Episode 131: Sex, Faith, and Desire: With Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife
Marriage Doesn’t Just Reveal Your Relationship — It Reveals You
Marriage Isn’t Meant to Keep You Comfortable — It’s Meant to Help You Grow
Most of us enter marriage believing love will finally make life feel secure. We imagine that once someone commits to us, we’ll be accepted no matter what — flaws, immaturity, insecurities and all. But eventually every couple discovers the same uncomfortable truth:
Marriage doesn’t just reveal love. It reveals us.
And according to relationship expert Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, that revelation is actually the point.
In a powerful conversation on the Marriage IQ podcast, she explained that relationships — especially intimate ones — function as “growth machines.” They expose our fears, our defenses, our emotional immaturity, and our deepest desires. The conflict we often think means something is wrong may actually be inviting us to grow.
Why Relationships Feel So Hard
One of the most relatable ideas Jennifer shared is that every relationship contains a built-in tension:
“I want to be at peace with you, but I also want to belong to myself and my own life.”
That tension exists in every marriage. We want closeness, connection, and harmony. But we also want autonomy, dignity, and self-respect. When we’re emotionally immature, we tend to believe we can only have one or the other.
Either:
I keep my partner happy and abandon myself.
Or I stay true to myself and lose the relationship.
So many couples get trapped there.
Some people become people-pleasers, quietly resentful while constantly accommodating their spouse. Others become defensive and controlling, determined to “win” every disagreement. Both approaches slowly erode intimacy.
But mature love asks something different of us. It asks us to hold onto ourselves while still staying emotionally connected to another person.
That’s hard work.
Conflict Isn’t the Enemy
Many couples fear conflict because they assume it means the relationship is failing. But Jennifer makes an important distinction: conflict is not the same as contempt.
Conflict is inevitable. Two different people will naturally have different desires, personalities, values, sexual preferences, communication styles, and ways of living. In fact, we’re often attracted to people precisely because they’re different from us.
The real issue isn’t whether conflict exists. It’s how we handle it.
Do we shut down?
Attack?
Withdraw?
Keep score?
Quietly build resentment?
Or do we get curious?
Healthy conflict sounds less like:
“You’re the problem.” And more like:
“Help me understand your experience.”
“What am I not seeing?”
“How can we build something better together?”
That shift requires emotional maturity because it forces us to tolerate discomfort instead of protecting our ego.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
One of the most insightful parts of the conversation centered around the stories couples create about each other.
Jennifer explained that people often come into therapy with stories that contain some truth — but not the whole truth.
For example:
A husband may believe his wife is “repressed” or emotionally closed off sexually.
A wife may believe her husband is selfish, immature, or overly focused on sex.
There may be truth in both perspectives. But those stories can also protect each person from facing their own fears, insecurities, and responsibilities.
Sometimes we cling to victimhood because it feels safer than vulnerability.
If I’m the “good one,” I don’t have to examine my own contribution to the problem.
But staying stuck in self-righteousness comes at a cost.
The Hidden Cost of Resentment
Jennifer points out that many couples are not openly fighting — but they’re deeply disconnected. They’re sleeping beside someone they no longer trust, admire, or even fully respect.
And often, they don’t respect themselves either.
That’s the quiet damage resentment causes.
We may feel temporarily justified in our anger or emotional withdrawal, but over time it steals peace, intimacy, and joy. Research consistently shows that the quality of our relationships is one of the strongest predictors of happiness and wellbeing — more than money, career success, or achievement.
The relationships we nurture shape the quality of our lives.
Sexuality, Spirituality, and Selfhood
One of the most meaningful parts of the discussion explored the relationship between sexuality and spirituality — especially for religious people who often feel torn between the two.
Many people grow up learning that spirituality is “good,” while sexuality is dangerous, indulgent, or shameful. As a result, they never fully integrate their sexuality into a healthy sense of self.
Jennifer argues that sexuality is not something evil to suppress, but something powerful to understand wisely.
Because sexuality is deeply tied to identity, vulnerability, trust, and connection, it affects us at the soul level. That’s why sexual betrayal and sexual shame can feel so devastating.
But when approached with maturity, honesty, and integrity, sexuality can become:
A source of closeness
A celebration of love
A way of deeply knowing and being known
A source of joy and renewal within marriage
Healthy sexuality isn’t about control or performance. It’s about authenticity, emotional courage, and mutual care.
Growth Requires Self-Awareness
Jennifer repeatedly returned to one central idea: growth begins with self-awareness.
We inherit countless beliefs about love, sex, relationships, gender, and worth from our families, culture, religion, and past experiences. Many of those beliefs operate unconsciously.
Questions like these can help uncover them:
How do I feel about myself as a sexual person?
What did I learn about pleasure growing up?
