Theology in the Raw - Freedom from Unwanted Sexual Behavior: Jay Stringer

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Join my Patreon community for extra episodes, chats, and bonus content. Jay Stringer joined me in New York City to talk about dealing with unwanted sexual behavior, trauma, sexual compulsion, and…. Apple Fritters. He has an incredible way of bridging the gap between theology, counseling, and clinical research —listen now and share your thoughts in the comments! Jay is a therapist, researcher, and author based in New York City. He’s the author of Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing (100,000+ readers), grounded in a study of nearly 4,000 adults and used by clinicians and communities worldwide. His forthcoming book, Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow (Random House, 2026), offers a new framework for five core longings—wholeness, growth, intimacy, pleasure, and meaning—and shows how to form desire into a force that restores connection and purpose.Learn more at https://jay-stringer.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the research, the data is really clear. Like, we can trace specific fantasies, specific problems that you're going to run into later in life based on your story. And so the implication there is instead of trying to just throw yourself into a thornbush or get internet monitoring or, you know, getting into accountability, which some of those things I'm mostly for, fight to really understand your story. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and Raw. My guest today is my friend Jay Stringer, who is a licensed mental health counselor, researcher, and author of the incredible book, Unwanted, How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing. Jay has an MA in Counseling Psychology and an MDiv from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, trained in both counseling, psychology, and spiritual formation.

Jay integrates trauma-informed care, adult development, and narrative work, which is what this episode is all about. This conversation was recorded in person, sat down with Jay in person in Hell's Kitchen Manhattan, where I sat down with Jay to chat about his work and helping people heal from sexual trauma and abuse. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only, Jay Stringer. Jay Stringer, welcome back to Theology and Arra. It's been a few years since you were on last time. Preston Sprinkle. Good to be back with you.

Thank you for having me on. We are here live, in person, in your stomping. grounds in New York City. So yeah, thanks for doing this, man. This has been looking forward to this. Can you, for people that don't know your work, can you just give kind of a basic one-on-one overview of the work that you do and how you have really helped people heal from both, you know, sexual abuse and trauma and also engaged in an unwanted sexual behavior as a result? Yes. So I went to seminary, grad school, got a master's and divest. divinity, then got ordained, and then I also had a foot in counseling. So I have a master's in

counseling, psychology, and I'm a licensed professional counselor as well. So that's always been a little bit of my life, is kind of this dual track, one foot in one world, one foot in the other world. And then I would say probably at some point during, after I had just graduated, I started doing some work with the city of Seattle. They had just started something called the John school. And this was basically a program for men who had been arrested for soliciting women in prostitution. Oh, the John. So the John school. Not named after a guy named John, but like your actual John. Yes. Somebody who's. Exactly. So at that time, I was doing some work with my church and we were doing a lot of work with like our unhoused neighbors. And there was just a lot of

prostitution in our neighborhood. So the city invited us to come in to talk about that. And, eventually became the sex therapist for the city of Seattle. And so it definitely had all my own kind of unwanted porn struggles, my own kind of fantasy life that I didn't quite understand. But that really gave me like a front row seat to patterns of why do people engage in these self-sabotage and titled behavior is like, what's going on underneath the hood? But, you know, I grew up as a pastor's kid, went to a Southern Baptist high school during puberty, which was just one of those experiences that was horrible. And so never had, you know,

the education and a lot of the books that you read in this particular subject area, I just think, are highly problematic. And so, you know, in seminary would learn a lot about, you know, Augustine's struggle with sex and desire, like, you know, the frenzy gripped me and I surrendered myself entirely to lust. And he would, like, kind of shake his head, get into, like, fetal position, like just hated his desire. And then you read people like Jerome. And Jerome would, you know, struggled with probably what could be referred to as like hook up sex during the week. And then he would go into the sepulacres on Sunday to try and have like something of the fear of hell scared out of him.

And there's like stories that when he was struggling with lust in the desert, he would like throw himself in thorn bushes. So there was like this inherited story that I felt like I was part of. like as a pastor's kids, Southern Baptist, of just like the suppression of desire. And then most of what I had access to in terms of how do you help people felt like it was like a lust management thing. Like let's get people into internet monitoring, accountability structures, just try and manage this thing, flee sexual immorality. And I knew from my own life, but also from the clients that I was beginning to see, like none of this is really helping people to understand. why they're drawn to what they're drawn to and what's happening. So, you know, just like a pretty

simple verse like Romans 12, too, like don't be conformed to the patterns of this world, which for the most part, Christianity is all four, like identifying where are the worldly patterns. But then really important phrase that follows is, you know, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so that sense of how do we renew our mind if we don't have any system or invalienable, to understand like what's going on in terms of why am I drawn to this particular behavior, what's going on in my body. And so that season of life of trying to understand my own sexual story, my own sexual sin and difficulties, but more importantly, like, why are people drawn to these things? That led to the decision to do some original research in the realm of, you know,

we looked at ACE scores, which are adverse childhood experiences. We looked at, you know, what were people's relationships to their mothers and fathers? And then we said, like, are you struggling with a lack of purpose, anxiety, depression? And then one of the really interesting, potentially invasive things that we did, invasive, because one of my friends that took the survey said that was like the most invasive thing I've ever taken part of. But one of the things we asked about is like, we didn't want to just know. like do you struggle with infidelity or do you struggle with porn but what types of porn like when

you get on porn hub what do you actually put into the search engine when you get on google what do you type in when you are having an affair what type of affair partner are you really drawn to and so we put all that together and had a team connected to NYU do all the research and analytics and so basically what we found in that is that not only is unwanted sexual behavior like the use of porn and fidelity hookups, not only is that not random. We can actually predict what types of sexual behaviors people will pursue based on the unaddressed stories of their life. And when I saw that, that was like this lightbulb moment of like, we've been thinking about this all wrong. We've been trying to manage it or we've been trying to, you know, more of the progressive minds. And, you know,

