084 - Unwanted (Pt. 1)

Welcome to the Pure Desire Podcast where we partner with you to bring hope and freedom on your journey to purity. Hey, ladies. I wanted to let you know about an upcoming event, the Pure Desire Women's Conference. This two day conference is designed to help all women find grace and peace in their daily lives. Doesn't that sound nice? Regardless of where you've been in your life, through this event you'll get a break from the daily grind. You get a fresh dose of encouragement and look. You'll also get practical tools to help you find emotional, spiritual and sexual health. This conference is from April 5th through 6th at the Sheraton Portland Airport Hotel. I'm excited for you to hear from Heather Kolb, Ashley Jamison, and our featured speaker, Patty Moreno. Come gather with other women looking to find ways to be healthier people in today's world. To register and get more info on the speakers on the schedule and more, visit PureDesire.org PDWomen Again, that's PureDesire.org PDWomen that's all I got for now. Enjoy the podcast. Hey everybody, Just wanted to let you know that today's episode is number one of a two part series where we sit down with author Jay Stringer about his book, How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing. Hey there. I'm your host, Trevor Windsor and we're so thankful you're taking time out of your day to hang out with us. I'm here with my co host as always, Nick Stumbo. Do, do, do. Dora.

Did you want me to keep going?

You're just nodding your head. I wish the listeners could see that.

It's sad to say I know most of the song and a surprising number of other children's cartoon songs.

Yeah, well, you have children. I mean, they're past the stage probably.

Where they watch Dora, which now means they just get stuck in your head at random times and you're like, oh, I still know the song to Wonder Pets. Fantastic.

I feel like you can learn a little bit about where someone's at in life based on what they quote. Cause for me, it's Paw Patrol. That's all we do is we quote paw Patrol. And I know every dog, all their call signs.

It's just, I do want to know, in what language does Dora and the Explorer rhyme? I don't know if that's a Spanish thing or just poor English or what.

Before we get off, because we really want to get to our episode here, just look up Brian Regan and look up Dora the Explorer. He's got the answer to that.

Okay, I gotta find that.

All right, so today we have a special guest with us, Jay Stringer. Jay is a licensed mental health counselor, ordained minister, and he's an author. He recently released his first book, How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing. And we're just excited to have Jay, a friend of ours, on the podcast. Welcome, Jay.

Thank you, Trevor and Nick, for having me on. I've been so excited to be a guest on this show.

Yes. That's fantastic. So we are excited to get to know Jay a little bit more, talk to him about his book, discuss really what Healing from Sexual Brokenness looks like. And as we kind of get through the episode, you'll see that Jay's done a ton of research and what that research has really brought out. So we're really excited to have you, Jay.

So good to be here.

All right, well, let's start with this, just because maybe some of our listeners. I mean, we think you're pretty awesome, and we know that you can be a popular guy, but maybe some of our listeners don't know who you are. So can you fill us in a little bit on your story, what you've been up to recently? Just let our listeners know a little bit about you?

Sure. So I live in Seattle, Washington, just up the road from you all. And as you mentioned, I'm a licensed mental health counselor and ordained minister. And I am married to my wife, heather. It'll be 10 years this August.

Yes.

And she is also a therapist, and we have two young kids, Amos and Iona. And so I have certainly seen my fair share of Dora. And right when you said. I was saying backpack. Backpack.

There you go.

That's good.

She was about two and a half. Three would go around just saying backpack.

Wow.

Her Dora days.

So what's it like when two counselors argue? What's that like in marriage?

It has gotten progressively better. I would say the first two to three years was just chaos in a lot of ways, when we would get into arguments where we knew just enough to get nasty. And it's just been, you know, a huge growing maturity phase for us to kind of say with the data that we know about one another's lives and how all these things come to be. How do we really use our knowledge of one another's lives for the sake of love and not to ridicule or humiliate? So we're figuring things out.