What role does fear play in my relationships?
Where do I silence myself to keep peace?
Where do I try to control others to feel secure?
The more aware we become, the more agency we gain.
And agency changes everything.
Love Is Hard — But Worth It
Near the end of the conversation, Jennifer shared a line that perfectly captures the heart of mature relationships:
“Hatred is easy. Love is hard. But it’s really, really worth it.”
Real love asks us to face ourselves honestly. To grow beyond defensiveness, resentment, fear, and ego. To stay in difficult conversations long enough to create something stronger than comfort: genuine intimacy.
Marriage doesn’t magically solve our problems.
But if we let it, it can refine us into wiser, braver, more loving people.
And maybe that’s where the deepest joy is found.
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0:00
Introducing Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife to Marriage IQ
I want to be at peace with you, but I also want to belong to myself and my own life.
The number one definer of a good life is people that have high quality relationships.
Doesn't matter how much money you have, how successful you've been in your career, it's really whether or not there's peace in your relationships.
0:16
A lot of us imagine when we get married, we have locked someone in that's going to love us, that now has made an agreement to love us no matter how immature we are.
Hatred is easy, love is hard, but it's really, really worth it.
That's where we find mind, peace and joy in our lives.
0:32
Religious standards and positions are so protective of sexuality because sexuality is so linked to our souls.
Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast helping you become an intelligent spouse.
0:48
Speaker 2
I'm Heidi Hastings.
0:49
Speaker 1
And I'm Scott Hastings.
0:51
Speaker 2
We are two doctors, 2 researchers, 2 spouses, 2 lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose, to change the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones using intelligence mixed with a little fun.
1:13
Hello everybody, and welcome back to Marriage IQ.
I know we have a lot of people in our listening audience who have a part of their identity that's spiritual or religious and have a part of their identity that's sexual as well.
And I have the perfect person here today to help us navigate how those two can fit together.
1:34
So today we have one of the best experts I can think of, Doctor Jennifer Finlayson Fife.
She's a relationship and sexuality coach with a PhD in counseling psychology.
She's the author of a really fantastic book that We Might have Joy.
1:50
And she's the creator of 6 online courses that help individuals and couples create happier lives and those strong intimate relationships.
She also hosts Room for Two.
It's a popular sex and intimacy podcast and she's a regular guest on a lot of podcasts that discuss relationships, faith and sexuality, so welcome Doctor Jennifer.
2:16
How Marriage and Sexuality Drive Personal Development
Thanks for having me.
2:17
Speaker 2
We're so glad to have you here.
I have followed you for some time now, and especially during writing my doctoral dissertation, it was brought to the forefront of my mind how religious people really struggle with letting those two parts of their identity coexist, and also how they navigate all of the tricky parts of sexuality and of their relationship.
2:45
Doctor David Snart, who I believe is a mentor of yours, once said that marriage is a growth machine and sexuality is part of that.
Can you speak to that a little bit and tell us how you see marriage and sexuality as a growth machine for relationships?
3:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, there's a lot there.
One thing I would say is that relationships and especially marriage relationships reveal us and they reveal our ability to love.
They reveal our ability to know another person.
3:24
They reveal how much we will let someone know us and our limitations there maybe don't impact others as much when those relationships are more distant, you know, a Co worker or somebody you know that you are interacting with in a superficial way.
3:43
But when you invite somebody into your life and into your bed and you know, then it really matters how much you can care about a person who's different than you, How much you can be at peace with yourself, including your body and your sexuality.
4:00
And so our challenges with that inherently are revealed by marriage.
I think a lot of us imagine when we get married, we have locked someone in that's going to love us, that now has made an agreement to love us no matter how immature we are.
4:16
And then we soon find out it doesn't work that way because they're looking to us to love them and to accept them.
And so we come up against those pain points.
And sometimes we think that means something's wrong with the marriage or with our spouse.
4:35
But in the truth, it's a moment to kind of look at who are we and how do we handle not getting what we want and how do we handle the exposures of marriage?
Because you can let them teach you and grow you up if you have the courage to do that.
4:52
Navigating the Tension Between Connection and Self-Identity
Human development is such an interesting topic, and I think a lot of times when we bump into those really hard things with those that we care most deeply about, we see things differently.
5:07
We think something's broken.
But you frame intimacy within a relationship as both the diagnosis and the cure to revealing those truths about who we are and showing us the path to wholeness.
5:25
What do you mean by that?
5:26
Speaker 1
Well, again, in this way that it reveals us, it shows us where there's limitation.
We come up into conflict with someone who matters so much to us that we want to have peace with.
And we're in a fundamental struggle that I think is just inherent to relationships, which is that I want to belong to you, I want to be at peace with you, but I also want to belong to myself and my own life.