more the progressive model would be like, this is normal, or maybe you should consider ethical porn, or maybe as long as no one's getting hurt, like, you should really bless that aspect of your desire, but no one is really helping us to understand, you know, what is shaping our desires. And so we started getting data. And so that's kind of long answer, but that's what I've been up to is, you know, some research, a lot of clinical practice to just be with men and women dealing with could be unwanted sexual behaviors, low desire in their marriage, like where they feel like they need a defibrillator for their sex life, or just like general questions around anxiety, mental health disorders, and depression, but then also doing a fair amount of training and equipping

for church leaders too. So probably like you, Preston, I love, I love different conversations. And I find if I get in the clinical conversation, the church conversation, or research conversation for too long. I just start getting like restless and needing to move on. Well, I'm sure I, the audience is going to resonate with me when I say, as you're talking, I mean, probably like 28 questions came up in my mind. I want to drill down deeper than that and that and that. One, we don't need to linger on. Long intro. One, we don't need to linger on, but Jerome, the guy who translated the Bible from Hebrew to Latin, you're saying he struggled with like hooking up during the week. That was like basically what was told to me. And like, I mean,

And it's like Augustine's story of bathhouses and his dad seeing his erection and coming home to tell his mom about it. And like just. And then you have Jerome's story. And then origin, I think castrated himself at 18 because of his unwanted sexual behaviors. And like that's what I feel like all of us, especially if you grew up in Christendom or some extension, we feel this in our bodies. And so one of the fascinating studies that's come out is.

what's called epigenetics and epigenetics is the study of gene expression from generation to generation and one of the first studies I looked at was like done on water fleas so they put these microscopic water fleas in this dish introduced a predator into the water and within one or two generations the water fleas had these like horned or helmeted heads and those horned or helmeted heads will persist in, you know, for generations until the predator or the threat is removed from the water. And again, like, what threats have been in our family system? What stories, what predators have been in our grandparents stories that are affecting, you know, when we get close to the topic of desire, it could be for sex or for an orgasm. It could just be for the desire of like, you know,

for one of my clients, it's just like, can I order a $4.50 latte or if I'm in New York, an $8 latte without feeling some level of judgment and condemnation? And it's like, where can we begin to trace like, why is there such a civil war with desire of the things that we want in life turn out to be, you know, give us the most beautiful things in our life from our kids to our vocations, but then our desires for anything else can also expose us to our own envy, to our own greed, to opens the door to betrayal. So I just think that we live in the civil war of desire, not just in terms of, you know, this present day life that we're living, but, you know, it's been handed down generation after generation of like a deep war with desire and life and joy.

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and use promo code TITR for up to 35% off your first order. Okay. So that's live momentus. promo code t-I-tr check it out i'm so fascinated that you said you can almost predict based on the study um when when somebody's engaging in in a certain kind of unwanted sexual behavior a certain kind of porn or maybe a certain kind of prostitute or a certain kind of hookup over and over that you can almost predict some kind of common story yes can you give us an example of for sure yeah i'll start with a client story and then go into what the research says. So this is from Dan Siegel, but these are really helpful parenting categories. But he would say that the four things that every child needs to be healthy, to flourish,

are to be seen, safe, soothed, and secure. And so if I were to run down those real quick, scene is like, you see your kid's joy. Like, what do they love? And, you know, on Saturday morning, it's like, you know, I know my son is loving basketball right now. So I'm going to orchestrated day where he gets basketball, but he's also loving, like, you know, really intense New York bagels, breakfast with locks or, like, chorizo and cheese. So there's, like, some sense of, I'm going to investigate, like, what's the bagel order that we need to go to next? But then there's also the sense of, you know, a parent needs to have a sense of attunement for the heartache of their child. So I always say that, like, middle school is like a prototype of hell. And so, like, when you came home from

school and something in your face look downcast or you just felt off or maybe you were really irritable. Did you have a mother or a father that were attuned to that heartache? So we need to be seen. And then I'll just talk about soothing before I transition. But soothing is the sense of, you know, when we are born, we are not even able to regulate our own temperature or our own nervous system. So I need my mom or my dad or my caregivers co-regulation. So I need their attunement.

I need their body. I need their temperature to calm down. Later in life, we do need to learn auto regulation or self-regulation, but a lot of people grow up in families where not only were their parents not co-regulating with them, they were actually the source of the dysregulation. So the question then becomes if you weren't seen in your delight, if you weren't seen in your heartache and you had no relational form of soothing, where the hell is all that going to go? And so one of my clients, you know, was a latchkey kid. And one of the things that he started doing was,

you know, his parents got him this bicycle when he was in seventh grade. And one of the things he talked about is he said, I used to cruise around the neighborhood trying to lock eyes with girls in my class and their friends' moms. And I was like, you know, give me. Given your history with soliciting prostitution and cruising, that's a very interesting word that you used. And kind of the matrix-like moment went off for him of like, whoa, that pattern of cruising actually started as a middle school boy where I was trying to get seen. I was trying to get eyes. And then this moment began to come to him and he said, you know, it's not that I don't like soliciting, but one of the most powerful. liturgies or rituals that he would engage in is just trying to lock eyes with women on the streets.

