Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1038: Good Sex, Bad Sex, and Marriage: Dr. Juli Slattery

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Dr. Juli Slattery is a clinical psychologist, author, speaker and the president/co-founder of Authentic Intimacy. Juli earned her college degree at Wheaton College, an MA in psychology from Biola University, and an MS and a Doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology from Florida Institute of Technology. In this podcast conversation, I talk to Juli about her latest book God, Sex, and Your Marriage, which leads into a quite raw conversation about sex, good sex, bad sex, sexual abuse, female sexuality, sexual identities, and much more. This conversation is tasteful and theologically rich, and it is also quite explicit at times (as any authentic conversation should be).  https://www.authenticintimacy.com/Juli

Hey friends, I just want to invite you to consider joining the Theology in the Raw Patreon community. This is a group of followers who believe in the ministry and work of Theology in the Raw and want to support it financially. And honestly, I've been so impacted by the people who have chosen to support this podcast. Every month they send in a bunch of questions. A lot of them are really personal and I get to spend time responding to them in a private podcast. And we, you know, we'll message each other throughout the month and post responses to each other's questions. I'm actually going to start something new this fall, a monthly live Zoom chat with some of the members. And I'm super looking forward to actually seeing more of their faces every month. And there's other perks to come up, like a free virtual pass

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you can join the Theology in Iran community for a minimum of five bucks a month by going to patreon.com forward slash Theology in Iran. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in Raw community for a minimum of five bucks a month by going to patreon.com forward slash Theology in Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in Raw. The link is in the show notes. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in Raw. My guest today is my friend, Dr. Julie Slattery. Julie is a clinical psychologist, author, speaker, and the president and co-founder of Authentic Intimacy. She earned a college degree at Wheaton College, an MA in psychology from Biola University, and an MS and doctorate degree in clinical psychology from Florida Institute of Technology. Julie is the author of several books,

including this most recent one, God, Sex, and Your Marriage, which just came out. This book is kind of like the launching point of our conversation around sex and your marriage, which just came out. This book is kind of like the launching point of our conversation around sex and sexuality and our conversation. I do want to say, you know, this is Theology in the Raw, so we're not going to shrink back from just talking openly and honestly about topics. So we do that with talking about sex in this podcast episode. So we do get raw and real and I mean, I think tasteful, but we're not afraid to name certain behaviors and so on and so forth. So if you got little ones hanging around, you might want to screen this podcast before you listen or openly or just put your earbuds in or whatever. So please welcome back to the show, the one only Dr. Julie Slattery. Julie, I think this is number two or three for you,

at least number two on Theology in a Raw. So welcome back. Yeah. And I've had you on my podcast a few times too. So I always enjoy chatting with you. Me too. Me too. Absolutely. I mean, we swim in very similar circles and just conversations and everything. So I very much just love your work and appreciate your voice. For those who aren't familiar with your voice, which will be probably a small percentage of people listening, give us this quick snapshot of who you are and what you do. Sure. Yeah. So my background is in clinical psychology and was kind of a generalist for many years until about a decade ago, God pretty dramatically called me into the space of sexuality, really pursuing his design for sexuality. Preston and I, I'd say the first

seven years of our ministry were focused on women, but all of a sudden like the men started joining the conversation too. So, um, so I do a lot of work just helping people understand biblical sexuality and how that applies in a wide sphere of applications, um, single married, um, church culture healing. So again, we overlap a lot with what God's called us to, and I enjoy learning from you quite a bit. I appreciate that. High praise. In working with women, I would love to, let's just jump right in. Like, what are some common, for those seven years where you're working in the area of women and sexuality, what are some big thing, common things you were seeing women experience? Like why, why were you, why were they coming to you? Yeah. There's so much sexual pain and

confusion. And I think for a lot of men, it tends to be somewhat compartmentalized, not all men, but a lot of men will say, hey, I have an issue with porn. Or men that are engaging with your ministry and organization might say, hey, I have an issue with same-sex attraction. So they can identify this is the pain point. For women, it feels like a little squishier. So women will say, sex is not good in marriage. My body image is horrible. I have these memories of abuse from the past. Maybe I'm in an abusive marriage today. I'm dealing with my own porn struggle or my spouse's. So I feel like for women, it's kind of this big stew of things. And women don't feel like they fit in these categories of, here's my problem, fix it. They really want to journey with people that understand the complexity of female sexuality and where's God in the midst of it.

Can you unpack just that phrase? I was going to ask you this anyway, but you said it, the complexity of female sexuality. And obviously we're dealing with broad categories, but if you were to give a big picture description of what that means, what would that look like? Yeah, I think, you know, basically, if you even start with the anatomy, we're quite a bit more complex. And then just the sexual response being tied so much more into the emotional and relational journey for the average woman than it is for the man. And I think at some level, a woman's complexity can also call men to understand the complexity of their sexuality that they may simplify. men to understand the complexity of their sexuality that they may simplify. So, you know, I think that's part of God's design in the genders and in marriages. You know, some men are like,

man, I wish my wife were simpler and could experience sexual pleasure the same way I do. But even the complexity can be an invitation to Him to consider, maybe there's more to my sexuality than just a climax or a physical experience. So I think women may just be more in touch or aware of the complexity of their sexuality than men are. What are some hindrance, like, I mean, you deal with a wide range of people and situations. What are some common hindrances that women, and you deal primarily with Christian women, right? Because that might add a whole other component. What are some common issues that Christian women are dealing with that prevent them from having a, for lack of better terms, just a healthy sexuality, sexual life?