5:54
And there is a tension in those competing desires, especially the more immature we are.
When we're immature, we think you get one or the other.
Either I capitulate and make you happy with me, or I defy and resist you and make me happy with me.
6:11
But then we always lose out in that framing, you know?
Then I can't be at peace with you if I'm at peace with myself.
Or I can have you happy with me, but I'm not happy with myself.
And so that tension becomes both revealing, but also the tension that pressures our development.
6:31
I want to not betray the values that I hope carry in my life or the core desires of who I really AM and what matters to me, but I also don't want to lose the relationship.
And so that what feels like competing demands on our psyche actually helps us to figure out what does it mean to love in this situation?
6:50
What does it mean to be fair?
What is it that I'm blind to about myself?
What is it that I need to face about who I'm married to?
And if we stay in the conflict that's inherent to blending your life with another person and you're really looking to do something that we can both be at peace with, not prevail or prove you're right to the other person.
7:13
Those are lesser parts of us.
But actually, how do we build a bridge across these differences?
Well, that makes you grow.
It mean it makes you look for more creative agency based decisions and that we kind of grow out of the problem.
7:29
The solution in some ways is to grow out of the problem and you start to see that wait for the relationship to be happy is essential for me to be happy and for me to be at peace with myself is essential for the relationship to be genuinely peaceful.
And you start recognizing these two go together.
7:47
And the commitment of marriage can be very valuable, just like the commitment to being a parent or to any important relationship, because it keeps you in the conflict enough to grow above it, to get better at it, to find real solutions, to find a way to be fair to all involved.
8:07
Transforming Marital Conflict into Opportunities for Wisdom
So.
8:07
Speaker 2
Do I hear you saying then that there is great value in conflict?
8:11
Speaker 1
Yes, and some people misunderstand that I think contempt is good or something like that.
And I make a distinction, of course, between contempt and conflict.
Conflict is the inevitable dissonance or differences when we put our lives together with someone who's different than us.
8:28
And when we get married, we tend to pick people that are different than us, right?
We're actually drawn to that difference.
There's a mystery and attraction in it.
But then when we're like, OK, well, how do we?
How are we going to spend money or save it?
Often we're coming from different perspectives.
How organized is the house going to be?
8:45
Just things like that.
We're often coming necessarily because we were drawn to somebody different than us that does it in a different way.
And so we're going to come up against honest conflict if people are being honest about who they are.
And so there's nothing wrong with that.
9:00
In fact, hiding from it or pretending it's not there creates weakness.
Now, the thesis of many of my courses is, is not how to get rid of conflict.
It's more that the way we handle conflict, the way we handle not getting what we want, determines the happiness of the marriage because a lot of us handle it in ways that manage our egos and our fears.
9:25
I'll just be quiet, but I'll quietly resent and pull away.
I'm going in there and I'm going to, like demand that this goes the right way, the way that I see it.
And so we tend to handle ourselves in ways that undermine the peace in the relationship or undermine our happiness.
9:42
But if we can learn to use conflict to grow, to be collaborative in finding real solutions, to let the differences reveal you.
Usually we go into arguments like AB and C, and then you did D and we're and we're just trying to prevail.
10:01
Rather than help me understand why you feel that way with me, to help me understand why you're unhappy with what I'm doing.
We don't tend to like those questions because they potentially expose us, the parts of ourselves we're very good at hiding from, and because we're afraid of it.
10:20
We tend to just want our point of view to win, but then it just keeps us in an entrenched battle rather than using the differences to get wiser.
10:31
Speaker 2
So it sounds like insight or self-awareness is key to this, and that requires some emotional maturity, right?
10:41
Speaker 1
Yes, well it requires at least self regulation in the face of ego puncture.
And that is what maturity maturation asks of us in my opinion, is coming into the disillusionment about ourselves, about life, about our marriage, and using it to get a truer map of reality, most especially of ourselves.
11:05
Right?
If we use our emotional dysregulation to just tell ourselves a victim story and how we were wrong and to make a case for why we're owed something, that's not as valuable to our growth as using our dysregulation and our emotion to get smarter.
11:22
To understand what is happening inside of me.
What can I learn from what just happened about me, about us.
How can I use this to grow my map of reality?
And if you look at developmental models, and in particular Robert Keegan's work does a lot of work with ego development, he talks about that moving out of the kind of egocentonic state that kind of the world is, as I see it, into the disillusionment or disruption that feels like things are breaking, that something's going terribly wrong.
11:55
But really we're just in conflict with reality.
And if we lean into it and let that teach us, then we start to have a truer map of reality and more ability to navigate it.
And that's what maturation is.
Our mind grows to accommodate more truth.
12:12
Unpacking Limiting Narratives in Sexual Relationships
So can you give me an example of what that might look like in a couple's sexual relationship?