That's good. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing sometimes. So, Jay, most people don't grow up as a little kid dreaming, you know, one Day. I want to be a mental health counselor dealing with sexual addiction. And I want to write a book about lust and fantasy. I mean, that's. That's not what you're picturing when you're in the back driveway, you know, shooting hoops. And yet that's the career and profession you find yourself in. So would you share with us just a little bit of your journey that brought you into this field and made this your area of focus?

Yeah, right. When you said that, Nick, I was taken back to. I'm a child born in the 1980s. And so I remember getting my first NIV Teen Study Bible, if you remember that. But it was kind of, I don't know, these broad strokes of blue paint, orange paint on the COVID And then on the inside of these sheets were about, I don't know, 15, 20 pages of contemporary issues like sex, money, self image. And I remember opening up that page to sex and just feeling like I had opened up a treasure chest. And so I should have known at that point that sex was going to be a pretty significant part of my story. But I think where I would begin are kind of two things. The first is that I grew up as a pastor's kid. My dad was a minister, Presbyterian church. And so what would often happen is when people would go through a crisis, they would often try and reach my dad or the associate pastor at the church office. And then when that wasn't working, they would call our home. And so I have so many memories of kind of sitting around. I had three other siblings, a family of six, four kids, my parents, and have some memories of just sitting at the kitchen table, and we're eating kind of like some rice, cream of mushroom casserole, Ritz cracker, chicken thing sounds delicious. And a phone call comes in, and it could be from anything from my kid is wetting the bed to I just found out that my husband's been looking at porn. To one really significant memory of an elder's wife calling and leaving a message about how her husband had had an affair. And so hearing a lot of these voicemails intrigued me greatly. That, you know, how was it that there's so much stuff going on in people's lives behind the scene that you would never know on a Sunday morning. And so just really became intrigued by that notion of why is it that when things are broken that people are the most honest, instead of it just being a place that we just know one another's stories? And so throughout kind of childhood, I would say that I did a lot of just kind of two step being a really good, faithful boy, and then also having a lot of my own issues around fantasy life and pornography. And I would say it was due to some really dear people in my life, including a therapist and a mentor, just kind of walking me through some of my sexual brokenness during that time. And part of what they showed me was that my sexual brokenness wasn't just revealing what I thought it was, but what they did was to really invite me to connect the dots between how a lot of my heartache, a lot of my trauma and just bullying, quite frankly, in middle school had connected to me. Beginning to lean on sexual fantasies to kind of in many ways help me maneuver through that. And so to me, that's been so much of just the great reversal of the gospel is that the things that I really thought would alienate me from ministry and from having deep relationships have really been. Been the very stage through which the work of redemption has played out in my life.

Man. I know for me, that was one of the things growing up because my dad also was a pastor. And I just know that I grew up in a place where, just in a culture where I felt like I needed to project a certain image or a certain Persona to people that I was somehow better. I don't think I viewed myself as better, knowing my struggles, knowing the issues, but still that idea of I need to project that we're a great family, that my parents have it figured out, that I have something figured out or I have something that other people don't. And really in that, that becomes more detrimental and really creates the cycle of. Really what it was for me is I had no idea who I was. I was always wondering, who am I really? And if I ever do find it, will people actually like me? So I just, I mean, I hear all that too and just resonate with growing up in the church, growing up with a pastor as your dad, that can be a really difficult. A difficult time for a lot of people.

It does. And I think part of what compounded that is so when my dad would kind of attend to some of these meetings, he would often go and spend time with families, spend time with individual people that were in the midst of some really difficult things. And that would often create more chaos within my own family system. Where dad is gone, mom feels more responsible, feels left yet another night for a meeting, a session meeting, a crisis. And so throughout kind of my growing up, that was a lot of the role that I knew how to play is okay, so mom is really angry dad needs to go. How do I kind of be someone that's really good in my family home? And then in secret would be the places where I would cry. And it would also be the places where I would indulge in my own unwanted sexual behavior. And so I think that was some of the helpful kind of language that I learned in seminary and grad school, was to really begin to connect the dots that this, you know, my understanding of who God was was very much shaped by my own family system and what I felt like I could actually bring to my parents versus what I needed to be for my mom and my dad.