That was kind of what he would do when he would get in porn sites. That's what he was drawn to far more than, you know, masturbation was just trying to lock eyes with people in the porn scene. And so that kind of began the sense of if no one saw you and no one offered real soothing, some of these bikes and some of these initial experiences with porn were, some of the first neurochemical experiences of oxytocin and dopamine and, you know, just serotonin and regulation for him. And so if that story wasn't addressed, he was going to continue to outsource some of those

legitimate needs and desires to something that would eventually become problematic. And to me, that's always my work is to invite people to see that, like, the formative things that help us to survive our family of origin, our trauma, our exile are the things that get us into trouble later in life. So that's his story. But then part of what the research showed is that, you know, let's say that you were someone that was looking for someone that was like a race that suggested to use subservience or a petite body type or a blonde, if that was like your search for term, is just someone that the researchers tagged it as, kind of like a power over arousal structure.

And what predicted that was a parent that was very strict or authoritarian, high levels of a lack of purpose in their life or high levels of shame. And so, you know, just playing armchair psychologist, if you are growing up in a family system that's very rigid, controlling, you often feel very powerless in your life. And one of the reasons why porn is so appealing to so many people is not just lust and not just beauty or not just something that could be, you know, seductive language. But it's really the realm of power. So I can get on the internet and for, you know, the average porn hub user is like seven minutes for a male, nine minutes for a female.

But for seven minutes, I can get exactly what I want when I want it. And if you're coming from a family system that some, someone else was that authority over you, we have to ask the question of where does all that go? And so that's, you know, from clinical practice, started seeing the patterns, but then in the research, the data is really clear. Like, we can trace specific fantasies, specific problems that you're going to run into later in life based on your story. And so the implication there is instead of trying to just throw yourself into a thornbush

or get internet monitoring or, you know, getting into accountability, which some of those things I'm mostly for, it's a sense of fight to really understand your story. Seek to understand what are the traumas, what are the heartaches that are informing your movement to try and find soothing in that particular way. Do you find a difference between like men and women in their response? I mean, I know like porn, for instance, from what I hear,

There's a, you know, men outnumber women. But there's a growing... 40% of porn users, I think, are now women. Is the motivation or is there a difference that it's driving that use? Because I know, I mean, male, female sexuality, you know, generally speaking, there's obvious similarities, but there's also some big differences too. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think that there's far more shame for women.

Just with regard to, especially if you're coming out of, like, purity culture, There's almost the sense of like, you know, you need to be the gatekeeper for men, meaning like, you know, men can't control themselves. They can't regulate their own arousal. They are just like people that need some level of monitoring or restriction. So then that sense of if they feel their own desire, if they feel their own longing, they've almost been conditioned and taught that you don't have it. And then when you do have it, it's like this really confusing experience of what do I do with the arousal inside of me?

All of us are sexual beings. So that sense of, you know, yeah, just how do women understand their own arousal structures, especially with regard to porn is always such an important clinical intervention of how, you know, were they introduced to porn? Did they have someone like a peer introduced them to it? What was their own arousal within that? So there's often more shame in initially engaging it. Yeah. And with like prostitution, I don't think women are out soliciting prostitutes. I mean, I'm sure it happens.

Yeah. It's very few. Yeah. Yeah. It happens. But it's far less. Why is that? Why is porn? They're, you know, women are getting up close very, you know, in the ballpark of where men are at in terms of viewing porn. But prostitution is just not. Yeah. I think that would be a cultural conversation just with regard to entitlement, you know, responsive versus spontaneous arousal. Like I think there's a lot. just in terms of the conditioning and what's expected. I think even, you know, just the language of a John. Like, this is every man's issue. This is just a John issue versus the way that, you know, strip clubs work in our culture. Porn is almost a right of passage for men. So I think that there are far more tributaries and on ramps into the world of prostitution. But I also think that, you know, there's something with regard to the desire for potential forms of intimacy.

and what people are looking for. Be curious about your theology on this too. But I think of like the curse for a man and the curse for a woman is the sense of in Genesis 3, thorns and thistles will define a man's existence. So that sense of I just want to have something where there's no relational debris. I can kind of have something like I can pay for a transaction

and just be done. I don't need any kind of enmeshed. relationship, I just want to pay from my ability to be done. The curse for a woman has much more to do with relationship, like this deep longing for connection and intimacy. And that, you know, would be antithetical to something like prostitution in many cases. That's what I was going to assume. So when it comes to like, you know, romance or kind of just the 50 shades, you'll see a lot more of, you know, erotica, a longing for intimacy, you know, just. a lot of women, it could be within a marriage, their fantasy life of kind of going back to an

ex-lover or a colleague when they're with their spouse or their partner, a lot of the wars for them, at least in my clinical experience, play out much more in like their fantasy life of what would it be like to have this person or this experience of someone really want me and desire me and almost overpower me within it. that's I don't understand the the sales rate for 50 shades of gray I never read it never saw the move or anything but it seems pretty um is I mean masochistic or almost like a misogynistic I mean it's very much a male dominating a woman is that I mean and why would women be drawn is that is there a it seems like such an unhealthy draw to

find pleasure and seeing that. That's really twisted. Am I missing something? There's something more complex there? Yeah. I mean, this is, I think it would be so fascinating to get multiple perspectives on this. But just thinking about it in terms of, you know, some of my clients that might come from histories of abuse where there is some sense of, you know, going back to those scene safe sues,

secure categories. That is not only a good parent in the God of the universe. that's also a perpetrator, that's also a predator, is the ability to be able to see this person lacks connection. Most abusers have a sick sense of this child, even if it's a peer, is not seen very well. They don't have a lot of soothing. They don't have a lot of, you know, sense of safety and security. And so one of the first things that most abusers offer is just a sense of like, I delight in you. enjoy you. I pick you. And again, if you don't have much of that, Kurt Thompson talks about how we can grow up in families where the food finds the table, you know, the money finds the college funds,

