Breaking Free from Sexual Baggage: Your Journey Starts Now

It feels like a lifetime ago where it's so distant from where you are now that you don't even see it as something you're hiding.

Exactly.

It's like you look back on it, and it feels like somebody else that did it, you know?

It's another life. Yeah, it's another life. You guys. We're continuing in our series all about sex for 14 consecutive days, and today we're talking about a really important one, one that we get a lot of questions on. I know I've said that a lot, but this is one we do get a lot of questions on, and that is, how do I handle talking about my own sexual history with my spouse, but also, how do I handle accepting my spouse's sexual history?

Yeah. Yeah. This is so important, so complex. It's something that should happen. These conversations should happen before you're even married.

Right.

It should be part of the full disclosure of just getting everything out there, out in the open before you were married. For the most part, I feel like we covered, you know, pretty and sexual history also. It doesn't just include, like, sexual partners. It includes mindsets. It includes what you were taught about sex in your home. Yeah. Expectations, insecurities, you know, One aspect of sexual history that I'd failed to talk about was that I'd had a problem with pornography. And that sexual history, I mean, that had programmed kind of the way I saw sex. And I withheld that from Ashley, which was really dishonest and cowardly of me, frankly. And we talked a lot about that in other episodes. So I won't turn this into a porn episode, but we need to talk about everything. I mean, first exposure, what our mindsets were related to it. If there was any abuse, if there were regrets, past relationships, all of it.

How our parents talked about it.

Yeah. How our parents talked about it. And one aspect of sexual history. I don't think I've ever shared this on the podcast, and I don't think I shared this full story with Ashley even until.

Well, I don't think you thought about it as sexual history.

I didn't think about it as sexual history.

It wasn't like you were trying to keep it from me. It kind of came out later as you were processing it. As you were processing, you know, because I think sometimes certain life circumstances, you know, or even if it's not even your own life circumstances, but you're working with other people, and it triggers something. Like, sometimes it can just be. You hear someone else's story, and you're like, wait a Minute. That's kind of similar to my story or, you know, so. Yeah, you just. I don't think you were keeping this from me.

No, not intentionally. I mean, I did. I kept the pornography thing intentionally. That was a sin.

But you told me every. I mean, you talked about past sexual experiences with me.

Right? And what I did talk about is that, you know, I. And this was really, I think, as a result of pornography. It had caused me to make compromises in other areas. I think I turned to porn thinking, well, this would be a substitute for sex until I can actually have sex with my spouse.

Which includes masturbation.

Right, it includes masturbation. That's a part of sexual history. If you've had a real issue with masturbation, which I did, that was accompanied by. And fueled by the porn use and the lust and then into relationships. You know, in college, I tried to have these hard boundaries in place, like, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to have any form of kind of sexual contact. And slowly those boundaries got eroded in and just kind of some unhealthy habits within relationships where compromises were made. And again, just like I had done with pornography, I started justifying these sins by saying, moving the boundary. I'm like, well, I'm just moving this boundary. Like, as long as I'm not doing this, I'm okay. And then I would do that, and I would move it again and ultimately say, well, as long as I'm not having intercourse, then I'm not really having sex. You know, it's kind of the old, like, Bill Clinton definition loophole definition of sex. Well, no, I'm not having sex because I'm not having intercourse. And I started making those kind of compromises and experiencing just the damage that happens when we do cross boundaries and then try to justify it, ultimately, it's hurting ourselves and others. So by the time Ashley and I got together, I'd been in a season where I had not been, for the most part, making those relationship compromises. But I was still in this cycle of masturbation. I was still kind of wrapped up in lust. I had kept. Thankfully, I had kept the very important boundary of not having intercourse. And I'm so thankful that I did not, until our wedding night, never had intercourse. So that's one win. Despite kind of all of my failures in this area. That is one win, and I'm thankful for that. But it was still, like, I was embarrassed to have to tell Ashley, like, you know, I've made these other compromises and I'm sorry. I felt that really, that I had sinned against God. But even though I didn't even know Ashley at the time, I had sinned against her as my future wife.

But you did tell me, like, you. I think you told me everything except the porn. Because at the time, I think in your mind, you justified it. Because at the time, it wasn't an issue. Right, but the thing with sexual history is, you know, you've heard the term full disclosure. It's a full disclosure where you're talking about, like, you could even say, well, I'm not struggling with this at this time, but I have had a struggle.

Yeah, I've had real struggle with porn, being honest, and I should have. And that porn clouded my thoughts on a lot of. So much related to sex. One thing that I had not shared because I really didn't consider it part of sexual history, which is what we were referring to before very much it was to come back to that story. But really my first sexual experience was when I was five years old. And it wasn't being abused by an adult somewhere. It was with my cousin Tina, who was also five years old. And we would play. We were very close. We were just close friends, close cousins. And she initiated this kind of sexual play where, you know, we would touch each other, where we would, like, you know, just. We didn't know we were doing, but we just knew that it felt good. Looking back, seeing how she was initiating this, it made me realize that almost certainly she was being abused by someone older. To just kind of plant these thoughts in her mind that this is okay, this is acceptable. But I went along with it fully, even though I knew somehow, like, this isn't wrong that we've got to keep this secret.