I don't know how to frame it. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I think there's a lot of confusion around God and sex. So this hits women by and large more than it does men. But again, it can also hit men. But women who have come through purity culture, who heard the message growing up in any church context that you're supposed to save yourself for marriage. In some ways, you're meant to be the gatekeeper of sex for the guys, even, and the way you dress. And then they hear, once you get married, you're supposed to please

your husband so he doesn't wander. That's just a piece of it. But that gives them a theology of sexuality that feels very unloving and legalistic and harsh. So they deal with that. They deal with the shame that can come from that, as well as just the sexual shame from, you know, we look at the research of how many women have experienced unwanted sexual contact, even in childhood, just those unresolved experiences. And then for some women, a lot of women, their bodies just don't cooperate. Their mind doesn't cooperate. And so this is something that they're supposed to enjoy and they find no enjoyment in it. And it becomes a burden to them. The women that do enjoy sex, many of them feel like there's something wrong with them. Like, why does my husband want sex more often? So again, I feel like female sexuality is so varied and complex that I feel like we're never bored.

You know, like if you look at most ministries that focused on male sexuality, they're going to have a high focus on pornography and sexual integrity. But when you're dealing with female sexuality, it's the whole gamut. Do you have a percentage off the top of your head of women that have experienced, I like the phrase you use, unwanted sexual contact? Is that the best? What's the best phrase to use? Sure. Yeah. Unwanted sexual touch, which is another way of saying sexual abuse. But I think a lot of people hear sexual abuse and they think, well, I didn't experience unwanted intercourse, but I think a lot of people hear sexual abuse and they think, well,

I didn't experience unwanted intercourse, therefore I wasn't abused. And many men and women decades later realize, wow, what I went through was abuse. The numbers are hard to come by because they're so often unreported, but we know that about one in every four women report having unwanted sexual contact before the age of 18. So when you take those numbers and then you extrapolate, you know, those who experience date rape and unwanted sexual contact in adulthood, you know, Preston, I would say we're getting close to probably half of women and maybe a quarter or a third of men. So I think the problem, like when you talk to experts like Dan Allender, you know, they'll say those are probably the numbers we're working with, even though we can't get any hard research on that. This is what's hard for me, because you would say probably the majority have not worked through that or healed from that in a healthy way. Like it's buried into their humanity and it's just, it's like a wound that just hasn't been healed. Would that be accurate?

And most have not dealt with it in a healthy way? Yeah, that's a good way of saying that. And then the fallout of that really is twofold. You know, first of all, the more we understand about trauma and how the body stores trauma, the more we realize that that's going to likely interfere with sexual response and functioning. But then you look at the spiritual level and any of us who've experienced any form of wounding like that, we're going to have lies we begin believing the moment that took place. Lies that, again, we can live by and never really address for a lifetime. So, you know, believing it was my fault or sex is always going to be dirty. I can never be healed. God must not love me. You know, why didn't God protect me? And so you've got all these other things that are stewing underneath.

So it has a profound effect on people. And that can have, I think you hinted at this earlier, like you had this maybe undealt with shame or perhaps even full-on trauma. And then that just is tethered to the psychological kind of view of sex to where it could lead to Heather, to the psychological kind of view of sex to where it could lead to little to no sexual desire because it's like seeing something dirty. Or could it also lead to maybe, I don't want to say hypersexuality, but maybe an unhealthy desire for sex? Is that the right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. For a number of reasons.

Sometimes people act out their trauma. Okay. Yeah, for sure. For a number of reasons. Sometimes people act out their trauma. Sometimes when your sexuality was just awakened so young, it becomes a go-to response. That's what I've seen. Yeah. And then I'd say the biggest thing you see is a form of dissociation with the body being sexually active, but this, your sense of self being disconnected. So, um, so my mind goes in a different place and I can't really be present, um, during sexual intercourse or intimacy. So, um, those would be some of the responses that we tend to see. Yeah. I don't, this might be anecdotal. I might've read a study on it, but like, yeah, when you said like, uh, especially maybe it's not especially, maybe it's for both men and women, but in my, so women that have had their sexuality awakened too early.

Yeah. desire or engage in sexual activity more often? Is that a common response? Like if you have a woman that has just maybe a high sex drive, oftentimes there is some kind of abuse in the past. Is that, again, I'm just going on anecdotes and stuff, but like, is there a connection there? Yeah, it definitely could be correlated. So it doesn't mean one is causing the other, but there can be some correlation. But if you think about it, and this is true for men too, when sexuality is awakened at such young ages and childhood and young adolescence, you know, the dopamine, the adrenaline that impacts the brain before you really have a chance to process what's happening just floods that brain. And so this is an intriguing place to go back to, even if it was forged in trauma, which is what we see even with early exposure to pornography. It just, it becomes the way I cope with loneliness and with

rejection and the need to feel connected or love. So yeah, that can definitely be linked to, you know, a lot of people are even saying if you were exposed to pornography at a young age, that's a form of sexual abuse, like against your will. You're looking at something that is creating this reaction in your brain that has a profound impact on you and how you view yourself and how you view sexuality. What is porn doing to our culture and human sexuality? I mean, obviously, it's having a negative effect, but can you unpack how extensive it is? And what is that? What are the manifestations of what seems to be the increasing and even more hardcore violent forms of porn? Like, is it just wrecking humanity? Yeah. Yeah. I feel like there are so many experts you could have on this show that would explain