but in many ways our hearts can be disengaged or unknown to the two people that God most put on the planet to see us, which would be our parents. And so if you're coming from that, that abuser, again, whether it's a peer or a youth pastor or someone older and an adult, they're going to engage in that grooming process. And whenever we are touched, wherever we're delighted in, we're hugged, we're engaged, someone says like, that's, you have a beautiful voice, or I love your passion, I love your energy, I like the clothes that you're wearing, you're going to feel some level of oxytocin bond. And eventually, as the abuse continues, you're going to

feel some level of pleasure. And anytime there's that sense of like someone has seen me and they want me and they're engaging it, your body's going to feel almost complicit in your own abuse and your own longing. And so I often feel like that's part of the war with some of my female clients is there's a sense of the longing that they have in their life to want to be seen, to be enjoyed, to be recognized for having strengths and gifts, that's often been perpetrated within an abusive system. It could be sexually abusive. It could be spiritually abusive. But it's some sense of, you know, these longings and these desires that I have to be seen, to be enjoyed, are eventually going to be the basis of which I come to know abuse or difficulty. And so I think

one of the purposes of that arousal structure is you almost don't even have to choose anymore, that someone is just doing something to you or they're overpowering you. So it reenacts something of the original template of I want to be enjoyed, I want to be seen, but those things are going to become the basis of me being potentially overpowered. And so that's part of a trauma reenactment is that we, you know, want to repeat some of the original storylines, but now be in control of I get to predict where this thing is going to end. Is that why, and I don't know the percentages, but it's not uncommon for somebody who's been abused to, like in their younger years, to pursue an abusive kind of relationship as they get older? Is that true that that's a common pattern?

It could be, yeah. So there's something that we talk about just in terms of like a trauma cocktail. So if you mix in that sense of oxytocin, which is like, Preston, I love your sweater that you're wearing. It looks great. There's that sense of you're going to feel some level of oxytocin. And that's the neurochemical that mothers get a wash of when they deliver their baby. And so you feel pleasure. You feel connected.

But then as you begin to feel touch and attention, your body's going to experience dopamine. And dopamine is not just pleasure. It's also responsible for motivation and what we give our attention to. And then we also feel some level of stress of, you know, if someone finds out about what we're doing or our little secretive relationship, that might become the basis of my shame. Maybe our abuser made an overt threat that if anyone finds out, out about this, like we're going to harm you. And so then you start introducing cortisol and stress into the system. And, you know, when you can't tell people what's happening to you,

you're going to eventually feel some level of shame and degradation. Like, I've just been used. And think about the ingredients of that cocktail. Like pleasure, attention, connection, but then cortisol, shame, adrenaline, neuroadrenaline, catacolamine. pumping through your system. It's just to me out right now. My cortisol level going up. But that's what happens later in life is that we recreate something of that template. And we think we were going to become aroused by this person that might see us or we read it in a book and they're like it's beauty and connection and desire.

But then it ends in some type of humiliation, some type of degradation, some sense of I can't really tell people what I love and what I enjoy listening to or reading late at night. And so then you feel some level of shame. And so people think that their war is, why do I just, why am I drawn to that? But they've totally missed, like, what are the formative stories that actually shape those desires in that template to begin with? And so I think that's the work is to build that bridge between, you know, the things that you are drawn to, if they are an unwanted dimension of your life. They're not random. And so what would it mean for you instead of feeling shame or, you? instead of just trying to end it or get rid of it or pray it away,

what would it mean for you to build that bridge in a set of hypotheses with regard to, I wonder why this form of fiction appeals to me. I wonder why this porn preference. I wonder why this archetype of someone at work or a college significant other, like why is that person coming to my mind? And I think that's the work to be able to form your mind and to understand your desires. Literally just turned 50 years old a few days ago.

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I know, I'm sure it's not 100%. But like, how do you try to get somebody out of that relationship? Yeah. I mean, it really depends on what the situation is. So, yeah, like as a licensed therapist, I. you know, have a duty to report when it's, you know, harm to self, harm to others or harm to a child. And so that's, oh, so you have to go to the have to report when there's, but, you know, oftentimes there's, you know, it could be some, you know, continuum of

domestic violence that's taking place in the home. And that's part of the unfortunate. I don't remember the statistics right out the top of my head, but making it up here. But it's like, let's say it takes somewhere between five to ten attempts to actually leave your abusive partner before you actually leave. So there's a lot of attempts to try and leave, but then it could be financial, could be emotional manipulation, connected to that, could be a sense of kind of spiritual abuse connected to why you need to stay and forgive your abusive husband, for example. So that becomes part of the wider work of how do we begin to engage that, yes,

this is an abusive, traumatic relationship that's reenacting potentially stuff from your past, or maybe you grew up in a home where, again, your desires were never engaged. Your sense of preferences and what you wanted was never respected. And so you became this eneagram too of like, I'm going to pay attention to the needs of other people and deprioritize mine. And then I'm going to baptize that with virtue. And then you get into a relationship where you're profoundly used physically, emotionally, sexually.

And so that becomes part of the work for me as a therapist is to help them to understand, like we've got two issues at play. We need to understand how you got here, that this isn't random. But then we also need to kind of get assess a plan for safety of how do you, how do we begin to leave? And that could be potentially a church community that offers safe harbor. That could be some sense of what's the legal realm, what's their involvement with community And unfortunately, many times perpetrators, abusers are very good at isolating people and kind of getting them to feel some level of shame for even being honest about these dynamics.

And so that becomes part of the tricky situation that we have to navigate is, yeah, we've got to get people out. So if it's a harm to a child, if they, you know, are the abuser that's causing harm, then some of those things have to be reported. And then it's, you know, worked with CPS many times to, you know, assess safety plans. And it's not always just you're going to be, you know, you have to abandon your kids from that day forward. But it's like if there is harm, if there's violence in the home, we need to address that. Yeah. It's so sinister when you described a groomer, almost having a sixth sense of praying on our deepest core needs, you know. And they just can know how to manipulate and play on that and pray on it. That's, does that get you angry?

