222 - Rescuing Our Marriages From Porn w/ Sheila Wray Gregoire

You're listening to the Pure Desire Podcast. Your safe place to find hope, healing, and freedom from sexual addiction, betrayal, and relationship issues. What's up, people? I'm your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 222 of the Pure Desire podcast. Here joining me as always, is my co host, the tall man, Nick Stumbo.

Teek off, hoser. No doubt. Eh?

What's funny? This is my favorite part is, like, you and I just had a conversation about your intro. I knew what you were gonna say, yet it was still so funny because.

I added the accent in there. I made it really authentic.

Gosh, what is. Okay, so I can't. People are gonna probably butcher me for this, but Rick Moranis and another guy have this, like, the Great White north comedy albums, and they talked about they, like, shook up beer, and they did, like, a Russian roulette with beer, and they called it a wet head if you like. Got it. I can't. Oh, I gotta go back.

I've not actually seen that movie, but it just seems like probably in about any movie that features Canada, there's gonna be a, you know, something about a hoser or a tube and using the word A over and over, which, you know, I. I can sympathize with because a lot of my family heritage is from Minnesota.

Okay.

In Minnesotan and Canadian have some similarities, definitely. And people bring up the, oh, you're gonna go out in a boat.

Yeah, there you go.

Things like that. So, uh, Sheila Ray Gregoire, our guest today, is Canadian. And so that was.

There it is.

Make the quick connection to the podcast.

So if you guys remember, listeners, we had sheila on episode 204 to talk about her book, the Great Sex Rescue. Um, we got some good feedback. Lots of good feedback. We got some negative pushback as well in that episode, but we wanted to talk to her a little bit more specifically about pornography and really how to rescue our marriages from pornography.

Yeah. I think what we feel about Sheila's message in this book is, is it's really confronting a paradigm and changing a paradigm, honestly, within the Christian church. And, you know, early on when you're changing a paradigm, it feels like pushing a boulder uphill. And it's hard. And I think for some of our listeners, this is challenging their paradigms. And so you might find some of what's said today hard. And I empathize with you because it's not easy to let go of maybe things we've been taught or held on to. And so I just wanted to encourage listeners, like, to listen with an open heart and mind. And if there are things in this episode that you're not sure you're ready for or just don't fit for you, like, like let those go. But try to listen to the heart of where we're going today. And you know, I'd say, honestly, if you are a big fan of Every Man's Battle, the book, or Love and respect, and you're really aren't open to considering some of the negative messages in those books, like you don't want to go there, this probably isn't the right podcast for you. Just, you know, we've got 200 and however many odd other ones you could listen to, just if that's where you're at, I get it and be okay with that. But I think most of us are saying, hey, there's a lot of room to grow in the church, particularly when it comes to how we teach on sexuality. And I think Sheila is a voice that's helping us see what does the future look like. How can we help men and women understand their sexuality as individuals and then most importantly, as a married couple in a way that's more true to how God designed us and really made our sexuality to function together in marriage?

I think Sheila gives us permission in this episode to question popular Christian resources and question their teaching and the value. So go into it. Absolutely. With, with that perspective. And we do want you to listen to this episode. Even though it may be, you know, harmful to you, maybe if you like these books. We do believe that her perspective is.

Valuable, hopefully not harmful to them, but it may be hard.

That's not a good word, you're right. But yeah, maybe harder to hear for sure.

So I don't think it's going to ruin their life.

This episode will not ruin your life. Full stop. Okay, a few things before we get into this non harmful and helpful episode. First, subscribe to the podcast. Second, follow us on social media. And then thirdly, we want to just remind people it is now out. It is out in the world. We are excited about it. We have updated the seven Pillars of Freedom Revolution resource for men.

Yeah, a long time in the making. We're excited about it because we've taken a lot of feedback from guys who've gone through seven pillars and we have added for every single lesson, we have added an introduction video that can really help men and groups understand the lesson better, have more clarity about the homework. And I know so many leaders are rejoicing about it because it's the questions they've gotten over and over, like, why do we have to answer this question? Or what do they mean by that? We've really designed the video series to lead someone into all of those questions so that as they sit down and do the lesson, they can do it with a lot more clarity. So we're excited to have it revamped, released. I mean, it's still 95% is what Ted wrote originally. We just kind of kept clarifying and adjusting and tweaking to make the message clearer. And so we're glad to have it out there and hope it benefits a lot of people.