the neurobiology in a better way than I could, but I'll tell you in ministry experience what I see, you know, first of all, when your brain is flooded with dopamine and adrenaline and a novelty kind of hormone called PEA, I think it's a neurotransmitter, it overrides this pleasure center of the brain to the point where you need more and more of that chemical. It acts like a drug. And so then when couples try to be intimate, they really can't respond sexually to each other. So it would be like, you know, if I eat cotton candy every day, an apple isn't going to taste sweet, even though an apple is far more nutritious for me. So you hear all these reports and couples who are in their 20s or 30s, They're Christian couples. They thought getting married is going to solve my lust problem. And then they can't respond sexually to each other. This is particularly true of young men who are saying, do I need Viagra at 28 years old?

So that's one impact. I think the other thing that goes less documented is the fact that porn teaches us to view sex as a consumer product. And this happens even in a Christian marriage. So somebody who's been using porn and learning about sex through pornography is teaching themselves that my sex drive has to be satisfied, it has to be satisfied the way I want it to be. And then this wife that God gives me is supposed to do all that. And so it creates a very dysfunctional, even relational dynamic within Christian marriages, because we're learning to think about our sexuality through the paradigm of pornography. So there's a lot of unlearning that has to happen. so there's a lot of unlearning that has to happen do you think we haven't actually seen so i mean think like gen z you know they grew up with a smartphone in the pocket i'm going to assume

there's a higher higher and higher levels of porn use well they're not really married yet some are getting married you know but like i want to know like in five ten years are we going to see just a lot of sexual dysfunction within Christian marriages? Again, guys expect thinking that this is what sex is through porn and then, or just like you said, issues with ED or sex that's disconnected from intimacy and on and on, maybe violence within so-called consensual sex, which I'm going to come back to that because I read an interesting book recently on that. But yeah, are you kind of anticipating like being really busy in the next five to 10 years? Yeah, you know, we're already seeing it. So I feel like if you get a couple

that's under 35, you just assume that for most of them, some of these dynamics are at play. And I think we're already even seeing it by the lack of desire for Christian couples to get married. Because, you know, sex has become this journey of self-exploration and of self-satisfaction. There's not even the thought anymore that you and I grew up with was sex was this great thing that was supposed to be this intimate connection that we save for marriage. Now it's like, hey, I can be on my own sexual journey and find myself through sex. And then maybe someday I'll get married if I want to have kids. So, you know, all the research is showing that these younger generations, Gen Z and

beyond, like they're not interested in dating. They're not interested in marriage. It's kind of like maybe someday down the road, but sex is a form of, again, self-actualization or discovering who I am. And is that because, well, two things. One, they're getting satisfied or quote unquote satisfied with the porn. And also I've heard that even in some Christian circles, like young people, they have this understanding that things like oral sex or sexual activity is not really sex. So guys are expecting stuff at parties or whatever, certain forms of hookup culture.

Respecting stuff at parties or whatever, you know, certain forms of hookup culture. And it's just because it's not seen as a sex act. There's just there's a lot of extra marital sexual activity happening where people don't feel the need to get married because. Yeah. Why would I? And yeah, masturbation, you know, just all of it. You know, I think also the narrative that we're seeing in our culture that you all talk a lot about at your organization, just, you know, sex is becoming a form of identity formation instead of something that we do with an intimate relationship. So I think all of those things are at work in just changing the way we think about sex. So, you know, a lot of what I love to do in ministry is challenge how Christians are thinking about sex. So, you know, a lot of what I love to do in ministry is challenge

how Christians are thinking about sex. Because if we're not thinking rightly about it, we're just swatting away at temptations and symptoms without getting at the root of, you know, how God wants to transform our thoughts and our affections. Okay. So have you read, have you read this book yet? I just ordered it. I haven't read it, but it's on the way. Somebody just told me about it. I held up. It's a Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century. Louise Perry, she's a secular feminist UK-based journalist who basically said the sexual revolution has harmed women and children

and has fed the appetites of men she makes a pretty rock so i mean it's i don't know how anybody can read this book and walk away thinking like sex positivity and bdsm and hookup culture and all this stuff is actually good for women or porn. You know, there's a whole argument within feminist circles that like, is porn, should women have the freedom? You know, it's consensual and let them be, you know, a sex worker. That's their choice or whatever. But she just destroys that thinking saying we are way, women are way worse off now than

they were before the invention of the pill, which led to the sexual revolution. It's pretty. She shares some startling things in the book. There's one stat. And I would, yeah, maybe I'm just out of touch. I don't know. But like 50% of UK women 18 to 24 years old have experienced strangulation from a male partner during sex. experienced strength,

strangulation from a male partner during sex. That's kind of being seen as again, in progressive circles as a form of kink or whatever. And she's like, no, this is a male power thing that's being said. And we're in, but she shares other things. It's just the,

just the increase of sexual violence under the guise of consent, which is a weird, just a weird thing to think about. Are you seeing an increase in that, just more violent kind of male, very self-serving sexual behaviors that are harming women? Is that? Yeah, I think that's been a trend for a while. You know, Fifty Shades of Grey. Let's go back 10 years. And how all of a sudden did bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism become romantic. So back when that came out, that really brought to light the conversation of women being confused. I think we see some minor indication of that, like anal sex becoming very normalized.

some minor indication of that, like anal sex becoming very normalized. And most women will say it hurts, they don't enjoy it, you know, but they feel like this is what they have to do to be sexual. And a lot of that is being fed by pornography. So a lot of pornography, as you know, is violent, and it depicts women as enjoying this. And so then women start to believe this is what it means for me to enjoy sex or be sexual. Um, even if it's degrading to me or harmful to me. She, she talks about anal sex in here too. A 70 something, let's see, like an income it's doubled or tripled, especially among younger women and 70, 80% report pain. And then she goes into some of those, just the medical issues that result from that. It's just so frightening and sad. You know, I've got three daughters, teenage daughters.