I mean, that's going to make you. No, infuriated. And it's also just like there's something about that that is completely diabolical where it's like the things that we most need in life. Like these legitimate needs become entangled with a sense of my body's going to be used and it's going to feel some level of shame and judgment. And that's what I'm trying to untangle a lot is, you know, I think that's the sense of grief work of if you do have a history of some type of abuse. Like how do you bless that you're longing for connection, for pleasure, for touch were really good.

But then that sense of the desires within you became the basis of your own degradation, your own humiliation, your own abuse. And how do you grieve? And as you said, how do you get really angry? that something of your dignity, something of your beauty was stolen here. And that's the work is, you know, I'm going to look at that seven-year-old boy, that 12-year-old girl. And instead of holding that boy in judgment or that girl with a sense of like, how could you have been so stupid?

Because that's what a lot of my clients, that's their inner voice, is if I had just never wanted that, if I had never put myself in that position. Yeah, so much self-blank. That's common. Yes. And that becomes this core, I would say spiritual, psychological agreement that I can't be trusted. My desires will inevitably lead me to harm or selfishness or something weird or awkward happening. And so in my estimation, one of the reasons why people go on to struggle with unwanted sexual behaviors or any self-sabotage behaviors is largely because of their unaddressed shame. So we don't just feel shame in response to doing something that we might say is stupid or sinful or unwanted. The core belief that I am broken, the core belief that, like, I can't be trusted. We will inevitably pursue evidence that reinforces that core judgment. So, you know, my, a little bit of, like, my backstory would be, my nickname growing up was donut.

And so I used to have, it kind of grew up in the era of the Pillsbury Do Boy commercials where I came to middle school like with a jelly donut, probably first or second day of seventh grade. And, you know, this jelly donut dripped on my shirt. And that was like the worst bus stop experience because then not only was I, you know, a larger kid, but also had this jelly stain. And that began, you know, just donut language. If I go back, though, one of my first experiences of, you know, just delight was like a summer barbecue when I was like in first grade. And we would have friends over and my dad would fire up, you know, the Weber and charcoal. And I'd get so excited that I would have to like poop pretty routinely.

And so I remember I used to sing on the toilet, like hamburger, hamburger. I love to eat hamburger hamburger hamburger with ketchup. I'm so loving little transfigure. right now. Right? I just, I want to hang out with this kid. So I'm like, I love food. I love. And so I remember during that season, like one of my first memories six, seven years old with my siblings was my sister and my brother who are older than me saying, Jay, do you love to eat or do you eat to live? Like, do you live to eat or eat to live? And I'm like, I didn't have language for why the binary, but like, do you hear the bind for that kid of like

there's not a right answer to my siblings because if I say I actually live to eat I love hedonic burgers like give me all the things that becomes like what's wrong with you for loving food so much but if I say that I just you know you know I eat to live it's like I don't want to reduce food to just something of calories like I love food and so I love donuts I love burgers I love you know salads oh so no I think I think I think I think mostly healthy at that age. But given my family system, which was highly disengaged at times, like mom and dad were not, my dad could be more involved with the church and his elders and people that were having crises within the church.

My mom could be more attuned to, you know, what was happening. You know, we had a golden retriever with a thyroid problem. So she shed all the time. So I was constantly needing to vacuum the floors in my home. And so that sense of my, you know, a lot of religious conformity, but also we had to keep everything clean. And so my mom, I think on her worst days, could be very preoccupied with the appearance of a house, the appearance of our family and not attuned to my own heart. So food that began with this sense of delight and like bowel movement and enjoyment became the sense of. of I'm going to find soothing.

I'm going to have, you know, like a donut in many ways offers me regulation at night when I'm being mistreated. So that's the dilemmas. The very thing that I went to to soothe became the basis of my shame and my humiliation. That set up just a lot of war within my desire of I love food, I enjoy it, but I also don't have relational soothing. And so my first love was not, you know, porn or sex. It was much more like an apple fritter. It was much more seductive to me than anything else in my life. And still is to this day.

Like that when I am struggling, I will unconsciously just drift off into like sweets and putting them in microwaves for like 20 seconds and just getting the sizzling dough. You're killing me. I know. We need to order some donuts after. We're done here. That's the fantasy of like I just I don't want to deal with the beauty in my life right now because of what it might cost me. I don't want to deal with the shame and the alienation.

I just want to dissociate and be in the world of baked goods so that I don't have to attend to some of the heartache or the joy in my life. Is that always bad? Like whatever somebody, I guess if somebody's escape is like clearly. immoral. That's bad. You know, shouldn't do that. But something like food.

Like, if you were going to an apple fritter, you had a bad day at work, you're feeling lonely, um, say, maybe your wife's out of town, whatever. And you just go and you get three apple fridders. Well, maybe that'd be,

you know, you know, like, I'm just trying to self-soothe right now. Like, is that, yeah, is that bad? Obviously, if that was like, every time you needed to self-sues, you go to the upper fitters every day.

You know, like obviously the habitual pattern would be bad. Yes. Yeah. Is it okay every now? Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. So let me nuance that.

So all of us have, this is another Dan Siegel term, but he says that we all have a window of tolerance. And so this window of tolerance think of two parallel lines. And then in the middle is what's called the green zone or the window of tolerance. Above the top line is what's referred to as hyper. arousal or the red zone. Beneath that bottom line is hypoarousal or the blue zone. So when we are stressed, when we're in difficulty, sometimes what happens is your window

of tolerance will shrink. And then you go into the red zone and to fight, flight, blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up. And so that's where people can make a lot of kind of self-sabotage decisions. They can kind of overeat because they're feeling kind of some level of hypomania inside. they're feeling some level of dysregulation. So they look to alcohol, sex, to kind of offer some level of soothing to bring them back into the green zone.