And it's got a sleek new look, that is for sure. All right, well, if you do want to check this out, just go to PureDesire.org 7 the actual word, seven pillars, and you'll find that there. All right, here's our conversation with Sheila Rae Gregoire on how to rescue sex in marriages after pornography enters it. Sheila, thank you for being here. Welcome back to the Pure Desire podcast.

I am so glad to be here. Thanks for having me back.

We. I'm just going to give a little bit of context. You had an episode with us, episode 204, where we talked about your book, the Great Sex Rescue, which was an amazing episode. We had a lot of fun, talked about some really, like, challenging things, while also identifying what we found in research and just identifying that there is a lot out there in the narratives that are taught or implied in the church that can be really, really damaging. And so we got some negative feedback, but a lot of positive feedback from that episode. And we're going to kind of continue in some of the themes you talk about in the book, but then also just really want to address what it looks like to rescue sex inside of a marriage relationship from the effects of pornography, which is more what we're dipping into our world and what we do. And so we're really excited to continue the conversation. And so let's just start with this. And gosh, all of these are so specific. I mean, to my life, even in this first question, many of us have heard the narrative that just being like a man, lust is every man's battle. Right, right. That and we have the Stephen Arterburn book from that. So basically, that means that it's inevitable that every man will struggle with lust, period, full stop. Is this narrative from your perspective, from your research, is this narrative true?

No. And I think it is so damaging to men. It really isn't. You know, this isn't in the Great Sex Rescue. Okay. This is actually.

Okay.

Yeah.

You get the preview for this.

Okay, that's awesome.

After we did our huge survey for the Great Sex Rescue, so we surveyed 20,000 women and then analyzed all the results. Big study. One of the things we realized is that if you want to drill down on certain topics, you need to ask, like, multiple questions to get nuance. And the one that we were really having issues with, that we thought was going to be an issue with men was the lust issue. So we did a survey of multiple thousands of men. I forget how many now. Like, five or something. It was a lot anyway. And we asked, like, eight different questions about lust to try to figure out what exactly was going on. And we found what we expected, which was this. Okay, roughly 75% of men say that they have a struggle with lust, but when you actually give them all kinds of different scenarios where they could lust, like, half of them do not. And so what's happening, we believe, and in our focus group that we did with men afterwards, is that guys think they're struggling with lust when they simply are sexually attracted to women. Like, they're not the same thing. And we have inflated them so much that men think they are going through life sinning when they're just simply going through life being heterosexual. And it's not a. We've made a big deal out of something which isn't a big deal. And we've made so many men carry a lot of shame they should never have had to carry.

Yeah. We've had another guest on the podcast, our friend Rodney Wright, who brought up that point that not every sexual thought is sinful because we are created by God to be sexual beings. And so in that regard, I think we need to ask, what do we mean by struggle? And I think the Every Man's Battle book does kind of imply that there will be this unavoidable struggle with sexual thoughts that I can't control that take me over the edge. And that's what we really are trying to confront. What I think your book confronts so well, if the question is asked, like, well, is every person a human being who's born with sexual desires, who's born into a fallen world, will have to in some way, shape or form navigate that, the answer to that is yes. Now, that doesn't mean it will become a sinful struggle that we can't avoid. And I think that's where we haven't helped educate people. The other thing I've heard Rodney say is that lust isn't always sinful. I was thinking about, what is the definition of lust? Lust is to have a strong desire for something. And God made us to have a strong desire for our spouse or future spouse, so that even the fact that we have the capacity to lust, I think a lot of people think of as sinful, when really the capacity for lust is God given. It's just when we turn it towards multiple people throughout our life, and we're allowing it to run off into places that God didn't intend. And whether that's our own old nature or an enemy that does tempt or a fallen world, I mean, all those things are at play. But I think just what you're saying, Sheila, if at the heart we realize God made us as beings to have strong sexual desire for something, and even if I'm feeling a desire to lust, I shouldn't immediately be beating myself up with that shame of, oh, what's wrong with me? Why do I think that way? It's like, oh, it's not what's wrong with me. It's what's right with what God made me for. Now, how do I recognize these desires in a way that can honor God and honor the women and the world around me?