Yeah. So, Jay, we want to talk about your book. Really? We want to talk about all the work you've been doing, all the work that's been put into this. And. And I've read some of it already. I wish I could tell you that I have read all of it, but I promise I'm in it. I'm reading it. I will put a review on Amazon, no doubt. Okay. You can count on me for that. But in your book, there was this quote that I saw and just wanted to talk about a little bit. And the quote says this. Sexual failures, Internet searches, and browser histories expose our sin, but far more. They are roadmaps. Sexual brokenness pinpoints the location of our past harm and highlights the current roadblocks that keep us from the freedom we desire. If we're willing to listen, our sexual struggles will have so much to teach us. I read that and was like, hold up. And I was something I really wanted to talk about. And so tell us a little bit more about this idea.

Yes. So, I mean, I know it's a huge paradigm shift. So what I'm saying is that right in the very middle of the behavior that most of us are trying to stop are actually the first set of clues about where to begin our journey in to healing. So, in kind of book and also the online course that I created, we did this kind of notion about thinking about your sexual life as a house. And so what I mean by that is, like, if you were to just begin to think about it right now, it's late in the evening, and you hear a familiar knock of lust on your front door. What are you going to do? So in the past, you may have tried to phone a friend for backup. Other times, you try and shoot the intruder. And at other times, in moments of your own sabotage, you just let lust kind of ransack your house. But part of what I'm proposing is that at some point in every person's recovery journey, you're going to have to go and meet your lust out on the front porch and ask it some questions. So you're going to need to say, why are you here? What is it about my house that makes you think that you would even be welcomed here? And so we can get into some of the research a little bit later. But I would say the major conclusion of my research on over 3,800 people was that our unwanted sexual behavior is not random at all. So, for example, men that sought out pornography that dealt with, I would say more teen, college age students, petite body types, even a race that suggested to them some level of subservience tended to have three things that were true about them. A really strict father, high levels of a lack of purpose in life, and pretty toxic levels of shame. And so what I'm trying to invite people to consider is you may have been trying to stop your unwanted sexual behavior for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, but until you actually understand, like what is actually informing those searches and those fantasies, you're really not going to be able to get into a place of full healing. So again, right in the middle of the affair fantasy or the porn search actually provides the first set of clues about the nature of healing that I think God is really inviting us into.

You know, Jay, the follow up question to that, as some of our listeners hear this, it may be difficult for them to wrap their minds around because as you said, a paradigm shift where we've really grown up. Especially if someone grew up like myself in a traditional Christian home, evangelical Christianity that tended to look at sexual things more from the, you need to bury it, you need to not think about it. You know, don't do it, don't go there, save it for marriage. That kind of the approach we were taught was just shut it down and don't entertain those thoughts. And so to some people, they may feel like what you're saying is, well, you need to entertain your lust. You need to think about those things that triggered you. And so how would you respond to someone that that is their, their background is like, I've spent my whole life trying to ignore those things. Why would I pay attention to them? How would you respond to someone feeling that way?