12:20
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm trying to think of how to be efficient in this, but here's maybe the quickest way to communicate it is that when people come in to see me, they're often in a story about themselves that has truth in it.
But they are in limited stories.
12:35
And they're stories that are designed to keep them stuck even though they don't want to be stuck, because there's just not enough truth in the story to build a bridge to one another.
For example, a high desire man might be like, here's his story, which is she's got issues.
12:50
Her religious upbringing has corrupted her and she just is afraid of pleasure and therefore she's the problem.
And there's often something to that story.
Doesn't mean there's nothing true about it, But what it may be limiting is the way that he's got his focus on her to get it off of himself, his own anxieties about sex and closeness, his own difficulty to know her and to love her.
13:17
That, yeah, she may have some of those anxieties, but she also may have a lot of truths about him that he doesn't want to hear.
And she also is reluctant to reveal because she doesn't want his feelings about it.
She doesn't want her deeper responsibility.
13:34
They're both kind of hiding in these stories that make one strong and one weak.
They actually can kind of use them to avoid the intimacy and the responsibility of coming together.
And So what growth might be like for that couple is really helping them tolerate A truer story.
13:55
And her talking more truthfully about her experience and her daring to actually take responsibility for creating something better, which is going to mean talking about what hasn't worked for her, not to justify herself, but to actually create different or for him to be willing to really understand it or think about it.
14:15
Now, there's plenty of people that might say, well, I am very willing to listen.
She just never wants to say she doesn't want to talk about it.
But the more you can get people to bring in between them the truths they're both afraid of, the more they grow into the ability to build a bridge if they want it.
14:33
Speaker 2
That's really so true.
I I saw that in my research so much I wanted to share a couple of quotes from women that showed more naive or earlier stages of sexual development.
One woman said my view of sex was, well, if he wants this, you need to do it.
14:51
Don't ask questions.
He's the authority in the home, so when he wanted to watch pornography together, those things that he was watching, it was still the same.
The men completely overpowering the women.
So that was one of them.
One said the expectation became to preemptively anticipate relapses.
15:09
This was again another pornography case.
And then throw my sense of self essentially in front of the bus and throw myself in the bed and try to prevent it by offering myself up as an alternative, albeit A dismally unsatisfactory 1.
15:25
And another one said if I turned him down he'd get so mad he'd just get in a rage.
And so towards the end I'm like, do whatever you want, I don't care, just tell me when you're done.
So very little agency in any of those examples, and I have dozens more.
15:43
But tell me, how is it possible to move from the victim mentality?
You gave a good example of things that a man might be saying.
Here's some examples of women.
How do you take those and start using agencies start taking responsibility and and growing well?
16:05
Understanding the Hidden Price of Self-Righteousness in Marriage
You know, what I would say is I try to show people the cost, for example, of their position.
Sometimes I think of myself as the ghost of Christmas, past, present and future, because I'm sometimes helping people see how they got to the position they're in, why it makes sense that they're coping in the way they're coping, so that it's not just like, what's the matter with you?
16:27
You know, there's a reason that this has made sense to you, but it's also been costing you a lot.
Peace with yourself, actual peace in the marriage.
That it's also in some ways challenging the victim's story as purely about powerlessness and sometimes helping people see the advantage that it gives them.
16:47
It doesn't really give them an advantage, but it gives them a perceived advantage that at least I'm the good one.
I'm the long-suffering 1.
I don't have to take deeper responsibility for myself.
I can just give it all away.
But understanding that has real cost to it, not just for them, but for the relationship and for their own dignity or their own self respect.
17:11
So it's showing people either through the ways I'm asking questions of them to reveal their mind or by me making observations about what I see them doing to wake them up to their participation in a problem and the cost that that participation has had.
17:30
Because often our stories are about I'm the victim of my wife, I'm a victim of my husband.
And also, I'm too afraid to do anything different because at least I know this suffering, but waking people up to the pending suffering, to the cost, is often helpful.
17:49
And, you know, a lot of times when I'm sitting with a couple, I'm thinking about what does this person or this couple hold dear?
Like what matters to them?
And can I talk to them about how this is going to cost them, About what they really hold dear, what they really want?
18:05
Speaker 2
What are the costs that you see most often?
18:09
Speaker 1
Well, at a minimum, people's cost is just peace in their lives.
I mean, they're climbing into bed with somebody that they do not like, that they do not trust.
And then there's their spouse.
OK.
That is to say, we often behave in ways that undermine our feelings about ourselves because way, way down, we don't respect it.
18:30
We know it's cowardly.
We know it's mean, we know it's self justified, and then we may see the same behavior in our spouse.
And so there's a lot of contempt even if we're not fighting actively.
And that is really, really hard on our happiness.
