautiful. It said, don't talk to your husband about this. Yes. It's said, do not ask your husband if he feels this way because it's too uncomfortable for him. He can't tell you the truth, but every man feels this way. And that was a terrible, terrible thing to say. Because to tell women, I am telling you what your husband can't. And I know what your husband's thinking. And even if your husband says I am wrong, you need to realize that I am right. So my voice in this book overrides whatever your husband will say.

Rebecca
Uh huh, and it completely ignores the fact that, like, hey, people like different people.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
Hey, people are attracted to different kinds of bodies. Hey, people are attracted to the same person as she has multiple different bodies over the lifespan. Like it completely ignores all that and is like, no, because my husband has this hang up. I'm going to convince you that your husband does too. And that to me, is just what this entire book is, is because my marriage has this hang up. Your marriage is going to have to function like this so that I feel better about this, and don’t I have to deal with it because here's here's the very interesting part.

Sheila
Okay. I'm listening.

Rebecca
There's one other thing I want to give him props for.

Sheila
Okay. 

Rebecca
Because I don't often see this done well. And I think that he actually did it pretty okay.

Sheila
Okay.

Rebecca
He talked about how women do face a lot of stuff. There's a lot more pressure. There's lots of societal pressure. All these things. And men, one of the ways that you actually can help your wife here is viewing cost that she has, in terms of her appearance as actually an investment in her and in her place in society. And like saying, like, you know, men often belittle women and call them shallow for like, needing to spend money on makeup, on new clothes, like more hair haircuts, hair dye, these kinds of things and like skincare, like see it as an investment and a necessary expense rather than as your wife being flighty. And I think that actually is important because that it really is a big stereotype that I feel is not is not helpful. And also especially there's been a lot of studies on like how women are seen as professional and women have to update their wardrobes, I think it's five times as often as men do in order to be seen professional. And for black women, when you consider the hair care that goes with it as well.

Sheila
It’s very expensive.

Rebecca
It's very expensive. And so I do like the men being told, sit down. She does, in fact know what she needs. Like you, you can work this out. And he didn't say and obviously be reasonable like, don't break the bank. Like there's a level where there's levels of what's reasonable. But like if she gets her hair highlighted, it's going to be expensive.

Sheila
Yeah. Yeah. 

Rebecca
So I did like that.

–Ad–

Sheila
You know what, Becca? The internet can sometimes be a really, really terrible place. 

Rebecca
Absolutely. 

Sheila
But I have a happy place. 

Rebecca
We do. 

Sheila
That is our patron group on Facebook. It's the place where I go, where I need some encouragement, where I just need to bounce something off of people to see if I'm crazy or not. And also where I get the best ideas for our podcasts and our blog posts.

Rebecca
Absolutely. And we also have a lot of fun there too. We've created a fantastic community where we, you know, share funny memes that we've seen throughout the week, and we talk about the terrible takes that we saw on Instagram. And you can go somewhere and know that you don't have to defend your belief that women should have rights. So if you are looking for a way to support this podcast, if you love what we do and you want to give us a tangible step up, you can join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month and get access to our Facebook group, where you'll get to join in the fun and know that you're supporting a fantastic cause.

Sheila
To join our patron. It's just Patreon.com/baremarriage or take a look at the link in the podcast notes.

–

Rebecca
Then we get into the section called “When the Hammer Drops.”

Sheila
Okay?