And, you know, just to think about the different culture they're growing up in is fearful to some extent. Well, let's, so you've written, how many books have you written on this topic? Is this, so I'm going to hold up, this is your latest one, God, Sex, and Your Marriage. Is this number, what number is this? I've written 12 books or co-authored them. I'm trying to think. I think eight or nine of them are on sex.

Okay. So, yeah. So how does this one contribute to the Julie Slattery Library of Sex Books? Well, only recently, as I mentioned, have I started writing to men and women. So the first probably 10 books that I wrote were just for women. And so as women were saying, hey, you know, I'm learning these things. My husband wants to learn it too. So I wrote Rethinking Sexuality, which was for men and women a few years back.

And then people were reading that as a marriage book. I was like, well, I can do better than that. Let's take those concepts and actually write a marriage book. So, um, so this is a very practical application of how we challenge our thinking, uh, about marital sexuality. I feel like a lot of the great books out there on sex and marriage for Christians are more practical and tactical. But I wanted a practical book. Again, how are we seeing sexuality? Like, how do you even define what a good sex life is from a Christian perspective? And I find that most Christian couples don't really

know how to answer those kinds of questions. And so if you don't know what you're working toward, you're going to have a really difficult time navigating challenges. So how do you define a good sex life for Christians? Well, let me ask you. How would you define it? I don't know if I could answer. I honestly don't know how I would answer that. I mean, I think it's arbitrary to put kind of a number on it. A good sex life would have to begin with undealt with shame or abuse or whatever. somebody has this open wound with regard to their sexuality. I feel like I've seen Christians put too much of an emphasis on it and not enough. So there's kind of this spectrum of like, if you're not doing it three times a week and it's not like,

you know, and others are like, you know, it can be really, or some people saying it's, well, it's not important at all. So I don't know, Julie.

I'm curious what your tagline definitely is. You're the theology expert. So I'll give you my best answer and then you can give me a grade and see how I did. You know, I start by saying we have to understand the primary reason why God created sex, which is to reveal. the primary reason why God created sex, which is to reveal. So if we read the whole Bible from cover to cover, sex is most often addressed, not in the passages of what not to do, but actually as a form of a metaphor that reveals to us how God loves his covenant people. And so we see that in the Old Testament, we see that in the New Testament. covenant people. And so we see that in the Old Testament, we see that in the New Testament.

So we've got to start with that premise. The example I use in the book is the example of a jigsaw puzzle. So if I'm trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, like a thousand pieces, the only way I can put together that puzzle is if I have a reference point of what is the picture that the puzzle is supposed to be creating. And then I can pick up each piece and say, okay, here's where it fits in the larger picture. And if we say, all right, what is the picture that we're meant to be creating within married sexuality? It's a picture of God's covenant love for his people. So for a lot of people, that's like, wow, you know, like, that sounds weird. God's covenant love is supposed to be revealed through our sex life. But again, we've separated God and sex so much that it sounds bizarre.

But if we read the scripture, it's undeniable that it's consistently used as a metaphor. And so then what I did in the book is say, okay, how do we define the beauty of God's covenant love? So that should define for us what a great sex life looks like. So I'll pause and then I'll talk to you about how we kind of make that practical. No, no, keep going because I'm with you so far. I, by only, who was it? I read somewhere, it was, was it Hauerwas or somebody somebody one of these more spicy writers who said something you know it was he was kind of like joking around with people that talk too much about the theology of sex he's like yeah but that's a whole lot to remember when you know when you're 19 years old in the back of your car with a girlfriend or whatever you know like

it was kind of like there came to this disconnect of of and maybe i don't i'm not saying it should be a disconnect but just kind of the theology of sex and, and then, but what, what are people really thinking about when they're in the bedroom, you know? Right. Right. But, but honestly, we haven't had a theology of sex. And so, um, our theology of anything should give us the framework of what maturity looks like. And here's what I found with most Christian couples. The only way they know how to define maturity sexually is to obey the rules. So maturity means we're not cheating on each other. It means we're not looking at pornography. There's no vision for what should we be working toward. And so I'm going to make this really practical. So the 19 year old in the back

seat of the car can actually think about this because theology is meant to then be practical. It's not just lofty. So the way that has been helpful for me to think about it is to think about four pillars of God's covenant love or four aspects of his love that inform our sex lives. So the first one is faithfulness that is built on a foundation of faithfulness. The second one, it's a journey of intimate knowing. The third one is it involves mutual sacrificial love. And the fourth one is that it involves a passionate celebration of covenant. And so when we look at those four elements in our walk with the Lord, we grow in those four things as we mature as Christ followers. And I think the same is true as Christian couples are looking to mature in their sexuality.