Such a good question, Nick. I mean, I think that I hear that all the time as well. So people have said, I've been told to flee sexual immorality. I've been told to slap a rubber band, I've been told to manage my triggers. And I think part of what I Hear over and over again, both from friends of mine, but also clients, is that essentially it's this sentence that says, jay, when I've been having the same conversation with my accountability partner for 15 years and nothing has changed, something isn't really working. So I think the reality is that God knows the depths of our hearts and our fantasies, and if God is not ashamed to move towards them, I don't know why we should be either. So with regard to. When you think about Romans 12:2, the instruction is, do not be conformed to the ways of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And I really can't renew my sexual mind if I don't really understand how my sexual mind was formed. And so, you know, part of what I was mentioning earlier with my own therapist was I was telling her some of the specific porn searches that I was putting in that usually had to do with kind of mother figures, people that were older than me, women that would kind of pursue someone in a porn film that maybe was a lot younger or in a place of less power. And. And also just additional factors around my fantasy life. And part of what she asked me to do was to connect the dots between how was it that that became my sexual mind? And that was a revolutionary question for me to consider. I was like, I cannot believe that I'm actually naming this for the right. And what she helped me to see was a lot of the toxic relationships that I had had with my mom were really being worked out where I did lust for, you know, a mother figure to see me. But then there was also such an anger there as well, that I needed to confront, that I would rather find someone to serve me somehow in order to kind of atone for the sins of what I felt like my mom had done. And I think that that was the unworking of a lot of really unhealthy patterns, was I had to really say, what does it mean for my sexual mind to be transformed here? Because I don't want to be conformed to the ways of the world that are about lust and infidelity. And so how do I actually engage my mind for the first time? And that that was, I would say, kind of ground zero of so much healing and flourishing in my life.

Yeah, I think that's so insightful, Jay. And what I hear you saying is that we're not, you are not. And in our podcast, we're not inviting someone to go and think about what they find attractive or imagine those scenarios. It's really encouraging someone to See through it, to look beyond at what is driving it. It's what author Anthony De Milo says that we can't defeat something in our life by fighting against it. Because the more we fight against it, we're actually just giving the very thing that we're fighting. We're giving it more power. He said the solution is to see through it, to understand why that particular thing has a hold of us. And I think that's what we're looking to do when we explore our lust and fantasy. And where did it come from is asking all those critical questions that you were invited to ask. And that's what I took away from your book, is just over and over seeing how when we connect the dots, we really get new tools to change the narrative, to change the power it has over us.

Yes. So, I mean, we. We do this in a lot of areas in our life. Like, if you were to think about something as simple as anger or anxiety, if you were to see a therapist to kind of walk through your anger, part of what they would say is your anger serves a good purpose. It's notifying you. It's like your radar for injustice. So it's not something that you just need to condemn and just stop doing. You actually need to, as you said, see through it. But I would say most of what we've been trained, especially in the church, is to kind of just manage our triggers, try and suppress desire, get filtering, and so we never have to actually engage it. Or I would say more of the left and may some more of the sex. Positive work is kind of indulge certain things as if there's no meaning at all. Just don't hurt someone in the process. And so what I'm trying to do in unwanted and most of the resources that I create is to really carve out a middle path that says no. There. There's actually stunning meaning within our sexual brokenness if we're willing to listen to it.

Well, and as you're saying that, what come. What comes to mind for me is that in a lot of. I think this is the way the church has looked at it, is that it's trying to look at what we do as an action rather than a reaction. So if I'm doing something, there's a reason behind it. There's stuff that's fueled me or pushed me in this certain direction. And that's, you know, one of the things that we focus on so much here at Pure Desire is just the idea of trying to get to the root of what's actually Going on? What are the messages I've learned? What are the truths that I believe that actually lies? I'm just being deceived about myself or about the world or my value. And really, and this is what I've seen too, is exactly what you're saying. I'm reacting to what I've learned in my life, and that's why I'm moving a certain direction with my actions. And so what I hear you saying is that we're not focusing on the outward action. We're trying to find out what it is we are reacting to. I mean, does that sound right?

Yes. Yep. Yeah. We have to begin to identify the unique reasons that bring us to our unwanted sexual behavior. Be that porn, be that infidelity. And so when we can kind of find what are the key drivers in our life, that's so often the doorway into the wider work of the gospel to bring healing. And I think that that's what most of us find. I don't think we would ever say, you know, I'm really grateful for my years of sexual brokenness. But it's often in our sexual brokenness that we discover that, as you said earlier, Trevor, we had no idea who we were. And this is part of identity formation, and that's part of just growing up, is we need to encounter some pretty difficult things about who we are and see that we can outgrow them.