Rebecca
In essence, now we're talking about lust. So here's what he says. “We now know that women are powerfully affirmed by knowing that their husbands find them beautiful, but that power has a dark side, because if a woman sees her husband's eyes also affirming the beauty of other women, she ceases to feel special. And suddenly, not only is she not affirmed, she's in competition with the world again, including for the attentions of the one man she thought she already had. That's when the hammer hits the mirror of you, the most important mirror in her life, and shatters it.” Okay, so then he says, “Now, because women are not as visually wired as we are, there are bound to be some misunderstandings here, some conflicts between what we consider innocent and what our women think. We may think, oh, my wife knows it's just a guy thing and that I don't love this other woman I'm looking at. We've even coined some analogies that elevate staring to a noble level. It's like enjoying a beautiful painting in a museum, we say, just don't try to take the picture home. Yes, sometimes it can be simply admiring beauty. And yes, God has created a beautiful world, and populating it with attractive people is consistent with his artistry. But the challenge of looking at a beautiful woman is the speed at which admiration morphs into something else. Looking at a sweeping vista of the Rockies doesn't just run the risk of my next thought being, I wonder what those mountains would look like without all that snow on them.” So then he goes into an essence saying that “I believe through God's power, not on our own, we really can be transformed.” which was good. And then he says, “if you need outside resources, you can check out Every Man's Battle” which is less good.

Sheila
Okay, which is bad.

Rebecca
Which is bad. But the point is, like, I found it interesting that he actually did seem to be able to denote between noticing beauty and lust. Now he seems to think it's a slippery slope, and them happening almost simultaneously. But he does seem to be able to understand that there's a difference between noticing and lusting. Which is not present in the other books.

Sheila
Yes.

Rebecca
But like everything else in this book, this is giving us a very uncomfortable picture into Jeff's own brain. Right? Because, he says, “looking at the sweeping vista of the Rockies just doesn't run the risk of my next thought being, I wonder what those mountains would look like without all that snow on them?” Which means every time he looks at a woman, he knows that there's a risk that his next thought is going to be trying to undress her in his head. And like, so there's not really an acknowledgment that you can just simply like, see women and kind of move on and not have it be a risk and a threat. So like pluses, they seem to, to to be differentiating between the two other plus is, he actually says you can get past this. Now, he does then say Every Man's Battle. But like the fact of the matter is, most people do not actually read the recommended materials that are given in these books.

Sheila
Right.

Rebecca
So what he just said was that you can be transformed and not have this happen anymore. So that's also positive. But then of course, it's like once again you're comparing and competing automatically instead of it simply just being a neutral experience.

Sheila
Well, I'm still reminded of, do you remember how For Women Only opens?

Rebecca
Yes. The skaters.

Sheila
Can I read this? 

Rebecca
Yes.

Sheila
Ok so this is the very, very beginning of For Women Only. Okay. Like like this is chapter one. All right. And I'll read you from the very beginning of chapter one. “As newlyweds, my husband and I lived in Manhattan, and like all New Yorkers, we walked everywhere. But I quickly noticed something strange, quite often would be strolling hand in hand, and Jeff would abruptly jerk his head up and away. We'd be watching inline skaters in Central Park, or waiting to cross the street in a crowd, and he would suddenly stare at the sky. I started to wonder if something going on on the tops of those buildings. Turns out something was going on, but it wasn't up in the buildings” and it was like her husband was worried about lusting and so he would just look away. So every time Jeff sees a young woman.

Rebecca
Rollerblading.

Sheila
Rollerblading, he he whips his head up.

Rebecca
Or else he's going to start having sexual thoughts.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca
I'm just like. Why are we thinking that this is normal and that these are things that we should tell people? It's just hard. I feel it's so hard. So anyway, so then he asks. She does ask. Well, he asked Jeff. It's in Jeff's voice. So I keep saying he. Even though I'm sure Shaunti actually wrote most of this. Here's what they say though, “on our survey for this book. Although two thirds of women said they'd be bothered if their man noticed a woman with a great body” which I'm struggling to find where they found that because their actual question said that, 35% said that it doesn't bother me. Guys will be guys, 38% said. I find it annoying, but it doesn't hurt my feelings. 20% said it hurts my feelings, but I try not to let it bother me too much. And 6% said I find it painful and I wish it would stop. So where's the, where's the two thirds?

Sheila
Yes.

Rebecca
Where is. Where is it? I can't find it.

Sheila
Yeah. Another misrepresentation even of their own data. Which was a crappy question to begin with. But ok.