These four pillars become more pronounced and they're balanced. So you just can't have one pillar and ignore the other three. Or you can't even just have three of the pillars and ignore the fourth. They're meant to go together. And you're drawing these both from what the Bible says about sex and also the biblical narrative, what the metaphor of marriage and sex point to, is that right? Yeah. And then also just practical reality, you know, like the book that you mentioned by a secular, you know, sociologist, like this is all in marriage literature too, that these are the things that, that really represent a solid good sex life over the course of years and decades. Do you think it's, to put like a number of how many times a healthy Christian

couple is being intimate? Do you feel like that could be a whole range of, it just really, I mean, depends on if these four pillars are kind of in place or? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the pillar of intimate knowing, one of the things that I talk about is that a lot of our focus is on sexual activity instead of sexual intimacy. So sexual activity is asking questions like, how often should we have sex? Is the sex good?

Am I still attracted to my spouse's body? Whereas the journey of sexual intimacy is, over the years, has sex been a venue in which we've gotten to know each other in a very intimate way? Sometimes couples may even fast from sexual activity for a time in order to learn to build sexual intimacy. I think a lot of Christian couples are, I don't want to be crass, but they're basically engaging in a sanctified hookup. I need your body. Are you available? Let's do it. God blesses it because we're married. Yes. But, you know, God created sex to be more than that. You were to make love to a person, not to a body. And so I think when the focus is always on how often are we having sex and that's the

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and financial aid is available. So if you want to get started, go to faithfulcounseling.com forward slash T-I-T-R and Theology in the Raw listeners will receive 10% off your first month. So that's faithfulcounseling.com forward slash T-I-T-R. I mean, this is Theology Naroth. You know, I don't hold back anything. And yet with this topic, there's always going to be some boundaries, I guess. But I guess this would fall under the pillar. Everybody's waiting to know what I'm going to say here.

When I start giving caution of what I'm going to say, people are like, oh my gosh. Okay, sacrificial love. It'd be pillar number three that you talk about in your book. And we've already talked about it. Male and female sexuality can be quite different. And I know some people want to deny that the male species, that the sex drive is higher than the women. And some people want to say that, oh, that's just socially constructed. I'm like, there's this thing called testosterone. It's just, it's like a testosterone level. Yes. Um, and you know, you know, who, um, in my line of work, you know, who testifies to this are, um, uh, trans men.

So biological females who take a lot of testosterone also, they're like, oh my word. Is this what men go through? Because this is like, I mean, it's like just all consuming. So, or Andrew Sullivan, who he's a gay journalist who has HIV. And so he's gone through, I guess, part of his treatment, taking testosterone. And he said, you know, he already has testosterone, but I mean, he, when it was increased, he was like, it's just, you, it directly affects your, so, so we're supposed to be selfless in our sexual intimate relationship with our spouse. That can mean very different things to men and women. For men, again, this is not an absolute, it's a generalization, but for men being selfless might be, yeah, let's just cuddle tonight and watch a movie and talk for three hours. I'll be a good

listener. And that might be serving your spouse. That might be the male way of serving your female. What would the opposite look like? Would it be a woman saying, I'm tired, I've been with kids all day, but I'm going to serve my husband tonight, you know, even though this is not what I want the one, the man saying, I'm going to not pursue what I desire tonight out of a sacrifice to my wife, what would it look like for the wife to do the same? Because she is also called to be sacrificial, right? Right. Yeah. So let me go back for a minute. You used the word selfless.

I don't know if I would use that word because the self is involved in sexuality. And I think when one person becomes selfless is when there's a potential for destruction. So I love the term like sacrificial giving, because again, that's what Jesus did for us. You know, he laid himself down for us. And I love what He said when He said, I lay my life down of my own accord. No one takes it from me. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it back up again. And so, as unselfish and sacrificial as Jesus was, it was no pushover. When we read the Gospels, he was never manipulated or coerced. And so I think it's really important that couples understand that healthy giving comes from a place of strength.

It's never manipulated, or even if people were to take 1 Corinthians 7, 1-5 and use that as a manipulative tactic, that's not the spirit of what we're called to. So now to answer your question, I think you're right. You know, there are probably about 25% of couples where the woman has the higher sex drive. So it's not always the man. 25%? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And the other thing that we're learning with time is the difference between

receptive sexual desire and initiating sexual desire. Have you ever heard the difference between these two things? No. Okay. So I'm going to give credit to a sex therapist who I've learned a lot from, Dr. Michael Seitzma, who would be a great guest on your show, by the way. He talks about the difference like initiating sexual desire is what the majority of men experience. And it's, they're thinking about sex. They are always, not always, but generally in the mood for sex, you don't really have to do a lot of convincing. So about 75% of men would say they have initiating sexual desire. And about 75% of women would say they have receptive sexual desire,

which is, I'm not really thinking about sex. Like I'm not in the mood right now, but I can get there. And so it takes foreplay. It takes time to think it through. It takes her getting her brain in a different place. And so when we understand what it is for a husband and wife to serve each other sexually and to sacrifice one for one another, part of it comes in just learning that difference. For a lot of men, what they need to understand, like this is something that my husband and I have worked out over time. Like he needs to let me know what he's thinking about and then give me about 24 hours to respond. what he's thinking about and then give me about 24 hours to respond. Because if I have time to talk, to connect, to relax, then I can initiate. And for a lot of couples, once they realize the difference between initiating and receptive desire, this becomes less of an issue. But I do want to answer directly your question. You know, I really believe that what 1 Corinthians 7, 1 through 5 is saying is that both the husband and