18:47
It's hard on our bodies.
I mean, the number one definer of a good life is people that have high quality relationships.
Doesn't matter how much money you have, how successful you've been in your career.
It's really whether or not there's peace in your relationships, whether or not you have real friends and your spouse being the most important one.
19:07
Look, I know when I've been upset about something, the indulgence of your victim position feels good.
It feels safe in a way.
You get a hit of, you know, pleasure in the idea that I'm good.
And that's so much easier on the surface and in the moment than actually going back in and saying, tell me about what you're upset about with me.
19:28
Tell me what you see going back into the disagreement, holding onto your own view of things when someone's unhappy with you, even though that is important to do, not to win, but to actually resolve, That's hard.
19:44
And so most of us prefer the the comfort of our self-righteous anger or of our self-righteous deference to something that's not good.
But we pay a big price on our overall happiness and even our physical health.
19:59
Speaker 2
And really what that does is it separates us.
20:03
Creating Friendship Amidst Varying Sexual Desires
It puts us on two different paths quite often, doesn't it?
20:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, we're not communicating, but that's not usually what the problem is.
The problem is usually there's so much anger and contempt in this marriage that we've just have a big, thick wall between US and that is getting communicated even in silence.
And so it's not usually like we just need to sit down and talk more.
20:23
I mean, sometimes that can be part of the solution to start coming toward the problems.
But usually it's not just lack of time or conversation that drives division.
It's hatred.
I mean, we don't like talking about marriage and hatred, but we can really have a lot of contempt when our spouse disappoints us, even if it's quiet and we don't admit it to ourselves.
20:44
And it drives division.
20:46
Speaker 2
One sexual complaint that I hear often is there's a higher desire and lower desire, and we talk a lot about that on this show and how that changes over the lifetime and how that's really simplistic, not really clear.
21:02
But if that's someone's belief, I am higher desire and my lower desire partner is not giving me what I need, is not fulfilling my needs, then there is contempt eventually born out of that right?
21:18
Speaker 1
There certainly can be, depending on how we frame the problem, yeah.
21:23
Speaker 2
So tell me how that might be framed in a way that is healthy.
21:28
Speaker 1
You know, men and women are wired differently and often approach sexuality from very different biological experiences.
Like men have testosterone so they're much more likely to have what they experience as spontaneous arousal and interest.
21:45
Women are more responsive and don't have their body pushing on desire in the same way often.
You know, of course, I'm speaking categorically here and this is not always the case.
Women, I would generally say, are more concerned about the quality of the relationship and what it means for letting someone into her body.
22:05
Men are generally more concerned with the quantity of it and that doesn't make men superficial.
It's just that, you know, because of the differences in our approach, it's not surprising that they show up in marriage.
Now, how many of us have been taught to deal with it as though he's got these needs?
22:21
So you just have to accommodate him, even if it makes you hate him a little more every time.
I think that's the wrong way to think about it, rather than we have married each other and we are different, so when we come up against our differences, we need not be shocked.
22:37
The goal, though, is not who's going to win, OK?
The goal is, how do we actually understand each other well enough to create a friendship in the face of these differences?
Most of us spend most of our time trying to get the other one to yield to our side, be more like us, even though we marry them precisely because they were not.
22:57
And rather than that, So like, how do you think about what good sex is?
How frequently would you like it?
What do you like about it?
What do you not like about it?
Is there anything that would make it different or better for you?
Is there some way we can build a bridge to actually have a physically close relationship that feels loving and exciting and bonding for us?
23:19
Hold up our goal.
We each have different points of view that can help us get there, but it means walking through the differences to sort out how we get there and resisting the part of us that just wants to be like you're ridiculous, your approach is dumb.
23:36
Many of us go and talk to our respective groups or our respective friends or whatever and and get validation for that.
We're good and our spouse is dumb, you know, and those are very self-serving and indulgent behaviors.
23:53
Now it's one thing to go to a third party to get more wisdom, self understanding so you can go back into the conversation in a wiser way.
But usually we look to justify ourselves rather than build.
And so then we end up living parallel lives in marriage.
24:09
Speaker 2
Or.
24:10
Speaker 1
Deep dissatisfaction around sex for both people.
And you know what's interesting is, you know, when I have people fill out forms before they meet with me, it's like they're equally unhappy about the sexual relationship.
They're equally unhappy usually about the marriage.
24:27
So even if you know, they're not having much sex because the lower desire person is winning, so to speak, both are pretty unhappy about it.
And so that's always interesting to me that they're living in the reality of what they've created or failed to create.
24:43
And so it's don't take the differences as something personal.
It's built in.
And so how you respond to it, whether you let it grow you up, whether you stay in those differences is very, very important.