And I've heard it said before. And it's funny because the first group I was ever in, the first pure desire group, there was one guy who. This wasn't his issue, like, did not struggle with it. And there is this, like, narrative that's attached to the Everyman's battle. And again, we're not. This is not a bash of Stephen's book. This is just that narrative of every man will struggle for all of time. More of where I'm coming from. And I remember saying that to someone and it's like, well, does he really not struggle with it? You know? And it's like that thing where our statistics show that 68 to 70, 72% of men in the church are struggling with a binge purge or an ongoing sexual addiction. Sexual brokenness is in their life. And then people will add onto that statement and the rest are just lying. And it's like, I don't like that statement. It makes me uncomfortable because we are buying into this narrative that absolutely is every. Every man's battle. Every man will struggle with it for all time. And if you don't, then you're a liar. And that's just like. That is even more damaging in the long run because it's like, number one, if I'm a person who doesn't really struggle in this area, and I hear that narrative where I'm kind of getting into the next question. So I don't want to get too.

Far, but I say we're answering our own questions.

It can be really, really damaging. Absolutely.

Yeah.

I know a young man who at 16 started watching porn because of what his youth group was saying. You know, as youth pastor would talk about how guys are, all guys are tempted by this. It's so hard to resist. You're going to be drawn in. You have to try really hard not to watch it. And he's sitting there thinking, I guess I'm not a man because this doesn't tempt me. And so he sat down and watched porn to try to see what all the fuss was about. And that started a two year habit that he finally quit because he realized he didn't like how he was seeing women around him now.

Wow.

But he wouldn't have started had his youth pastor not told him that this is what all guys do. And that is not the way the Bible talks about lust. Lust is not the one sin that men can't get over. And that is the way that Steve Arterburn portrays it. And the other thing is, you know, we've got to use a little bit of psychology here, okay? Don't mean to stray from biblical texts or anything, but psychology will definitely tell you that, that nobody changes because of shame. Shame actually reinforces habits because shame is such a paralyzing thing that if your primary emotion with regards to something is shame, you're going to be stuck in it even more. And what the everyman's battle does is it takes the shame message and then it pairs it with the only way to get over it is avoidance, which is willpower. So shame and willpower do not cure anyone, you know, and instead we need to reshape how we see women, how we see sex, how we see ourselves, and how we handle our own shame. And that's the way forward. Instead of just trying to white knuckle it, which is really what the whole bounce your eyes, you know, you must avoid. You can't ever think. And it's like, you know, gee, yeah, Jesus did not say that whoever sees a woman has sinned. And we treat it that way. Like he doesn't say that. He doesn't even say whoever looks at a woman has sinned. He says, whoever looks deliberate action with lust, deliberate mindset, you know, so. And yet what we're told, what Steve Arterburn is saying is don't see women. Like you're not allowed to see a woman. You have to bounce your eyes away from a woman and that's not what Jesus ever said.

Well, and I know you're talking psychology, Sheila, but really that is biblical because we would see many passages that would say an emphasis of Jesus, death and resurrection for us was to deliver people from shame, to deliver them from condemnation. And that sense of not being good enough, not belonging with God, not being able to be with him, because there's something in me that is wrong or defunct. And so I can't be with a holy, perfect, righteous God. I mean, the. The point of Christ sacrifice for us, just to say, you're with God because of what I've done. There's no shame, there's no condemnation, believing that when we were delivered from that. That shadow or curtain of shame, we would actually be able to live out more freely the design God gave us for who we are.

So.

So we've already jumped into some of these already, Sheila, but let's keep unpacking. What are some of the damaging messages or potentially damag. If we really believe that the every man's battle narrative. What are the. And not only for men, but also for women. What are the potentially damaging messages for women? If we continue to kind of promote this every man's battle mindset, I think.