wife need to have a spirit of ministering to each other sexually. And so that means sensitivity to their struggles, whether the struggle is I don't enjoy sex or I'm thinking about it all the time. It means saying, hey, God has given me as a provision to you for your sexual journey. I'm not an object, but part of being married is I want to be a ministry to you sexually. And when both the husband and wife have that attitude, they begin to experience sex as a blessing instead of a source of conflict. So just understanding each other, whether a husband and wife fit the paradigm of kind of the man has a typical male sexuality, woman, whatever, but just having that communication and really talking through and really understanding each other's needs and desires and hangups and, you know,

fears and past trauma. And a lot of that goes into it. Right. And then a few other things I would say is that, and I don't, again, want to, don't want to be too graphic, but having sex doesn't always have to mean intercourse. And so like, as you mentioned, teenagers are figuring that out. Like, why do we forget that once we're married? And so there are seasons and reasons why you may be married to someone who really is longing for sex, but you just can't have intercourse. It's too emotionally triggering or it's painful. The last thing you should do in that case is force it. But you can say, this is not something I can do now, but what can we do? You know, how can we enjoy this together? And then the second thing I would say is,

I think both spouses have to have an attitude of, we're working on intimacy. And so, you know, I've seen couples where one of them is dealing with a significant trauma. And love means I'm going to go to a therapist and work through that trauma so that I can begin to enjoy sex. And I don't always feel like I have to say no. And so there are many forms of ministering to each other and loving each other sexually. forms of ministering to each other and loving each other sexually. But when we just simplify it to, you have to have sex with me once a week or five times a week, like that's just not the spirit of covenant and it doesn't foster good things in a relationship. Wow. That's so good. So in your book, you talk about the four, each of those four pillars, you mentioned, um, faithfulness, uh,

intimate knowing, sacrificial love, and passionate celebration. These are all chapters in the book. Why did God, okay, let's just briefly, theology of sex. What is, I often frame the question of what is marriage for and what is sex for? They're overlapping questions, but yeah, what is sex for? Why did God create sex? Yeah, well, you know, ultimately, God created everything to reveal himself. So in all of creation, none of it was random. You know, like you cannot open a page of the Bible and not see physical things referencing spiritual truths everywhere.

So water teaches us something and trees teaches something and the sky teaches us something and fatherhood teaches us something and trees teaches something and the sky teaches us something and fatherhood teaches us something. And so we have to realize that when God created male and female and he created marriage and sexual desire at their core level, there's lots of other reasons, but the core of it is there's a form of revelation of God. And again, this is throughout scripture. a form of revelation of God. And again, this is throughout scripture. So, God is giving us a relational, physical experience of what it is to desire intimate covenant love. He's given us an experience of the differences and the similarity of male and female, which you've written on, Preston, that reveals something of the Godhead and the Trinity in our relationship with God.

And so these are mysteries, Paul would say in Ephesians chapter 5, but they're still mysteries that we can pursue and that are revealed to us personally in our own journey. So I know that, again, can feel very lofty, like we have to break that down. So it's practical for people, but we have to not be afraid of a difficult theological concept, especially when we're so lost for direction and understanding our sexuality. I love that you have a professional psychological background. Cause I can, you like live in two different worlds, you know, like you can talk about the psychology of it and also the, just the theology of it. I've often heard, or maybe it's just assumed in more secular psychological circles that humans cannot live a flourishing, happy life without satisfying their sexual desires.

Now, theologically, I can't quite get there because really of the Bible's high view of singleness or the New Testament, at least, and just in how it talks about sex and marriage, it has more of a deeper purpose than just satisfying a desire. Is that kind of a secular psychological given that if we're not satisfying or is it even more debated within secular more debated within secular circles you know i feel like that's a real theory you know it's a prominent theory but i haven't seen a lot of research that would back that up you know even if you look at you know case studies like hugh hefner you know who on his deathbed is talking about this desperation of his soul the loneliness how all this sex did nothing for him. Even if you look at the trend lines, the more sexual freedom we have in the Western world, the more alienation, the more loneliness, the higher the suicidality rate, depression, anxiety. And yeah, there are conflating factors, but I don't think we can leave this out. I think what we need to realize is we cannot thrive as humans without intimacy. But we can live very well without sex.

And we live in a world that sabotages intimacy and offers sex as a replacement. And, you know, I think longitudinal studies or even just the arc of what we see historically, it's not about sexual fulfillment and expression. It really is about intimacy, being intimately known, being cared for, belonging. You know, those are things that theologically and historically and psychologically, those are the things we can't live without. Now that's Perry, the book that you just ordered that I talked about. She opens with a story of Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe is just kind of an example of, you know, Hugh Hefner was this icon of progressivism, praised the pill, you know, separating sex from procreation and, and he's been hailed as kind of this like, yeah, progressive icon. But then she's like, all he did is just feed the male sexual appetites, you know, it's so simple. Now it seems like a no brainer, but I didn't realize it before. She's like, yeah, the pill served a male interest because now you can have sex without consequences, without any kind of

relational commitment. She goes, guess who that serves, you know, serves like you. Of course, Hugh Hefner is going to praise the pill because now you can have sex with tons of women and without the fear of less fear of pregnancy. And ultimately down the road hurts men too. You know, all the research on mental stability and happiness and even health of men, married versus unmarried. So, so when you get rid of the covenant of marriage and the promise to be together, that intimate knowing, like when you make every relationship

objectified and negotiable, you lose the very thing that makes us thrive, both male and female. you lose the very thing that makes us thrive both male and female so i think women are more likely to feel it sooner but it comes home to roost for men too eventually yeah yeah yeah we're all interconnected as a society um so okay let's transition a little bit uh women and porn i i've um you know heard various stats that like we often think it's just a male thing and people will say no no this is a woman thing, too. It's increasing. The percentages are always going to be smaller, but it's still there. But then I think like with porn being so male serving and even violent and abusive towards women and what I know about female sexuality, that's not just about the act.