24:56
Integrating God-Given Sexuality with Spiritual Identity
I lived in your book how you talked about questions that we can ask ourselves to help ourselves develop that more mature sexual part of our identity.
I know in my research, the couples typically had spent a lot more effort in growing their spiritual part of their identity rather than the sexual part of their identity, and they were both operating on lower levels of development as far as their sexuality goes.
25:28
You've mentioned things that we can say to each other that help with those conversations about sex, but what are the questions we should be asking ourselves that help us expand and grow?
25:41
Speaker 1
Well, let me just kind of speak to the challenge a little bit.
I think that, you know, for a lot of people, they're like, what do you mean?
How could sexuality and spirituality have anything to do with each other?
Because when we're at a low, what I would consider a younger level of development of both spirituality and of sexuality, we think of them in terms of spirituality as everything that's good and obedient and proper and contained.
26:06
And sexuality is what's indulgent and pleasure and disobedience in a way like denying the rules of propriety.
And when we're young, that's kind of true.
Like our parents are saying, take your hands out of your pants.
You got to keep your clothes on because guests are coming over.
26:23
And you know, there's a lot of containing of our impulses.
And that's important.
That's important for being able to be not just a responsible citizen, but being trustworthy in a marriage relationship.
But a lot of times we overdue our fear of the body, overdue our fear of sexuality and our fear of pleasure to such a degree that we can't imagine its capacity for goodness.
26:49
We can't imagine its ability to be linked to love and enjoyment of another, of our spouse, of a celebration of the marriage.
And so breaks matter.
But when we use too much fear, then we can't actually integrate this part of ourselves, this God-given part of ourselves that is just fundamental to our nature and integrated in a way that we create more beauty through it.
27:16
To love and be loved, to know and be known, to feel a sense of communion, right, with beauty, with a spouse that actually grounds and anchors us and grounds and anchors the marriage if it's about taking pleasure in one another and the relationship.
27:37
And so I think when people grow beyond their fears and start becoming more agents in their lives, which is really fundamental when we come up against these impasses, it's asking us to engage our agency, the self defining part of us.
27:53
When we can relate to our sexuality in that more deeply self defining way, when we're creating more beauty, touching beauty, you know, like we feel it, we start understanding how deeply interconnected those are.
I mean, one reason why I think religious standards and positions are so protective of sexuality is because sexuality is so linked to our souls.
28:19
It's so linked to our sense of self.
You know, that's why sexual trauma is so disruptive to the psyche because it's very different than someone stealing your laptop.
You know, it's just, it's just a much deeper violation of your dignity and your sense of self.
28:35
And so how we relate to our sexuality matters.
And so I think in some of the post sexual revolution messaging is kind of, it's just healthy to be sexual.
You shouldn't inhibit yourself.
But I think while there's some truth in that, that we've been overly anxious about sex, sometimes to our detriment, we can also be overly liberal about it too, to our detriment.
28:57
Because I think it's so fundamental to our sense of self that being wise and safeguarding it for the deepest connections that we want with another person can really be a way to create and sustain something beautiful.
29:13
And so, you know, it's better understanding that sexuality is a powerful part of me, not an evil part of me.
And how I am in relationship to it shapes my soul and my relationships.
So I want to be wise about it.
But that, you know, we're built for joy.
29:33
We're built for being able to see beauty, especially if we can rise above our lesser impulses.
29:39
Cultivating Agency for Deeper Emotional and Sexual Connection
And this is just as true in marriage.
I rise above the impulsive, self indulgent part of me even in conflict to go to the stronger, more courageous part of me and creates real peace, create something truly sustaining for us in our relationship.
29:56
So I think our emotional connection and our sexual connection are very they're asking for the same thing from us.
30:03
Speaker 2
So many of us are holding in paradox the rules, the cultural scripts, the things that maybe a mother or a friend told us years ago, or maybe shame.
30:21
And then on the other hand, we're hearing you say there's so much more possible, which I agree with you.
30:27
Speaker 1
Yeah.
And I never answered the question you initially asked, which is like, what are some of those questions?
But yeah, I mean, the questions in my book are very much about starting to get at the meanings that maybe you don't even see anymore because you just inherited them.
Mom always recoiled from dad.
30:44
Mom always told me to cover up.
Mom seemed to hate her body, whatever it is.
I'm.
I'm blaming all mom here for a minute.
But, you know, or, you know, my father was unfaithful or something that we might learn messages about sex as a dangerous or unappealing or unfeminine part of ourselves of reality.
31:03
And so then we just instinctively rejected or fear it and don't even really realize we've done it because we've just absorbed the meanings that we we're immersed in.
And So what I see helps people is the more self aware we become, the more agency we have.
31:21
Because if we're just living out meanings without even realizing we're living them out, we can't change them.