Rebecca
Exactly. So they said they'd be bothered if. I guess it would be like the “I find it annoying, but it doesn't hurt my feelings” down. But but it doesn't. It doesn't anyway. I can't understand how they got that either. “But when asked how they'd feel if they knew their man's thoughts were now lingering on that woman's body, the number of women who said they'd be hurt jumped to three out of four, with even higher rates among women under age 45. Shaunti suspects that these numbers would be even higher if women could actually see inside our heads and watch our thoughts like a movie, and I do too.”

Sheila
So what are these guys thinking?

Rebecca
I'm just like, What is Jeff thinking?

Sheila
What is Jeff thinking?

Rebecca
What is Jeff thinking is the question.

Sheila
Shaunti knows what Jeff is thinking. Shaunti is like, oh yeah.

Rebecca
I just feel bad for Shaunti. I'll be honest, I'm like, if I were married to a man who had to look up at the sky when rollerbladers. I'm sorry. I also like, I’m married to a man who did dance. And who watches dance a lot. And I'm never uncomfortable with it. It's like if people's bodies exist anyway, it's just, I would not be okay in that marriage. I'm being real honest. “But the truth is, most women cannot comprehend why a man would choose or risk such damage.” Because that's what they think it's like. Well, why would you risk hurting me? Right? Like, yeah.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca
Like this is the thing. Like, it's just what I find so funny here is that, like, they mentioned that, like, only, like 75% of women are kind of like, it's kind of annoying, but it's fine.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
And then 35% are like, I don't see a problem. It's like there's a woman there, right? And also, to be clear, that question is also leading. Right. So “imagine you are sitting with your husband's significant other in a train station, and a woman with a great body walks in and stands in a nearby line. Your husband or significant other glances at her several times and appears quite distracted by her. How does this make you feel?” So this is already not noticing.

Sheila
Right? 

Rebecca
And you're still at like only 26% 

Sheila
Because noticing is like he's he's deliberately glancing at her. That's just not that's not just noticing, that’s lingering. 

Rebecca
That’s not like when Connor and I are walking around and he's like, oh my gosh, that dress is gorgeous or something like that. Or I'm like, oh, look at that, that thing that's not like, like this thing like it's normal.

Sheila
Oh gosh. Yeah. Like I've been, we were walking around recently and I saw this one, I think I think she was probably the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. I don't I don't know what race she was. I think it was like a combination of like like she was she was so absolutely stunning. And I said to Keith, oh my gosh, that is the most beautiful woman ever seen in my life. And he's like, oh my gosh, she totally is. But like, it wasn't anything other than that. Like that is what noticing is.

Rebecca
Yeah. It's like it's so you're already having someone like being distracted by someone and trying to look away, and you still have the majority of women being like, I mean, I feel like that's pretty normal. And then it's like. And then if you knew that the thoughts were lingering on her, it's like, oh yeah, that would be a problem for the majority of women. And then they're talking about how, like, if they really knew what was going on in the man's mind, then they'd be even more angry. And I'm like, what's necessary about that? Why do we feel the need to normalize Jeff's sexual thought life? That's what I'm doing, while I'm reading this and like, why are we working on normalizing the things that are going on in Jeff's mind? Because why are we expecting that they don't understand. Why are we expecting that these women are silly little women who don't have the secrets that Shaunti does because she's married to a man with severe sexual issues? That's what this reads to me. Because it's like, I think that a lot of this is a self-soothing strategy. I think this is.

Sheila
You mean this book, these books.

Rebecca
Yeah. For for this particular situation, I think that for Jeff, I think this is a self-soothing strategy of I'm not actually the problem. I'm not actually broken. This is just how men are. Because to acknowledge this is not how most marriages function. And this is not how most men experience the world, except in hypersexualized spaces like his religious context. That would mean that he actually is the problem, that he needs to change how he views women, how he views himself, how he views sex. Maybe do some deep work. 