I know about female sexuality, that's not just about the act. It's all about kind of the holistic, whatever intimacy relationship with the women that deal with porn that you work with. I mean, what is the draw? It seems counterintuitive for a woman to be drawn to porn. Yeah. Well, first of all, we have to say that people that create pornography are increasingly creating it to attract women. So there's romantic storylines involved. So again, 50 shades of gray is a classic example, you know, the best selling book, our fastest selling book in the history ever. Yeah. Um, so it's mainly women buying it. So what, Oh yeah. Well, it's, you know, that doesn't make sense. It, I, women buying it. So what? Oh, yeah. Well, it's, you know. That doesn't make sense. It, I read it.

I remember. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yes. And I can tell you, it pulls you in. Like the romantic storyline of this amazing guy who is the bad boy. Like it pulls on the heartstrings of women. And other forms of pornography do that as well in chat, chat rooms. And so there, there, and then sometimes people,

women will start with erotica and then they'll move to pornography. But I think we also have to recognize that even though a man and woman's sex drive may be a little different, dopamine and PEA is still at play. And so there's still this pleasure center of the brain that loves to feel good and loves to return to something that makes me feel good. And being sexually excited and climaxing feels good for a man and for a woman. So the way we get there might be different, and the pornography may be slightly different between men and women. But we're all looking for the opportunity for a quick fix to feel good, to reduce stress, to not feel alone, to deal with our past wounds and shame. Some women will return to porn more and more out of shame. It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy of, you know, I'm dirty. This is the best I can get.

So there are all kinds of reasons why women are using porn, but their brains can get hooked on this just as easily as a man's can. Particularly when you have creators of pornography that are intentionally creating it so that it's attractive to women and girls. Yeah, it's wild. She, Perry, not to keep bringing up her book, but yeah, she talks about why, I forgot exactly what she said, but why Fifty Chains of Grey was so, just blew up among women and why BDSM, you know, women are, because she talks about how it is so like male serving and, and sometimes even, well, the BDSM can be violent, even if you say

it's consensual, but even consent, she has an old chapter on consent and kind of blows that out of the water. But I forgot what it was, but yeah, she talked about why women are wooed into this kind of behavior, which you would think it would be something that is really just kind of more male oriented. Shifting gears again, just quickly, the rise in bisexual identities among teenage girls. I have a theory. So let me say it and then please feel free to critique me. We live obviously in a very highly sexualized culture among young people. A quest for identities, sexual or gender identities can be a lot of pressure there. And given that female sexuality, especially in the that female sexuality, especially in the adolescent, post-puberty teenage years can be chaotic. You can have a perfectly normal, straight 15-year-old girl who the thought of

having sex with a boy just freaks her out. And then you're going through menstruation and body changes. And I now have breasts and I kind of like that. I'm being a woman, but now a guy's looking at me and I don't like that. There's so much just complications, not just complications, but just difficulties of emerging into womanhood. And given the fact that women, sex is very holistic. So you have romantic attraction, you have sexual attraction, you have just emotional attraction and intimacy and even kind of envy, admiration. You're a 15-year-old girl in a locker room and you see another girl in dressing like, oh, I wish I had that body. I felt a spike of emotion.

Any kind of positive emotion a female feels towards another female, which is very normal of female sexuality, is being, this is my theory, so I'm not saying this is now people are just, they have one lens to interpret this through. If you feel any positive response from looking at another woman, oh, you must be bisexual at least, you know, is that at all? Am I onto something there? Because I would say, I mean, anecdotally, I feel like, I don't want to say the majority, but it's getting close to like the majority of, like if I'm speaking to youth group, junior high, teenage girls are bisexual more than straight. group, junior high teenage girls are bisexual more than straight. Yeah. Your description of, of adolescent female life is taking me back to places I don't want to go. And it also makes me think, yeah, you are the dad of girls. Uh, it's, it's a horrendous time for most adolescent girls.

It doesn't matter what era you grew up in. in, just the search for identity, the confusion, the awkwardness of your body, the insecurity, how catty we can be with each other. So you're going to find acting out and confusion and self-harming behaviors and bulimia in most generations that you look at. So it is a high- risk population to start with. But I think you are onto something, Preston, but I would even take it a step further. The moment a society defines sexuality based on desire is the moment everything starts to crumble. Oh, wow. So when we like biblically, sexuality is something we move toward as an expression of something else. So it's meant to be an expression of covenant or moving towards covenant.