We can't do it differently.
And so, so much of my work is about helping people see themselves and their situation more clearly because then it expands their ability to create something better.
31:40
And so, yeah, those self reflection questions often, you know, have a lot to do with how do I think about myself as a sexual being?
How do I feel in my body?
How do I feel about pleasure?
What did I learn from my family about pleasure?
Right?
How have I thought about if you're married, my relationship with my spouse and who I am in that relationship, Are there meanings that would be more appealing to me than the ones that we live out day-to-day?
32:08
So again, it's just kind of getting who am I in this?
And it helps to drive us forward.
32:14
Speaker 2
I lived one of the examples that you used of a man and woman that came in to see you and he had quite a history with pornography, it seemed like.
And she felt we're coming to this counselor to take care of your problem.
32:30
At least that was my interpretation.
32:32
Speaker 1
Of it, he needs help, yes.
32:33
Speaker 2
Exactly.
And on the other hand, she had a lot of rigidness.
Some of the things that you're talking about around sexuality, you know, you don't do this, you don't do this, you don't do this.
And had put the brakes on a lot of the things that he was proposing, which in my interviews, a lot of the women said I was sexually groomed by my husband because, you know, and I didn't even know who I was.
33:02
They weren't using agency, but so there's one or the other.
You do whatever he does because he says or we don't do any anything.
Yeah.
And so you've got.
33:13
Speaker 1
This.
I'm holding on the brakes all the time because I'm just afraid of everything, yeah.
33:17
Speaker 2
Yeah.
And I love the questions that you asked them to kind of get to what is at the root of your your requests for certain sexual acts.
Is it that you're wanting to act out what you're seeing in the porn, or is it that you feel like you just want to be closer to your wife?
33:38
Speaker 1
Right, something that feels less formulaic and so on, which was what this couple was definitely doing.
They were definitely revolving around her fears.
And so, for example, he would then contain over contain his point of view, but then resent and then feel justified in kind of the secrecy of his porn viewing.
34:00
And so, you know, and then she was kind of meeting that with a lot of self righteousness and rigidity, which had always been in there but wasn't she was out kind of doubling down on it.
And so they were stuck in this impasse.
And they each grew into deeper self-awareness about how they've been participating in the problem, how there's been indulgence on each side in their own way into their fears and their desire for control.
34:25
And.
Yeah.
And so that's how that couple was able to grow into something more real and honest between them.
34:32
Progressing Through Levels of Sexual Self-Determination
Yeah.
34:32
Speaker 2
So if there are couples listening, maybe stuck in this position of, for an example, I spoke on sexuality to a religious group and let them submit questions ahead of time and they're like, is it OK to do this?
34:48
Is it OK to do this?
Is it OK to do this?
I'm like.
34:52
Speaker 1
Yes.
34:53
Speaker 2
Let's talk about human development and Keegan was a big part of my research as well.
And at the end, let's like you make those decisions.
But would you very briefly just tell how do you know if you're in like Keegan's first level of sexual development versus second level versus third level?
35:15
And I'm not so worried about specifically what number is what, but just the progressiveness of it.
35:23
Speaker 1
Yeah.
So the the fastest way to maybe think about it because as you know, there's a lot of developmental theorists and have many different stages.
And in my book, I put it into 3 stages because I think it captures most of us best.
35:39
But the first two stages are development within an external sense of self.
And it's where we must start.
And it's an important place to start.
It's where we're inheriting standards and ideas about ourselves and our value and sexuality and relationships.
35:58
And so we're really internalizing the world as the people around us see it and very motivated to keep others happy with us.
That's how we are.
OK.
It's in short, I need you to be OK with me, for me to be OK with me.
36:13
And so, you know, we may rebel within that.
So it doesn't mean we're just running around trying to please everyone, but our sense of self lives in other people.
When we move into the third stage, and this is, in my opinion, when we really become capable of love and intimacy, we start to grow beyond that demand for validation, that need for other people to tell me I'm OK and we move into a deeper expression of agency that I'm going to self determine.
36:46
I'm going to take these things that I've learned and internalize and hold on to the ones that really feel true to me, to my integrity and kind of resonate with my spirit.
And I'm going to choose what I believe is most good, most valuable, most right in this situation.
37:04
And so this is where we really self determine and self develop in the sense that we start to forge a life that love and intimacy become creative acts like that.
We're we're self authoring into the world.
We're choosing to love, we're choosing to care, we're choosing to build and not just to keep people happy with us, but to be more deeply in line with who we are.
37:29
And as we do that, we are really literally forging a relationship.
We're forging an intimate connection, and we can be ourselves there while also loving another person.
And so it's where the sexual relationship becomes much more intimate, an expression of ourselves and a way to love another and be loved.