Sheila
Well, yeah, because Shaunti wrote an entire book called Through a Man's Eyes where she talks about men's problem with with lust and their visual nature, and she describes what a typical day looks like in the life of a man, and how his whole day he's just bombarded by women's bodies, like from billboards and the attractive coworker. And then he goes to a hotel for a meeting in the conference room, and there's these 16 year old girls in the pool. And how

Rebecca
And what if a button came undone? And then you're picturing all the different ways that bosoms could fly at you?

Sheila
Yeah, basically. And it's like. And it's like, I mean, that the life that she was describing, basically his entire mental energy at work all day was to not think about boobs. And it's like, no real work got done. No, no real work got done because his coworkers were all distracting to him. And this was all incredibly stressful. And I'm like, I have never like Keith read that. And he just laughed. He couldn't believe he was even serious. And he's a man who works in a predominantly female environment. And it's like, if this is what Shaunti and Jeff think are normal, like, this is this is really problematic because this isn't normal.

Rebecca
Yeah. And then what's really bizarre is they end the section with something that's not bad, ok here’s what they say. “while most women don't mind if a husband or boyfriend is just truly appreciating beauty, as in, oh, what a beautiful girl. They experience excruciating pain if we look at, linger on and lust after another attractive female, their trust in their man's love gets badly shaken.” And I'm like, see, at the end, he's.

Sheila
Definitely true. Yeah.

Rebecca
And he's able to see the difference. It's like like, yeah. You say, oh, what a beautiful girl. Truly appreciating beauty. Like. But it's like, this is such a whiplash situation, which is why it's not based in logic. It's not actually well written. It's just psychological defense mechanisms. That's really what logically this ends up for me is that I read this and I'm like, this is not actually quite helpful. I did make a note that there's a lot of early 2000s comparison talk going on, and it does seem like the solution that's presented because of how women are taught to compare one another for their beauty, is to just engage in the comparison to make sure that your wife is always on top, which is not actually helpful. Like for example, he says this “a key time to practice affirmation is when you've both noticed another attractive person. One woman told us. To me, the confirmation I need is something like this. Yes, that other woman is cute, but you're beautiful. And you’re mine.”

Sheila
Okay. No no no no no. That’s so

Rebecca
And then here's what she says. “Those words would be such a help to me. And consciously tearing down the insecurity I carry around.” If you're insecurity.

Sheila
Yeah. If the answer to your insecurity needs to be, I believe I'm the most beautiful woman in the world.

Rebecca
And I need to tear down other women.

Sheila
Yeah, that's that's nuts. Like like, Keith and I both agree that that woman that we saw was way more beautiful than me because she was, okay? That doesn't mean Keith doesn't love me or think thinks that I'm beautiful.

Rebecca
Like beauty is not a zero sum game. Someone else being more beautiful does not mean that you are less. You being less attractive than someone else does not mean that your value or your desirability is less.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
Like this is the thing. These things are separated. This is one aspect of who you are as a person. And if our self-esteem and self-confidence requires that our husband is putting down other women and saying, yeah but you're hotter than her, or yeah, you're better than this. Like that's also not acceptable.

Sheila
It could just simply be, you know what? She's really beautiful. But you're the one I want. Why isn't that? Why isn’t that ok?


Rebecca
Or even say you're both beautiful, but just in your own ways or something like that, I don't mind. You can do a lot of other things. It doesn't. But I thought it was very interesting that like the way that men were told to handle this is to put down other women, especially since  women are not stupid. Like, I'm sorry. I know that there are many other women out there who are more attractive than I am. If Connor's like, no, objectively speaking, you're a ten, they are a six. I'm like, so you're full of crap, and now I don't trust you. And now when you say you look good, I don't know if you're telling me the truth.

Rebecca
Right? You know what I mean? Like, that's just reality.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
Anyway. But again, I don't think that reality is the desire here. I don't think that reality is the desire. I think that we are wanting to live in delusion and living in delusions that make us feel better about the bad decisions we've made about

Sheila
Our deep insecurities that have not, have not been healed. And I mean, if you get married to someone and the very first thing that happens is that your husbands whiping his head up because he can't handle, like, no wonder. And now she's now. They've been married for several decades. No wonder she's got insecurities about her body.