Or there's a sense of I just don't feel good about who I am. I feel like my career isn't working out. My marriage freaking sucks. So now I'm going to pursue a type of behavior, a type of eating, a type of sex that reinforces the blue zone, that I am just screwed when it comes in life. And so part of what you're asking is, you know, how do you find self-soothing? And a lot of times what happens is we haven't taught people how to increase their window of tolerance for distress. We've just taught people, you know, just don't do bad decisions.

So there's a shameless plug, not even shameless plug. It's not even my place, but there's this place called Moes Does. It's out in Greenpoint if you ever come. And they have blueberry fritters and apple fritters right now. On Saturday mornings, I wake up and I go for a run. So I will look at bakeries now. And New York is full of them. And so I get up at 6.37 and I pick a different bakery in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Manhattan, East Village.

And I'm like, I'm going to haul these baked goods back to my family. And I will, like, that's what I'm doing if I'm in town every weekend is I'm going to try a different bakery. And so Moe's Does has these incredible. fritters, but they're like this bit. And so I have two kids and my wife, but like we brought back blueberry and apple fritters. And then I went to some, I can't believe I'm talking so much about apple fritters. I do. And so I got them from some way.

It may have been radio bakery, which is another great baker in the city. But we got three different fritters. Oh, and then my son went up to Dunkin Donuts as well to get their fritter. So we had like a fritter taste off and got the air friar out and chopped them in half. And we're like, these are going to get us through the weekend. But that sense of I know that if I were to eat a full mose dough, maybe an eternity I could eat that without some level of just feeling judgment or just like so much oil in this thing. But that sense of I know a portion that's not going to bring about judgment. And so then that sense of something that I used to do in isolation and shame and judgment, I'm now running to and bringing my family into how do we develop our palate for what a good fritter is.

And to me, that's where I'm not trying to just liberate my desire or pathologize it, but to say like, how do I bring desire into communal life? And that's what we want to see happening is that most of, you know, a desire for screens is good. movies, stories, but when that just becomes like, I'm going to do it just for me, that's usually where problems begin to emerge. And theologians like Ronald Roelheuser would say that all children are born with these raw desires for food or pleasure or connection. And the point of a community is to show how do we bring these desires into full integration? And so that's usually when I'm looking at most of my unwanted behaviors of any kind. It's the sense of, I'm eating, I'm drinking, I'm indulging in a way that's not really about community and vitality

and a deep sense of I love my body and I enjoy my body, but I'm actually using it for the basis of judgment. Or, you know, if something really good is happening in my life, I don't trust that goodness is going to remain very long. And so I might increase some shameful behavior. I might lash out it my kids, I might overeat. And then it becomes the basis of I will be the one to ruin the goodness because I know that goodness is eventually going to end. People might take a shot at me. People might, you know, try and remove my credentials as has happened before. Just like anytime something good has happened in my life, there has been a movement to ruin it. So it's like, fine, I'll ruin it first so that those bastards don't get a chance to do.

do it. And so that's that's part of the war is how do I bless that as you said like I love little Jay in that moment. Like do I love little Jay? And for decades of my life, I looked at that kid with judgment of like you wanted like kind of kid sings about a hamburger on a toilet. But now there's a growing sense of I bless that. And therefore how do I bless my desires for anything in life and build that window of tolerance. So we need to teach people how to self-soothe with food, with good sex, with mindfulness, with prayer, with going for a walk. Like University of Michigan just came out with study maybe in the last couple years around, like if you go for like a 20-minute walk in a area with trees, your cortisol levels drop significantly. So you'd certainly get more

stress reduction if you're out in the woods for longer people. periods of time, but for the first 20 minutes, there's a significant drop in cortisol levels from just going for a walk. And so that sense of all of us need the capacity to increase our window of tolerance. And so whether it's an apple fritter, a walk in Central Park. Probably a walk is going to be better for you than the fritter. Or buy the fritter, cut it in half, have a quarter of it. Go for a 40 walk. Yeah, and enjoy it. So. I used to when I was in college, you know, I'm 20 years old and you can just consume whatever you want.

You know, I live across the street from the college in San Diego. And on my way, there was a coffee shop and a taco shop. Okay. And the coffee shop had amazing apple fritter. So on my way to school, big cup of coffee, massive apple fritter,

on the way home, Carni-asada burrito, extra guac. We need to go there. Together. That way, I would be in the grave. Yes, yeah. We need to go there. I want to get to the book you just finished on Desire.

But before we do, there's a question I just wanted to ask. It kind of takes us back to what we were talking about before. Can you, because you can see patterns and kind of where these are probably going to lead, I'm curious, if you're working with a married couple, can you kind of like predict that there's probably going to be an affair that's going to happen here? There's probably going to be infidelity or at least a temptation or pursuit of it. And kind of related to that, like, Like, what are some patterns you see at a marriage that often are like,

this is likely going to lead into a fair? Yeah. Yeah. So great question. I mean, I think depending on the. I thought asking for myself. Yeah, for a friend of yours. Depending on the statistics that you're looking at, like somewhere between 25 to 35%

of marriages will experience infidelity. Really? So, yeah, it's a little bit higher. include like an emotional just kind of like oh those are primarily sexual affairs oh so 25 to 35 percent i mean some of that self-reported data are people actually so you know a third of all marriages roughly will experience some level of infidelity i would say um are there predictors yes um are there so you know part of that is that issue of kind of the interplay between uh shame and contempt and so that sense of of, you know, this is where I think Jesus is really helpful and not helpful when he says, like, you know, all of us are adulters and all of us are murders.