You mean this is wrong, right?

This is wrong. This is wrong, but we have to keep this secret. I felt some shame and confusion over it, but I also knew that it felt good. It felt good to touch and be touched. It felt good to. Of course, as a child of that age, you don't know what you're doing, but it's exposed. It's just confusing is what it is. And so over the period of the next couple years, from, like, age 5 and 6, we would do that. Some you just kind of do this sexual play. And then to complicate things further and to really add an element of really deep tragedy into all this, when I was 6, or maybe just turning 7, Tina, my cousin Tina, and her dad, my uncle, tragically, one day out on the water, they were on a boat, and she fell in. He jumped in after her, and they both drowned. And so I lost my cousin, one of my best friends, and I had all kinds of just deep and confusing conflicting emotions. I missed her. I grieved her. I felt guilt. I felt survivor guilt. I felt shame over just what we had done. I felt this element of confusion and this kind of strange bond to her, as, you know, which any sort of sexual contact kind of creates that extra layer of bond and ties. And I'm just a small child trying to process all of this and not really knowing how to process all of this. And. And that was all so in my distant past that, you know, when I'm talking to Ashley about, you know, relationships and mistakes, it didn't even enter my mind. I mean, I think she probably knew about Tina because that story is such a part of the family narrative, this collective trauma of losing them and how it really changed our whole family. My aunt. My surviving aunt became a heroin addict, just trying to cope with the pain of that. And then she. She's out of prison and clean.

She ended up going to prison.

But now a very joyful person, loves Jesus, has found a lot of healing, but there's just deep trauma there, and that I didn't really process until much later. A deep trauma that I was carrying and never really knew how to process it, because as a child, you're not even really meant to process those kinds of feelings.

And so you don't really have even a language for it.

No, you don't have a language for it. Yeah. You don't have a context for it.

Right.

You know, and. Yeah, it's.

I mean, to be honest, like, you know, we've talked all about faithful counseling, which now is. Betterhelp.com NakedMarriage, who's been a sponsor of this podcast for many years. And you actually. Because we want to make sure that whatever sponsors are on this podcast, that we have tried them out. And so, you know, got a Counselor through GetFaithful. BetterHelp.com and when she was asking about your story, this happened to come up, and you said, this is years ago, that she really honed in on that and was, like, wanting to.

Yeah, she wanted to camp out there. And so, like, I started really processing it. And at the time, that's when we.

Talked about this a lot more.

Well, because at the time, our youngest son, Chatham, was. He was six. And so he was the age that I was, like, when this was going on. And then ultimately, around the age that I was when she died And I'm just looking at Chatham at 6 years old a couple years ago and just so innocent and so like precious and full of life and stuff. And it was like she was having me kind of like look at my 6 year old self kind of like through him, you know, like kind of what you say. And I start seeing myself at that age and trying to really process it in that way. Like what would you say to this little kid? And, and all of a sudden like all this sort of emotion and pent up feeling, it started coming out in unexpected ways and, and we were talking too, just kind of like long term ramifications of trauma. Because like one weird thing that came from all that is that I haven't been able to eat seafood since I was in first grade. Because, you know, I used to love fish and fish sticks and all that. But you know, about a week or two after Tina died, my dad took me fishing and he was just trying to get my mind off of it. And so we're fishing and we catch this fish and then I wanted to just throw it back, but he was like, no, we're going to eat it. And so he, you know, he like cut its head and he cleaned it. You know, he did what you did with the fish.

Prepared it.