We've gotten rid of that. And we've saying the most important thing about your sexuality is what you desire. And so when we tell a 12 year old that or a 50 year old, all of a sudden it becomes this, I have to figure out what I want, who I am in the midst of for an adolescent girl, all these other factors that you mentioned, the peer pressure, how do I distinguish myself from other people, the intimacy, you know, like you ask any 12 or 13 year old girl, she probably has more intimate connections with her best friend than she does with a boy she thinks is cute. And so she's very likely to say, well, then that means I'm either bisexual or I'm lesbian because I feel safer or closer to females. So, you know, I know you've talked to Mark your house and others who have done research on this, and they'll say, be careful not to pick one thing that's causing this.

Right. Because there's so many factors that it's hard to tease them out. But certainly, I think what you're saying is very true, that it's no longer that two 12-year-old girls can hug and braid each other's hair like we used to when I was that age and be best friends. It's now that it has to be sexualized. I really see this as one of the hidden, well, maybe unforeseen discipleship needs in the church is for maybe youth leaders or the church helping parents to disciple their kids through this. church helping parents to disciple their kids through this. Because I do, I think, yeah, women, girls are growing up in our society and just aren't really being discipled well in some of the unique complexities of female sexuality viewed through a biblical lens.

And just having the freedom to not, see, this is where I get nervous is sometimes, sometimes all the time, but identity labels can, people can misinterpret those. It's not just a word that kind of describes their current experience on kind of a low level, but it's now they're kind of like, oh, this is who I am. This is the subcategory of humanity that I am and always will be. What I'm going to say, like, I mean, if you want to define bisexuality in terms of like what an emotional spike you might feel by looking at another woman's body, I mean, most women are probably bisexual. But if we're going to define it by naming any kind of emotional draw to another woman under the umbrella of bisexuality, I just see, I'm just, yeah, I see a lot of danger in that, quite honestly. Yeah, I see a lot of danger in that, quite honestly.

Not that there aren't some genuinely bisexual teenagers, but like you don't go from like 1% of the population to like 50% of the teenage population and not start asking questions about, I don't know. And that's not a real statistic. It just seems like that. No, and you're absolutely right. But the discipleship has to go so much deeper and it has to start with adults. It's not going to start with kids because we're the ones discipling. And so even beginning with the paradigm of why do we use words like bisexual, homosexual, or even heterosexual?

You know, those are not words that are in the Bible, and they haven't even been in use until like the last 150 years. been in use until like the last 150 years. So we never understood ourself based on sexual desire before the last century. And so, you know, it has to go so many levels of the assumptions that we've just adopted from the world that we live in, in order to really disciple what does it look like to steward our sexuality in a way that is reflective of why God created it in the first place. That's good. That's good. So are you seeing, like everything I said, are you seeing an increase among? Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. So bisexual, trans, I think since the pandemic, you know, the movement of non-binary and trans among female adolescents. As you know, I've heard you talk about it, like that's spiked a lot as well as just anything fluid with gender

identity or sexual expression. Yeah. And there's, you know, Andrew Bunt who wrote a book on sexual and gender identity. He's a same-sex attracted Christian celibate guy who's just really well versed in his stuff. But yeah, we're talking kind of the pros and cons of identity labels. I've got friends that they were going through an experience, maybe it was gender dysphoria, and they just felt like they're the only person on earth. There was no category. And then when they came across a word like trans, they explained to me how.

I was like, oh, so I'm not. I am human. There is a word out trans, they explained to me how I was like, oh, so I'm not, I am human. There is a word out there that fits me. So I can appreciate for some people how that experience can be life-giving to some extent. I'm also very nervous about young people feeling the pressure and anxiety of trying to find a label or even demisexual, even, uh, uh, demisexual, I don't know, do you know, is increasing. But if you look at the definition of that, it's like a person who prefers sexual relationships within a committed relationship, or like they prefer the emotional relationship to happen before as a foundation before a sexual relationship. I'm like, isn't that like 88% of all women? I mean,

I don't, I just wonder the utility of having a term a label that is taken to be could be taken to be too fundamental to your humanity rather than just saying you're we're a diverse group of humans experiencing life in in various ways you know i don't know well well i i understand where it's coming from from. It's coming from to make nothing normative. So even normative things have to have a label. And, you know, there's a lot behind all of this. And as you said, some of the language can help identify people's experience. But identifying experience and identifying an identity are two different things. You know, it's become so much a part of how we define ourselves. That's where I think this has become, you know, just sort of the Gordian knot for us to try to unravel, particularly for people that are followers of Christ.

Yeah. Yeah. So desire for non-normal, like if you're just normal, that scene is like, well, where's my uniqueness? Where's my meaning? Well, like cisgender, you know, 10 years ago, we would have just said, what? Like that's normal. But using the word normal makes people feel marginalized who don't have that experience. So the language changes to reflect that. so the language changes to reflect that. Julie, it was great, great, great talking to you. I got so many more questions, but I have another podcast I gotta get to. The book is God, Sex, and Your Marriage by Julie Slattery. Thank you so much for this book.

I'm excited to dive into it. And thank you so much for your voice in this conversation. We didn't even get to, last time you were on, we talked about purity culture and that was really, really helpful. I was gonna bring it up again, but if those of you who are interested, cause you, you have, you've got some incredible thoughts, some of the best I've come across

on, on the, the negative effects of purity culture can have on, on especially Christian women. So the, I forgot what number the previous episode was. You can scroll back a couple of years and find that one. But Julie, thank you so much for your work and your voice in the kingdom of God. Really appreciate you. Thanks. Always a pleasure. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.