And so that sense of we long for something. And then the language that James uses is you want something and you don't get it so you kill. And so that sense of contempt could be, you know, I want my wife to remember all the details that she's supposed to attend to. And if she doesn't, you know, set a couple comments to her this past week that were intended to. harm her. And so that sense of that could be part of the basis of a lot of marriages is just some interplay between, you know, I want something from you. I want more sexual engagement. I want more relational engagement. Like, I have such a hunger to be known. And yet the partner that I'm connected to does not want to know me. They might want to use me, but they don't want to be deeply

connected to me. And so where do you go with regard to some of that tepidness? in the marriage or some of the conflict in the marriage. And so that at that point, you'll have some different strategies. You'll have some people that they just get really involved in their, you know, kids' lives and they travel all over and do travel sports and or they get really involved with playing tennis or building their career. And so that becomes the basis of, I'm going to abdicate my loyalty, my vows to my partner and just make a lot of money or, you know, just get really involved in my kids' lives. But it could also become this neighbor down the street, this colleague sees me, enjoys me more, and then that becomes the basis of it. And so if I were to kind of back up a little

bit, most of what the human is trying to negotiate between is like, how do I be authentic and how do I stay deeply connected to someone? And part of what we learn is that the more authentic we become, in some ways the less connected we are. And then to remain connected, the less authentic. And so a good marriage requires some deep commitment to differentiation to authenticity. Like think of a good marriage like a symphony. So you go into symphony in your city, you want your violinist to be like the best violinist in the city. You want your percussion team to be like phenomenal.

But the magic of a good symphony is not just. that like you have a really good violinist. It's that somehow all of these instruments, all these differentiated, authentic components are coming together to create beauty and music and song. And that's what a good marriage looks like. But what often happens is that most of us always arrive at marriage underdeveloped. Like got a few broken strings and we don't like the sound that we play or we don't like the sound that our partner plays. But typically we, to stay in that metaphor, we're going to pick someone that has an equal level of differentiation. Like maybe our strings are broken, but maybe their reads are a little too cracked, not making

good sounds. So we tend to marry people at similar levels of differentiation. And so usually the things that attract us to a person are the things that will divide us later on. So I love my wife's spontaneity. I loved how free she was, like coming from a rigid, pastor's family. I'm like, who is this artist? I can't believe how magical she is. Like, how does she think like this and create? And then I'm like, wait a minute, where is any level of responsibility and like ownership?

10 years into marriage. This is freaking maddening. And so, you know, part of be allured to that was that my family was completely underindexed with creativity and longing and expression. And so I found something. And then all of that began to implode. And that became, you know, a lot of the breakdown, the argument is I want something different from you. I, you know, all this life that you have outside of me was really good when we first got together.

But now you're finding way too much life outside of me and you're not seeing me. You're not attuning to me. So that became the basis of, you know, could be pornography, could be a sense of anger and contempt, is you're not going to be the one to offer it to me. I'm going to find someone or something that will offer that attunement. So at low levels of differentiation and authenticity, you're going to have partners that, one marriage therapist by the name of David Schnarsh,

he passed away a couple years ago. He referred to it as normal marital sadism, and some other people referred to it now in the field as normal marital hatred. But it's that sense of like, we love our partners, but we also do things intentionally to piss them off. And that, is that like recognizing that is like, and this is part of a normal marriage? Or it's like, we need to fix this. You should not be doing this.

Well, it's part of a normal marriage, but it's also part of, I need to fix this. Like, why does someone need to bear my contempt? Like, why is it that hatred plays out in this particular realm? So usually that's the process of growth is, you know, just like a category that we know in psychology of like validation, right? Like you're an author, I'm an author. It's really good to kind of mutually validate. Like I really appreciate your research, your, you know, the book that you wrote, the integration that you do, it's like you can feel validated and I can feel validated. But if you're building a relationship on the purpose of validation, that's going to eventually become a hostage situation because,

eventually you're going to be like, I don't want to validate Jay every single time I hang out. Like if he doesn't hear validation, then he just checks out and disengages emotionally. But when I'm really kind and supportive, then it's all about him. But what about me? That's going to eventually dissipate in a marriage. And so that sense of how do we enjoy who we are? Like if I don't like who I am and I'm not committed to developing myself, I'm handing my wife a set of needs. to soothe and to address, I'm not bringing the best of my adult life to her.

And that's what I often find will ruin a lot of marriages, is we bring our partners the leftovers of, you know, I can bring myself to this podcast or I can bring myself to my client work. And that's the best in me. But then when I come home, I'm like, flat affect, shut down. Like, are you going to see me? You know, did you get the groceries? I told you to order it. And so now all the energy, all the life that I bring to other people becomes like, you'll have the worst in me. And then I also want you to want me. And that's the mind screwing.

So overwhelming. I mean, is there some part of that that's just like, of course it's going to be that way. If you're both working, you know, you're going to spend a lot of emotional, intellectual, energy, maybe physical energy if you're out, you know, I have a physical job. You know, for instance, like I, you know, I do all my podcasts on Tuesdays. Sometimes I'll do, sometimes I'll do, sometimes I'll do, sometimes I'll do, sometimes even four, record a couple ads, then engage intellectually on like, you know, writing summaries and all that stuff. And I'm a big

introvert. Like, I've got, you know, people have their like amount of words they're going to use a day. I exceed the amount of words that need to come out of my mouth by like one in the afternoon on Tuesday. Yes, you are taxed. I'm spent, you know, so it takes a lot of work for me to must. And my wife loves to engage. And if I'm quiet, she's like, why are you quiet? You know, let's connect and stuff.