There'S two, especially for women. And the first is the way that it is telling you to view women. And you'll see this. I found this on the Steve Artebrun site where he was talking about bouncing your eyes and how that works in the summer and how the first thing that you need to do is identify your enemies. And as he's listing enemies, he lists a lot of women, female joggers, you know, women in scantily clad outfits. So women are your enemy. And that is just a very toxic way of looking at. That's exactly what the Atlanta shooter said, by the way. You know, when he went in and shot up the massage parlors was that he. That these women were his enemies and he had to defeat them. And that's just an extremely unchristlike way of looking at women. And it's so interesting because this whole bounce your eyes philosophy actually agrees with the pornographic view of women. And the pornographic view of women is all women are sex objects. And they primarily exist for me to view them as sex objects. So in the name of trying to escape seeing women as sex objects, we are now not going to look at them at all. Which means you're still viewing them reinforces the same message.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It is the exact same message. And Jesus never saw women like that. Like Jesus worked with women. 10 out of the 29 people that Paul mentions in Romans 16 that he says to greet were women. And he mentions more women in terms of their ministry role than he mentions men in terms of their ministry role. Like, Paul worked very closely with women. He says, greet one another with the Holy Ghost. That would have included women. Like men and women were working closely together as brothers and sisters in Christ. And the bounce your eyes philosophy makes us into two completely separate spheres that are dangerous to one another. And that's. That's not part of the body of Christ. And I think the more that we see each other as dangerous to one another, the more we'll never be able to defeat these sort of sexual issues. So that's one. That's one problem. And then the second one, which is what we found in the great sex rescue over and over again, is that this idea when. When women are taught all men struggle with lust, it's every man's battle. This has great repercussions for their sexual satisfaction and marital satisfaction later. Like when teen girls hear this in their youth group, even if they never believe it. This is what's so interesting is this is the one teaching that we measured where we found. Even if you don't believe it, if you're simply in a community that teaches this, it's going to cause you to trust your husband less. It's going to cause you to have sex more out of obligation than because you want to. It's going to cause orgasm rates to decrease. It's going to cause rates of sexual pain to increase. It's just not a pretty picture. And I think it's because it makes women feel like intimate is impossible because guys will only ever see me as a body part.

Yeah.

You know, so much of what I hear you saying there, Sheila, is how this message really kind of keeps us from healthy relationship. And, you know, the kingdom of God is all about relationship coming into relationship with the triune God, who's in constant relationship with himself, learning to have healthy relationship with one another in the church, in the body of Christ, male and female. And yeah, I think sin and broken sexuality has caused a lot of problems and messiness in that. But our reaction to it has been, let's just keep it all separate, which really undermines the fabric of relationship. And so what I hear you saying is like, we've got to find a way back to valuing healthy relationship, healthy boundaries within male, female relationships. Not pulling them apart, but in healthy ways, teaching them how to relate to one another.

Yep. And I keep saying Too. You know, Jesus didn't refuse to look at women. Jesus chose to truly see women. And studies have repeatedly shown that if you want men to see women not as sexual objects, but as people, the way to do that, stop focusing on body parts and start focusing on other aspects of the relationship. And that's actually quite possible to do. And so we haven't taught men to do because from the very beginning, you know, from the time guys hit puberty, they're told, be careful because you're going to lust after girls. And so their first thought when a girl comes into view is, oh, no, am I lusting after her body? And it's so interesting because. Because another thing that we found is that guys who don't grow up in the church and who become Christians later have far less of an issue with lust because they are taught as teenagers that these are just girls. They're just my friends. It's not a big deal. And in the church, we're taught this is a huge deal. And it's very difficult to unlearn that when you get older, when in your formative years in puberty, you are taught girls are going to be your biggest source of sin and you need to be careful around them.

Yeah, I think one of the things when it comes to this, just damaging messages for women. I mean, one, and I know so many people have talked about it, is it teaches that it's their fault that a man lusts. Like, I have to be careful about what I dress or. And I. Gosh, I've had conversations and have heard women who are ashamed of how maybe busty their body is or their own shape because they're taught this narrative. And so they carry this shame and this lower self worth when it's like, no, it's okay. If God made you to be visually appealing and beautiful in whatever context you live in, then fantastic. That's how God made you. You don't need to feel shame because God gave you whatever. I think that's one. I think another one is, what if women struggle if it's every man's battle? Well, like, what if I struggle with it as a female? You know, there's tons. Which. That's its own conversation and topic, for sure. But another one, as you were talking, Sheila, is. And I got that narrative, the purity culture narrative of, you know, avoid, avoid, avoid, be careful, be careful, be careful. And then you get married and it's like, okay, don't be careful anymore. Okay, like, go for it. And for me, that, like, I have fought so hard against Something for so long and now I'm taught to fight, fought to fight for that I'm taught to fight against for so long and then no fight for it. And it's like, well, which one is it? Like, I don't. I've trained myself to feel bad about these things or to avoid these things. And I would guess this is a armchair expert assessment. Okay. I would guess that men maybe have a little bit easier time making that adjustment to, oh, now I can do it. Okay, great. Like now I can have sex with my spouse. But in general, across the board, that change, that dynamic is difficult, I think for both genders. Like avoid, avoid, avoid. Be pure. Be pure, be pure. No. Okay, go for it.