Rebecca
Well, that's. I'm going to say. Who do you think gave her the insecurities?

Sheila
And then you add what she probably had as a child too like. I mean, this has probably become a real problem, right? 

Rebecca
Yes, exactly. And I think that's that's just what I look at, all this sex stuff and it's like, I'm just like, I would like to find the evidence that there is an emotionally healthy approach to sexier, you know, because even the parts that they did really well, like they did the stuff about orgasm, that was all great. That was fantastic. But it's so couching the man self-esteem in this entire book, which she did not do to women in For Women Only. In For Women Only, it was this is a hard truth, you need to learn, you need to do this, your husband needs you to do this. And then for men, it was all like, you know, there was a lot of like, stuff where like, you need to do this. Your wife is just never going to find you attractive and you just need to live with that. And I'm like, but that's not even true. But at the same time, there's all this stuff about how like, she's not logical the way you are, but you need to learn how, it was benevolent sexism throughout this entire book.

Sheila
Yeah, women were really lectured in For Women Only, women were lectured about, this is how men are and so you need to change everything about you and stop and stop judging them for it. But for men, it was like, yeah, women be crazy.

Rebecca
And then and then he would always say things about how like her perspective also matters and like she is also correct. And just because it's a feeling thing doesn't mean that it's not logical. But like, the problem is you've also then used the negative stereotypes and you've made it the laughing stock and you've made it the joke, and you've done the me caveman her the wonderful goddess that I worship at the feet of. And then you end up in this weird, sycophantic relationship where none of you are honest. No one actually knows each other. Apparently you can write best selling marriage books and still snap at your husband for trying to be your cheerleader. And apparently you can still have issues with wanting to know what everyone looks like without their clothes on. And you think that's normal? And it's just like, I find, I look at all this and I'm like, I'm just so glad that I don't have your marriage. And I'm so glad that my husband had the, had the smarts that at 21 years old, after just four months of trying to implement what Shaunti said with claiming to be a Harvard researcher and all of this stuff, he was like, this is all kind of crap. And we just stopped doing it. And then literally the thing is, guys, you have to understand, our problems with conflict resolved overnight. It was like, I think it was genuinely within two weeks and all of a sudden conflict just worked a lot better and things got a lot smoother and everything got better.

Sheila
I still love little Connor, just trying to put this into practice.

Rebecca
I know. It was so cute. If you think, like he's just so earnest, I'm gonna be the best husband ever. And you have to understand, he's just someone who goes in rabbit holes and he learns and he becomes like an expert in things. He said, I'm going to become the expert in being a good Christian husband with data. I love you so much. I know you're so sad, but do you know how much I love you? And I'm here to listen? And I'm like, can you fricking shut up and do something about it? And it was so funny.

Sheila
Well, and he, you know, he got married thinking, my wife knows so much more because she's been a Christian for so long. And so even if something if something sounds off to me, I'm going to assume I'm the one wrong. Because I am new to the faith. And then realizing, oh, no, no, this is just this is just wrong.

Rebecca
Just how it is. And they end, they end the book with telling the men that like, you know, it's very easy to focus on, like what you're not getting in your relationship and like, really what you can do is be the first one to make the move. And I'm like, that's fine, that's fine.

Sheila
That's good. 

Rebecca
Yeah, you're gonna find that in every marriage book. And just kind of reiterating that, like, you know, you may have been socialized to believe that you need to perform certain things, but really, what your wife wants is a healthy, happy relationship with a healthy and happy spouse and father for her kids. And so, like, it's like, I'm not mad at the end of it. It's fine, but it's just the whole thing is I'm like, but how are you supposed to be happy and healthy if this is the model that you're following? Like and the problem is with For Men Only verses For Women Only, For Women Only had a lot more like objectively openly toxic teachings. For Men Only, it all just, okay not to sound like a manosphere, red pillar, which is always a great start.

Sheila
Okay?