Prepared it. You know, he cut it up and cleaned it. I'm just looking at his head. Then we went home and we put it on the frying pan and fried it up. And seeing that dead fish and smelling it and it coming out of the water and I'd now like associated water with death because it's where Tina had died. And something just a switch flipped in my brain and I became repulsed by seafood. It was just the smell and taste and reminder of you can't do it. And as a kid you'd think, well, yeah, I mean, kids make weird connections and correlations and surely you'd outgrow that. I'm telling you, I could not outgrow it. Like I later on when I could say, oh yeah, that's silly, that's a silly thing. That was just a childhood, whatever, I'm going to try to eat seafood. I can't physically do it. Like there's something that changed my brain that sees it as just inedible. And I was talking to the counselor about this, I was just like, it would be nice to be able to enjoy seafood, but I don't know why this happened, my gosh, almost 40 years ago and why can't I eat fish? And she said that, she said the way that the brain is kind of where trauma is processed in your brain, held in your brain. And she explained what the scientific names for all of it is. But she said that part of the brain doesn't process things in terms of linear timeline. So if you've experienced trauma at any point, she said, it's always there. Like, you can do things to heal, you can do things to work through it, but there's a certain part of your brain that when triggered, it's like it never really expires or goes away. And you can't logically look at it and just say, well, I recognize that that's old. That shouldn't matter because there's, you know, the brain's powerful and it is what it is. And so I share that kind of long, drawn out narrative to say if you've experienced any form of sexual trau, whether it was from being abused, being in a relationship where maybe it was a consensual relationship, but there was certainly an element of you felt abuse or you just feel regret. I mean, I had regret over decisions I had made in relationships that even though I didn't. You cross certain lines. I certainly did cross lines into sinful territory. And I have regret over that. And so the regret. But all that stuff, even though God forgives, even though we work through it, there's a place in the brain where kind of all that trauma is still stored that's not connected to a linear timeline. And even if it happened when you were a kid, it can be triggered and it can come up and it can affect your sex life and your marriage today.

It can, because you can associate shame with it. You know, And I think it's really interesting because I feel like God has walked with you and he walked with your family through that horrible tragedy. But then for you, it was even complicated because there was this sadness of losing your dear cousin and one of your best friends, but also shame associated with it because you knew something was wrong there, but you didn't even know why. Like, at the time, you didn't know why, but you knew kind of in your spirit, this isn't right. And I don't know why we're doing this. You know, I mean, it was confusing for you, right?

And I'm thinking like, well, was she punished for that? And then why wasn't I?

Well, because as kids, that's what we try to make sense of things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you're thinking, like, is she gonna, like, haunt me because she's mad that I live? Yeah. Is it? Am I next? Because we did the same thing.

Right.

So am I gonna.

And then there's, like you said survivors get, like, why her and not me? And I think too, with. I know that was a longer story, but we really felt compelled to share it because I think that a lot of us, we have trauma like that. Like, maybe it's not the same kind of story or situation, but it's something where we really, like, you know, in the. In the deeper parts of our brain. It's there and it's. And again, we talked a lot about through this series, Renewing youg Mind. Like God can renew your mind 100%. But we still, on this earth, we will not be fully healed till we go to heaven. There's just certain elements that come with being a human being on this earth. And so that doesn't mean that we have to walk in shame. In fact, that's why, I mean, we have Jesus. You know, he doesn't want us to walk in shame. He wants us to walk in victory and freedom and so we can have that. But I think where this comes into marriage is having compassion and having understanding and reassuring our spouse when they are triggered. Like, listen, I love you. This is part of your story. You don't need to have any shame with this. Like, I'm here for you. You know, especially sexual abuse, like, if it's at the hand of a parent or, you know, this neighbor, whoever. It was like just being very. A safe place where the spouse can share about it. Because that's so hard. Those things are so hard to share. I mean, we've talked openly about this at XO conferences, and I know several years back with our Counterfeit Climax message, we talked about this. And when we were doing our meet and greet, we would have people come just weeping, saying, I was sexually abused. And I never, ever told my spouse. And I now feel like I need to almost feeling guilty. And it's like, listen, don't feel guilty. You were traumatized.

Yeah. You were a victim. Don't have guilt on trauma.

Right. I mean, don't add guilt. Exactly. But don't keep this. Like, I feel like, you know, in marriage we say this all the time, like we are supposed to be burden bearers of one another. You know, out of all human relationships, husband and wife need to bear burdens together. So you don't need to feel like you need to bear that burden, like share it with your spouse. It also will give insight to your spouse. Like, okay, I get it. And it's really. I mean, I believe God can use it to draw you closer because you can have this understanding and the support that maybe you've been trying to go through this alone, and you didn't even know you could have support. You didn't know what that felt like to have someone in your corner. So don't feel like you have to bear these, like, a sexual abuse burden alone. But even when it comes to, you know, we get written a lot where there's been people who've been married for a while, and something triggers, you know, a spouse to confess to something maybe from their past. Like, it wasn't. They weren't even married yet, but the spouse will end up confessing to something that happened in the past because they felt guilty. They felt like, I need to tell my spouse that I did this in my past with somebody. And they end up telling them. And that can sometimes send that spouse reeling from this new information.

Right.

Because what it does. The reason why they're having a hard time is because they think, well, if you didn't tell me about that way back when, what else are you holding back from me? That's the natural human doubt that comes in there. And so what I would say is, like, you know, just because they didn't tell you one thing doesn't mean they're not telling you all of it. Okay? And I would say, like, thank you for telling me. This is. This is make. This is making me feel a little bit insecure because you waited. But I'm grateful that you told me now. I'm grateful that you're telling me now. And anytime you feel like. If you feel like there's any more that's. With this, can you go ahead and tell me? Because I really want to trust you, and I really want to be able to have a thriving sex life. But this just rocks me a bit. I think it's okay if it rocks you a bit. Right, sweetie? I mean, and being honest about that and saying, like, but I'm glad you told me, but let's not punish our spouse for waiting, because I do think sometimes there are scenarios where it's just because they. Maybe they had put it way back. I mean, I do think sometimes it's almost gone to that, like, unconscious, you know, unconscious part of our brain where.