You didn't get the great magic lever you got to pull at the end of your marriage. There's a lever, you know, and everything just magically changes. You didn't have one of those that.

No.

That's too bad.

Lord, what have you done?

Yeah, that actually is, that's another teaching that we measured that has a lot of bad repercussions for women is this idea the boys will push boundaries. And so you need to be the gatekeeper because that's what girls are taught is that guys can't help it. You know, if Shanti Feldon in her book for young women only says that 82% of boys feel little responsibility or little ability to stop in a make out situation. And so if you want to stop, it's better to not even start. And so girls are taught guys literally cannot help it. Girls are taught there's a point of no return where he won't be able to stop. And so you don't want, want to get him to the point of no return. And I always say, look, if a raccoon jumped on the bed, he would stop. If he can stop for a raccoon, like such thing. Okay, to do the raccoon test. But anyway, you know, but girls are taught this, that boys can't stop. And so it means that no matter where you are, you are being threatened. So girls are in a state of hyper vigilance when they're dating, even when they're engaged. Whatever, you know, you're thinking, I want to stay pure. I don't want to have sex before I'm married. But I know that that's entirely on me. He can't help it. And so she has to make sure that they don't go too far. So when they are kissing, when they are making whatever they're doing, her thoughts are not with what Am I feeling? What am I experiencing? Her thoughts are, is he getting carried away yet? And so she's always focusing on what he's feeling, not what she's feeling. And then when she gets married, she has no idea how to get in touch with her body.

Well, and. Okay, we need to move on to the next question because we probably could sit here for a long time, but something that off of what you just said is interesting, that if there is like a crack in the foundation of trust there, a wife will go into her marriage with that perspective. If I can't trust him to be self controlled now, then the ramifications are, where else can I not when we get married, it's not just now that this area is okay, that thought or that process doesn't just go away, that will transfer. That's another. And I didn't think about that until you said that. Okay, so let's, let's keep moving forward. According to your book, the Great Sex Rescue, the overarching negative sex message for churches is that men need sex and wives just need to give it to them or else they're depriving them, you know, attach on or they may go somewhere else. Whatever narratives you've heard, how might someone's struggle with pornography play into the stereotype?

With sex and marriage, we tend to see porn and sex as substitutes for one another. So we assume a guy is using porn because he's not getting sex. And most women will tell you that when they've gone to their church, their pastor's wife, their women's Bible study leader, their counselor, whoever, to talk about a husband's porn use, the very first thing they're asked is, are you giving him enough sex? A focus on the family show that we, that we quoted in the Great Sex rescue, you know, November 2019, they said on the air that probably the reason that men are watching porn so much is because women aren't giving enough sex. So this, this is the narrative. If he's watching porn, it's ultimately your fault. Kevin Lehman in Sheet Music said that, you know, for 10 years this man had struggled with porn. And then finally she realized that he was finding her period a very difficult time for him. And so if she provided oral sex during her period, then it made it far less of a difficult time for him. And so again, her period is being characterized as a difficult time for the husband. And so she needs to have oral sex. She needs to give him oral sex so that he doesn't betray her while she is bleeding from her vagina like I mean, like, it's really quite. And he repeats that in regards to the postpartum phase as well, that, you know, when she's postpartum that she should do something to help him so he's not climbing the walls. And so this idea that the most important thing in the marriage is that he gets, he ejaculates enough so that he won't watch pornography. And she is the one who's responsible for making sure that happens. And most books talk about at least every 72 hours. Yeah. And that 72 hour rule was, is not medical. We couldn't find it in any medical textbook. It was, it was said by James Dobson in a book in 1977. And then from then on, every evangelical took it as gospel truth, but it isn't actually in any way.

But we digress.

Yes.