37:52
And so in the earlier self, you know, that reflected sense of self stages that I'm looking to you to make me, OK.
We're much more about either complying or defying what we think others expect of us.
And so if we're hiding from our spouse, we're in a kind of defiance, you know, but we're doing more like you want me to do this, therefore I'll do it to keep you happy with me, or I'll resist doing it because I don't want to be controlled by you.
38:19
But we're much more in that authority outside of myself.
When we cross that continental divide and development, we start to develop a deeper internal authority that's been built through the earlier stages.
So it's not just I can do whatever I want.
You can't tell me.
So it's not rebellious, it's integrated and it's a gentic.
38:39
And we find that we're much more able to resolve that tension or hold that tension in a wiser way between belonging to me and belonging to you, being true to you and true to myself.
I can know you as you are and be known as I am without needing to control you, manage you, change you.
39:00
And so that's where we start to feel a much deeper peace.
39:04
Embracing Continuous Growth and Deeper Meaning in Relationships
So you've been at this for a long time.
Do you still experience growth in this area?
39:11
Speaker 1
In terms of life and loving others and Oh yeah, 100%.
In terms of sexuality, I guess growth, yes, I'm sure, I'm sure we're coming up against new challenges and things like I, I don't ever imagine we're just like done with that.
39:25
Speaker 2
Every transition in life.
39:27
Speaker 1
Right.
And as your body ages and all those things, you know, there's no question that there is going to be new challenges.
I think the one thing that I have felt is just like, well, just how much it's a source of peace and comfort and rejuvenation for us.
39:44
You know, Doctor Schnarge used to say this is that the best sex happens like when Cellulite grows and, and our skin sags and so on.
You know, I think there's a lot of truth in that because we get more and more able to just be who we are, accept each other.
40:02
Be grateful for each other, grateful for life, grateful for the time we have left.
More awareness that there's no guarantees on that.
So it certainly takes a different, a deeper meaning as we've gotten older.
40:16
Speaker 2
I did just see a study within the last couple of weeks that the best sex is in that later part of life, starting in the 50s which.
40:25
Speaker 1
You'd never think that's.
40:26
Speaker 2
Good news for me, yeah.
40:28
Speaker 1
Exactly.
40:29
Speaker 2
That's really good.
Well, you've taught us a lot of truths that we can confront in ourselves.
And I love even in your book, you use the terms truth and integrity kind of interchangeably.
40:45
But if we start to make this kind of a transformation because we're opening up to understanding ourselves better, seeing things that we're bumping against with each other as opportunities for growth and transformation, how do you see that transforming not only a relationship with our spouse, but our relationship with God?
41:10
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Well, I think it's similarly we grow out of the, you know, I think in the early stage, you know, it's God as punisher or rewarder is how we think initially, which fits with our development and how we see the world.
So God fits into our understanding and then when we're in the next stage, it's more about wanting to be in relationship with God and God is a friend, God is a counselor, which is good, but it's also I need God to be pleased with me.
41:39
Again, it's very valuable for our development and helping us grow and evolve.
But I think as we keep growing, it's more that we are enacting the good, like that we are Co creators of goodness, that we are wanting to create good in the world.
41:58
And it doesn't mean that you don't need a relationship with God or you don't need to be in conversation with that, with what goodness is, with what God represents.
I think we absolutely need that and keep referencing it.
But it's less validation dependent.
42:15
It's more integrated into your sense of who you are and what your life wants to be about, and that you hunger and thirst after it.
You seek it.
You want it because of the only sustaining reality is to do what is good.
42:32
And so you value it for its own sake, not for a reward that will come with it.
A social one or a tangible one.
Yeah, Well.
I.
42:41
Speaker 2
Really appreciate the time that you've spent here with us today and uncovering those deeper parts of our identity development that sometimes are a little bit harder to talk about.
42:53
Speaker 1
I just would say that hatred is easy, love is hard, but it's really, really worth it.
That's where we find peace and joy in our lives is when we have the courage to look at ourselves honestly and to do what we know is stronger and better.
43:12
So it isn't easy, but it's really valuable.
And the fact that you're here listening means you care about it.
And I think that is the first step.
And so anyway, I value the hard work and but it really does reward us in a better life.
43:30
Speaker 2
Joy beyond compare.
We've experienced that ourselves a few times when we've been through those periods of growth.
Thank you so much for being here with us today.
We want to invite you to check out some of Doctor Jennifer's resources on our website or podcast.
43:47
We'll put the links in the show notes and let us know if you have any questions.
We'd love to see in the comments any questions that you have and see if we can explore some of those together.
Like we always stay on Marriage IQ, to change the stinky parts of your relationship into scintillating ones first requires a change in yourself.
44:06
And everybody will see you next time on another episode of Marriage IQ.