It feels like a stored. It feels like a lifetime ago where you're. It's so distant from where you are now that you don't even see it as something you're hiding.

Exactly.

It's like you look back on it, and it feels like somebody else that did it.

You Know, it feels like another life. Yeah, it's another life. Especially those of us who maybe came to Christ later. It's like you almost look at it as like my pre Christian days. You know, I hear people say that, like, before when I was in darkness or, you know, this is just my past. But even so, let me tell you, those of you who are like, engaged or you're early in those, Those newlywed days, go ahead and tell them because you build trust the more that you. You reveal. I mean, you do. And it is hard. I mean, this stuff is hard. Like you talking about stuff with your cousin, that was hard. I mean, it's. Even now you recounting that story. You had tears in your eyes and. Because like you said, trauma. I mean, it's there. And this is your family member. I mean, it's a big deal. And I think when we have children too similar in that age, that's triggering.

Yeah, yeah, that is. Cause I just think about our little ones and, you know, I mean, I think about our. Yeah.

And we. And that's why I think too, just a shout out to our Parenting Uncovered podcast, which, in case you didn't know, those of you parents out there, please go listen to our Parenting Uncovered podcast, which is fairly new, but we talk a lot on there about when it comes to, you know, teaching our kids about sex, about how we also have to teach them about having license over their bodies and not allowing people to touch them, you know, in those private places, and not allowing. And not having them touch anyone else. And that includes family members, that includes, you know, their siblings, it includes friends, it includes adults, it includes kids. It doesn't matter who they are, you know, and I think we're probably a little bit hyper vigilant on that because of what happened. Because back, you know, in the 80s, I mean, we just. There wasn't as much talk about that because it just, you know, and if you don't know, you know, and you're a kid, I mean, you're not supposed to know. You're only like five or six years old. But it's just important that we. The more we can inform, I think the more safety we can have in these situations. But I think when it comes to the sexual history, we've got to, you know, it is history. We have to remember this is history. This is what led us here. You know what I'm saying? Don't. Don't hold something in the past against your spouse, but help them to find healing moving forward. Right. And, you know, the thing about it, too, if they confess to some ongoing addiction, like a porn addiction, a sex addiction, you've got to get help. Like, you got to get help. And yes, there needs to be boundaries in place. There doesn't. This doesn't mean, like, if they're, you know, maybe sex addicted and that is part of their history, but it's moved into their presence. That's a whole other podcast, and we do have podcasts about this. Clearly, there's been a breach of trust, and this needs to be dealt with, and there needs to be consequences in place and boundaries put in place and things like that. But when it just comes to sexual history of what happened in the past, you know, I think that it can be hard to deal with, especially if you've withheld it for a long time. But I would do whatever you need to do, whether it's getting counseling or just getting. Trying to seek more information about healing through this so that you can move forward so that we don't get stuck in the past.

Yeah, you don't. You don't have to get stuck or stay stuck.

Right.

You do need to talk about it, which can be uncomfortable, but you gotta have a naked marriage. Right. Anything that's been covered, you need to uncover. And like Ashley said, you know, don't punish each other. Let it be a safe place where always. Where you're sharing your insecurities, your regrets, your fears, your past, all of it. And if you've intentionally withheld something, then as you share it, apologize for not sharing it sooner. You know, apologize that, you know, I should have told you this before. I was wrong. I was afraid. I'm sorry. Forgive me, but I want us to have full trust. I don't want there to be anything between us. And I'm telling you this now, and I should have told you before, but this is everything. And the more honest you are, the level of your honesty will determine the level of your intimacy. And if you're experiencing trauma from your past, whether that's the trauma of regret or the trauma of being victimized by any form of abuse being inflicted upon you, get the help that you need to heal. I mean, talk to a counselor. We have a counseling partner here you can find online@betterhelp.com nakedmarriage and. And they're doing a special deal just for our listeners. I've, like Ashley said, I've spoken to one of the counselors there via Skype, and it was really helpful. Betterhelp.com NakedMarriage so, yeah, get the help that you need. Do us a favor and share this episode. It's one that a lot of folks need. I promise. It's the one that a lot of folks need to listen to. Not because we're saying anything that's, like, brand new, but we're just. We're just trying to provide a safe place where folks can talk about these issues. And a lot of folks are struggling with them. We know because a lot of you write us and thank you for writing us. We love and appreciate you so much, guys. God bless. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.