Well, you're, you're preaching our, you're preaching our language, Sheila, because that's so much what we try to say at Pure Desire is like your sexual addiction, your struggle with pornography is not actually about sexual. And sometimes when a guy or a gal hears that, it's like at first confusion, like, well, of course it is. And it's like, no, you're going to find out that that need, that compulsive need for pornography or your other sexual outlets is actually being driven by much deeper stuff about where you're finding, you know, a place to escape, what makes you feel good, how you're figuring out your value and worth. And like, there's all these other things taking place that most of us are blind to. And for me, that was transformational because, you know, a dozen years ago, when I was stuck in my own binge purge issues with pornography, many of my worst times were during seasons where physically my wife and I were doing fantastic. And that was a huge, huge shame issue for me because of this message. It's like my wife and I are doing great. Like I'm getting what I need and yet I still go off and do the like. And I could not figure out this shame message, like, what was wrong with me. So for me, when I heard pure desire say it's not about sex, and I learned those deeper things, like, like all this stuff started to click into place and I just, I think most people haven't heard that message. So it's, it's really great to hear you say that.

Well, you know, because porn and sex are polar opposites, right? Because porn says, I'm going to use something for my own sexual gratification and to make me feel good about Myself and sex says this is something that we are going to share so that we experience something intimately together. And the problem is that in order for sex to be great, you have to be able to be completely vulnerable because it's supposed to be this true knowing of one another. And if you're carrying a lot of shame, you could physically be having a great time. But, you know, there's something really lacking in sex because she's not seeing all of you, and that leads to more shame. And then the thing about porn is that because of all the chemical dopamine, everything stuff that happens, it lets you feel strong without having to be strong. Right. It lets you feel. It feel like you've accomplished something without actually having to accomplish that thing. And so when you're feeling shame, you turn to the porn because it makes you feel strong, and then it just reinforces the shame and it gets in this big cycle. So sex doesn't keep anyone from porn, and porn can't keep anyone from sex.

Yeah.

And yet we're laying that on women's shoulders.

Well, and we've talked about this too. That though which, number one, the word that you said that's been used, the giving your husband sex like that alone, we should take issue with it is not a giving your spouse sex. It should be. What you said beautifully in the episode we did with you prior to this is that it's something that's mutually, as you just said too, just mutually together. It is a both, and we are together in this. But what's interesting is that if a wife is in fear of keeping him away from porn, is giving her husband sex, what she actually might be doing is just perpetuating the addictive mindset he has in general. Like, that is not a. It's her fault, that is that the situation has created this cycle where it is actually making it worse. Because the more you give him sex, the more he's viewing it that way. And even as I'm saying this, I want to make sure that this is, like, at the most unhealthy level when it comes to this. Not every marriage is here. That definitely not every marriage is here. But if someone is struggling with a binge purge or some form of sexual addiction, this mindset can cause the wife to perpetually make that addiction worse by giving her. Her spouse sex.

So one of the things that we try to emphasize here, Sheila, is we don't avoid the hard conversations. You know, we don't avoid the elephants in the room. And I think an elephant could be a lot of the pushback that you've gotten in. Trevor mentioned that we've heard about how you have responded to the book Love and Respect. And because Love and Respect for, you know, a lot of years has been a really popular title for marriages and churches to use. And so. And if anyone reads the book, though, particularly at the end, you talk about how like it was when you read Love and Respect for the first time that you put it down and were like, oh my goodness, like we need to respond to this. And essentially was your motivation to write the Great Sex Rescue. And so you had, at that time, you had to know that you were kind of like poking the bear like this. I'm. I'm going to be really, you know, poking at something that a lot of Christians love. So what, what made you willing to do that? I guess would be the first part of my question. And then also I would love to have you just respond to what would you say to the sincere Christian who really liked the book Love and Respect? And they're having a hard time maybe getting over how they hear you talk about it, like, because I'm sure you've had this conversation, like, how do you respond to that person to maybe help them consider a new paradigm, even if it means looking at some of this book they've loved and thinking about it a little differently, how do you respond to them? So two questions there, and I'll let you have at it.