Yeah. So continuing kind of into more of what your book talks about. In Unwanted, you say that our sexuality is not an impediment to knowing God. It doesn't get in the way yet for so many people, we feel that sexuality separates us from God. So how, in your opinion, how do we connect our sexuality and our faith? How do we start to view our sexuality as not a hurdle between us and the Lord?

Yep. So, I mean, I think God is the creator of sexuality. God created genitals. So, for instance, like God created the clitoris. That is really the only part of the female body that has no other purpose except for sexual pleasure. And what are we supposed to do with that as Christians, except to say, like, God created and blesses sexuality? And so I think part of what I've discovered in my professional work is that we haven't become too sexual. The problem is that we have not yet become sexual enough. So to me, that's what God is inviting us into is really this kind of faith that this desire that he put inside of our hearts is good. And I think that that's the war that most of us are walking is that we look at so much of the desire in our hearts and then we see so much debris behind it. That I can see broken years of a marriage. I can see that maybe someone lost their job, lost a relationship that was really significant. And it's in that looking back at the debris of your life that you're saying, you know, I'm really screwed with desire. And I think that that's the kind of God waking us up to say, no, you don't want to bury that desire. I see the debris. But is it possible that your desire could actually allow you to long for wholeness, for beauty, in ways that you would have never, ever conceived of at the height of your sexual brokenness? So to me, that's so much of the invitation of God is saying, don't become less sexual. Actually discover the fullness, the beauty of what I've actually designed you for.

Yeah, I think the danger with fantasy pornography, so much of our sexual brokenness is it really detaches us from relationships, from people, from God. When what I hear you saying, Jay, is we need to look for ways that our sexuality can attach us to people. And not because we're having sex necessarily. I mean, that can be with our spouse, but just that sense of connectedness that God made me this way. God knows God's been a part of my story. And leaning into almost reverses the curse, so to speak. That the. The isolation that. That sin and Satan and evil causes in our lives can be undone by the ways that we can become connected through intimacy of relationship and just knowing that we are as God made us and seeing the goodness in his creation.

So beautifully said. Yes, one of. I mean, I think. I believe it's a Catholic theologian that made this wonderful insight that he said that the word sex is taken from the Latin word sicare, which means to sever or to amputate from the whole. So in his kind of working this out, he would say that sex, then, is the awareness of how disconnected we are from one another and the way that we go about reconnecting. One of the examples that he says is like when you see an infant crying in its crib. Most of us don't think of that as sexuality of the infant, but it certainly is. It doesn't involve their genitality at that point. But it's this ache of something about my life right now is miserable, and I really cry. I long for connection. And it's in that scooping up that some of the initial neural pathways of kind of trust and oxytocin and connection are really formed. And so that's so much of the purpose of our sexuality. Not necessarily, again, our genitality to begin with, but it's how do we actually connect to people in ways when we feel really disconnected and amputated and alienated. And so part of what I have found that I just see over and over again is that unwanted sexual behavior really is not about escape. It's far more about self hatred. It's far more about kind of pursuing something for the purpose of judgment and disconnection. And so to me, that, as you said, Nick, that's the invitation is how do we take these severed, broken parts of our lives and learn how to connect them with dear friends, but also to bring that online into our sexuality as well.

Hey everybody. Really enjoyed our time with J. Stringer on today's episode. If you want more information on Jay and what he's up to, visit www.j-stringer.com. he's got content, blogs, an online course. There's a lot to check out. And if you're interested in Jay's book Unwanted, you can now order a copy at www.puredesire.org. unwanted. We highly recommend you get it and dive in. And remember, today's episode is part one of a two part series. So check in next week to hear the remainder of the interview. And thank you for listening to the Pure Desire podcast. If you like what you're hearing and want to keep up with the podcast, please subscribe. You can also rate and review our podcast and let us know how we're doing. For more information, check out our website, PureDesire.org. you can follow us on social media. EaredesirePDMI. Once again, that's EaredesirePDMI mind. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Pure Desire podcast. For more information, check out our website www.puredesire.org. check in each week for new content on the podcast and we pray that it will help you find hope and freedom on your journey to purity.