Rebecca
For something that's so obsessed with masculinity and femininity. The portrayal of masculinity here is really, really pathetic. It's like the portrayal of a man who is not emotionally aware of what's going on in his own relationship, who needs to be like, coddled and handheld through things, who is going to be kind of sad and mopey about how his wife doesn't find him attractive instead of just being attractive? Like. And I don't mean physically. I mean, like in the way that women find attractive, like like there's there's no real understanding because all the there is so much advice here about how do you be decisive, how do you take initiative and make your wife's life better? Versus have you thought about just getting the firestarter yourself? If you don't know what that's about, go watch the last one. Like there's so many areas where the traditionally masculine traits that everyone actually agrees are good, are completely overlooked and are not encouraged, and traits that actually are quite insecure and can come across as very frustrating, are encouraged. Like, the thing is, don't try to fix the problems. I'm like, okay, but sometimes we do need to fix the problems. And if I'm sitting there and I'm carrying all the mental load and I'm in, I'm in the kind of marriage that Jeff's talking to and my husband is, you know, kind of sitting there just trying to listen to me and be there emotionally, but isn't actually doing anything or taking any initiative. And I had to freaking go get the fire started myself.

Sheila
Again, go listen to last week's episode.

Rebecca
I'm like, where is the positive masculinity? Because like, where is it? Where is the strong Aragorn man? Right? Like. This is the thing. And I'm like, I can't find him in here. I cannot find the kind of man that I, as a straight woman, am attracted to in this book. Like, I'll be very flat out honest. A lot of it is like very insecure. It's very emotionally immature. It's accepting that you're just not going to be attractive and that sex isn't going to be as hot as you would have wanted it. And just and all these different things. I'm like, this is not attractive. Where's the initiative? Where's the like, hutzpah, where's the drive? Where's all these things that, like, we each want in a partner and that healthy people want in female partners too?

Sheila
Yeah. And this is what happens when you have gender essentialism, which is what For Women Only and For Men Only are. They’re the quintessential book that says men are like this, women are like this. And and that's not the way it works. And they just give in to gender stereotypes rather than asking the question of how do we actually build intimacy? His Needs, Her Needs did it, Love and Respect. Think about how many evangelical books and book series are based on gender essentialism. The women are like this and men are like this. Why do they do that? They do it because they need to convince you that women and men are fundamentally different, because they need a reason for men to be an authority over women. And the only way to do that is to is to tell you that no, they are made completely different. Otherwise God wouldn't have a reason for keeping women down. Right? And so the reason is because women just aren't cut out for it. Men were cut out for leadership. So that's why books do it. But here's the here's the bigger question that I ask when I read all of this stuff is like, who reads these books? The people who read these books, well, some of them are like Connor.

Rebecca
Some of them are young, newlyweds. Easily impressionable, who just who. Just want to do it well.

Sheila
Want to do well, and that's great. Okay. That's great if they have that attitude. But a lot of people are reading it because they're in really toxic marriages. And what these books do is they give you the illusion that, oh, now I have a solution, and they may try it for a little bit and it doesn't work. And so then what do they do? They buy another book. And there is a reason that evangelical marriage books outsell pretty much all other marriage books. There is a reason that when you look at the top marriage books on Amazon, most of them are evangelical. And it's because evangelicals are addicted to marriage books, because their marriages are in trouble, and each book makes it worse. And but instead of questioning the whole premise, they just keep buying new ones. And we need to break this cycle, people. That's why we're reading these books. That's why I make all my one sheets. And we'll have links in the podcast notes to our one sheet on For Women Only. We didn't do one for For Men Only, because. 

Rebecca
It's not actually a very popular book in the grand scheme of things like it's often recommended with For Women Only, but if you kind of cut off the option for For Women Only.

Sheila
But the reason we wanted to talk about it was just the it's so interesting, the dichotomy between them.

Rebecca
It is, because there are, again, there are some things this book did so much better. There are some things this book did so much better in, but a lot of it was just, even the areas where it's like, I can see how this advice is helpful. It's just perpetuating this helplessness and emotional immaturity when we could all just kind of grow up.