And sometimes I'm like, ooh, I don't have much left in the tank right now, you know. But is that, I mean, part of it's like, well, that's what sacrificial love is, is not engaging when you feel like it when you have the energy, but stepping it up and continue to engage. I deeply resonate with that. when I got ordained, I had to go through a bunch of psychological tests. And one of the things that the psychologist said was, Jay, we have one primary concern for you. And I said, okay.

There might be more. But they said, you have the lowest need of socialization of any ministerial candidate to ever have come through this. Like, you're off the, like, literally off the charts in terms of how little you want to be around people. So I like resonate deeply with what you're saying. I think I would beat you. I think I would beat you.

Let's go. Socialization wrestling match. Well, part of like what the latest neuroscience is showing is like there's something like satiety levels like hunger and like how much food you need to feel full. There are different social satiety levels with regard to extroverts and introverts. So extroverts, you know, they get some amount of social interaction, but their metabolism essentially burns through it real fast. So they need to keep eating. They need to keep getting social interactions for satiety.

People like you and I are like camels. We can just like have a sip of water and be like, I'm good for a couple months. So similar to metabolism, they burn through their need for social interaction. I don't know all the neuroscience, but that's the way I've heard. it is like kind of a social satiety level is like some sense of you know we can get something like this on a Tuesday and then it's like I'm I'm good the rest of the week so I'm gonna be my you know I started my brother-in-law got me a whoop and what is that you referenced that or not it took it off but it's it measures like your heart rate kind of stress levels through the day sleep I sleep like

an infant in a bad way. And I just struggle. So I'm trying to figure out like what's the sleep, what's the routine? How do I hold stress? So, you know, all these dynamics of shame, judgment inside my body, needing to speak. But I was in Michigan last week speaking. I fly to Nebraska tomorrow. And so it's measuring my heart rate.

And so one of the things that it said with my heart rate variability and stress levels, is basically my recovery, they give you a dashboard of like, if you're in a green recovery, it's like go for a run, try and do some, you know, PRs in terms of lifts. But when I got done speaking last week, my recovery was like at 12% or something in the red. And it just said like your nervous system is completely taxed. And so that sense of the, you know, potential performance, but also just like I was talking to people all day long. and just wiped out. So, yeah, that's, I know you're, you were asking about that with regard to spouses.

So that, that sense of how do I give my wife the best of me? And it's probably not, if I'm like you, it's not going to be right when I come back on Sunday night. But that sense of, okay, I want to deeply know, you know, what my wife has been going through. I want to share what I've been through. So it needs to probably be a couple days later to be able to give her something of the best in me. or a sense of how do we find like a walk where we don't have to share a lot of words or a sense of I can hear a lot right now, but don't ask me to talk about what I went through like that will come with time. So I think we're all managing expectations and kids. And that's where I'm always trying to don't do this perfectly.

But I had a friend who is working with a lot of children in his clinical practice. he said sometimes dads like think that they have to do like all the things like I've got to like spend six hours with my boy building Legos when I get home and like build this whole thing and he's like no it's like 10 or 15 minutes on the floor a day so it's like it could be Legos at one stage it could be like you know my son is wanting to play basketball so we might look at like you know these lethal shooter videos of just kind of seeing how to see perfect a shot or work through things. but it's some sense of can I give someone in my family 10, 15 minutes a day. So quality, not necessarily quantity? Yeah. And then try and attune to other deeper desires throughout the week as well. Before I let you go, let's talk about your fourth-core me book. Yes.

What's the title and yeah, what's it all about? Yeah, so the title is desire, the longings inside us, and the new science of how we love, heal, and grow. And it will be published in March of 26, 2026. And really on the topic of desire. So part of what I would say is like no one is really being taught how to want well. If you come from a conservative background, you've been taught to suppress desire because desire might bring you into something selfish or God forbid sexual. A lot of the progressive paradigm is kind of just the sense of what is it that you want to do with this one wild and wonderful. life that you've been given. Like love that Mary Oliver line. But then how do you, what do you do? Well, do you eat prey? You love your way through life. So no one's really teaching us how to want and how to get under the engine of our heart to say, why am I even drawn to this to begin with? How do I understand the problems of my life? So it's, it's a did a lot of research on it, but basically on how do we

develop our relationship to desire? And so really helping people have really practical ways of you need five desires to really flourish. And those are desires for wholeness. Like how do you understand your story, connect to that childhood self? You have to develop a sense of self and personal growth. And this isn't just optimization of I'm going to work out. I'm going to get my sleep.

It's like, who are you growing into? Like who are you becoming as an individual? And then a desire for intimacy, which is the strength of our connect. How are we known? How do we know another person? A desire for pleasure and just experiencing goodness and joy and then also a desire for meaning and purpose in our life. And so it's this integrated framework of how do you really develop your relationship to desire so that you can

become this authentic but also deeply connected person. So it's very related to a lot of stuff we've been talking about. Yeah, but not just on unwanted sexual behavior. That was part of what we were saying pre-show is my agent and some publishers were like, Jay, do you want to be the Christian bedroom guy and just kind of talk about this strange like porn whisperer stuff? Or do you want to begin to kind of break in? That to me is like, I'm so curious, not just about unwanted behaviors, but I'm interested in like just how do we desire and who, you know, what are the decisions? What are the dynamics that shape the nature and quality of our lives. And so that's kind of just assessing, like, what did my clients need before unwanted was written? What do they need after they've kind of,

you know, gotten curious about their life? And what I saw is that they really needed a roadmap for like how to become human, how to work with the engine of their heart rather than just trying to, you know, manage it or kind of make what they could out of their lives. Yeah, that's good. So I'm excited to read it. Thanks so much for being on the Algernonaut again, man. Really appreciate it. Yeah, more apple fritter and fried dough than I ever imagined. Fritters and tacos sounds like a great way to spend life in San Diego.