Sheila
And so that's what we need to do, people is like, we need to get out of this, this, this hamster wheel where we just keep buying all of these horrible books. I saw a conversation on Instagram yesterday where someone was saying, you know, they really loved Love and Respect. And people were saying, no, please don't read Love and Respect, it’s a toxic book. And they said, well, do you have any other suggestions? And someone said, oh, read The Empowered Wife and it's like, it is the same book.

Rebecca
It's the same book.

Sheila
It is the same book, people. That's the next one we're going to do a deep dive on when we're back after summer vacation, but like same book and we need to stop reading the same books because all of these books have basically the same messages. You can download our rubric that we that we looked at all the top evangelical sex and marriage books, and we looked at them how they scored on 12 different metrics of healthy sexuality. And it was incredibly similar. Like they're all making the same mistakes, they're all saying the same toxic messages and we can do better. And so, look, people, we've been trying to say this for years, but please, please, please get The Marriage You Want. It's starting point is, hey, here's what intimacy is. Now, how are we going to get there? And what does the research actually say? And we base it on our research, which was done to academic standards, but also like like.

Rebecca
Peer reviewed.

Sheila
Hundreds of peer reviewed articles. I don't know how many there are. There's there's a lot at this at this point. But and there's so many citations in there of so many other peer reviewed articles because our research was in line with other peer reviewed articles, their research was not because it wasn't real research in the first place. And yet it was it was described by in evangelicalism as like, this is the pinnacle. We have found the secret to marriage because Shaunti Feldhahnon did all this research, even though it wasn't done to academic standards. The questions were laughable.

Rebecca
And in their own follow up book, they're still having these problems.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah. And so we got to do better. Like this is now on us. Okay. We've been talking about this for five years now. We have no more excuses. All right? So get the marriage you want. If you know a Connor in your life, who is who is in?

Rebecca
Just getting married.

Sheila
He's eager, you know? Give him The Marriage You Want. Give him The Good Guys Guide to Great Sex and help him start well and make The Good Girls Guide to Great Sex. Good Guys, Guide to Great Sex your premarital books.

Rebecca
Not For Women Only and For Men Only.

Sheila
Your premarital books. And if someone grew up evangelical and they've had these really toxic teachings, then by all means, get them The Great Sex Rescue. But if they didn't, don't get them that. Because quite seriously, we don't we don't want them to think about all the negative stuff, get them the books that teach them the good stuff. Okay. You know, and then maybe in ten years, no one's going to need The Great Sex Rescue anymore. And that would make us so happy. It honestly would if we can, if we can write ourselves out of a job because we've changed a culture, that's what we're trying to do. And we're not going to change that culture until we stop recommending these crappy books. And so let's just realize it's not that this one book was crappy, it's that the whole industry of evangelical marriage books is based on the same toxic ideas that keep coming up again and again that don't lead to emotional health. It just leads to toxic dynamics. And when you look at their marriage, who wants who wants that?

Rebecca
We just need to get better at recognizing when the advice someone is giving is covering for their own psychological shortcomings, versus if it's actually good. And you get to just believe people when they tell you who they are, even if they are best selling authors.

Sheila
So thank you for joining us on the Bare Marriage Podcast. Rebecca, thank you for sitting in chair one.

Rebecca
Thank you very much. 

Sheila
And doing all of the doing all the research for me, for us and making it so that I didn't have to read a book for once, which was just lovely. And remember, every time you see me on social media, click like, write a comment. It helps the algorithm, it feeds it. And so it shows me to more people. Remember to hit subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube and rate our podcast, five stars wherever you're listening to it otherwise. And thank you for joining us on the Bare Marriage podcast. If you want to know more about us, you can always join our Patreon group. The link is in the podcast notes. We have a ton of fun on Facebook. We have a book club, we have all kinds of stuff going on, and you can be part of this bigger movement to change the evangelical conversation about marriage and sex. Thanks, everyone. See you next week. Bye bye.

Rebecca
Bye.