Okay. Do you remember the drug thalidomide? It was used in the 1960s. It was used in the 1960s. It was a sign. It was given for all kinds of different conditions and it still is used to treat number of things today. It just isn't given to women anymore. But if taken when you were pregnant, it resulted in horrendous birth defects like no hands, no feet, missing limbs. And so they took it off the market. In the 1960s, thalidomide babies was a huge thing. The thing was it didn't affect everybody. It's not like every baby whose mom took thalidomide ended up like that. But those that it did affect, it wrecked, and it really affected them badly. And so I would say to someone who read Love and Respect and loved it, that's wonderful. You know what? God can use anything in your life. But we need to be very aware that there are certain things that do harm. And Love and Respect is one such thing that has harmed a lot of people. And in fact, what we found in our study is that it's the number one named resource that caused harm in Women's marriages. So, of the 20,000 women that we surveyed, Love and Respect was rated the number one harmful book. And I want to say three things about why, if I can. The first is. And the question about why we addressed Love and Respect, we were not anticipating this because I originally wrote about Love and Respect's take on sex, which I'll get to in a minute. But when I opened the floodgates, what happened was I didn't hear so much about how love and respect handled sex. I heard from women who had been abused after reading Love and Respect. And I now have, I think, roughly 1500 stories. People keep sending them to me. I get several every day. They're all over social media. It's a very damaging book for women that perpetuates abuse and enables abuse. He says. He literally says. He talks about a woman whose husband has withering rage, so much so that she feels like she wants to run away and hide, that she must resist the impulse and instead give him unconditional respect, which includes sex on demand. He talks about a woman who had her husband leave the home because he was physically abusive, but because he repented, she brought him back in. And now he warns her that she must learn to respect him and not provoke his anger. Anyone who works with abuse victims will tell you that love bombing is very common, that people who are kicked out of the house will now love bomb you and repent. And it doesn't mean anything if they don't prove it over time. He says that husbands might be drinking and straying, so they might be alcoholics and having affairs, but you need to give them unconditional respect anyway. So very damaging book for abuse. That's number one. Number two, I challenge people to read the book and ask yourself this question. If a woman has genuine concerns about how her husband is treating her, what does the book tell her to do? Because what you will see over and over again is when a woman has genuine concerns, she's labeled disrespectful.

Yeah.

And she's never told. Basically, she is never told. A proper way to bring anything up until the appendix, where he gives an example of a woman with a workaholic husband and what she is supposed to do. She's supposed to say two to three sentences to him, honey, we love you. Your children need you. You're such a great influence in their life, but we're concerned that you're not here enough. And then she's supposed to say nothing else for 10 to 20 days, and that's all she's Allowed to do that is not in line with Matthew 18 of how you handle someone in sin. That is not in line with iron sharpening iron. That is just simply not biblical. We need to be able to speak to one another. And he never tells you how to do that. And so as a guy, you might read this book and think it's wonderful, but imagine reading it as a woman whose husband is porn addicted and see what does it tell her to do, because what it tells her to do is absolutely nothing but just keep giving him sex on demand or a husband who won't work. She has no recourse. And then finally, those are big picture issues, which I think are the most important, but they're not actually the ones that I deal with. What I deal with is the sex side, which is important, but it's not as important as abuse. Okay, but for the great sex rescue, we created a rubric of 12 markers of healthy female sexuality. So 12 questions that we were asking. Things like, does the book talk about the benefits of sex, including intimacy, pleasure for both, etc. Or does it only talk about a husband's physical release? Does the book talk about a woman's ability to orgasm? Or does it imply that women don't enjoy sex? Does the book. You know, so we had 12 different questions, and you could score between 0 and 4. A book like the Gift of Sex by Clifford and Joyce Penner scored 47 out of 48. Great book. Boundaries in marriage, 42 out of 48. Great book. So it was very, very easy to score. Well, yeah. Love and Respect literally got zero.

Wow.

Like, zero out of four. There was no redeeming thing. There was no mention of women's pleasure. No mention of women even being capable of orgasm. In. He said, one of the benefits of sex is that it takes so little time. Okay, like. And so I. I understand a lot of people like it, but let me just say that if a book is implicated in enabling abuse and if it handles sex so badly that maybe we. It's time to look for better resources, because this isn't right. This is hurting too many people.

Yeah, I think that's a great answer, Sheila. And it just makes me think about. I wonder how many. You know, in our Christian world, books tend to kind of catch fire. And I think love and respect. I remember as a pastor, we used it because it had a neat kind of small group curriculum, video series. You know, came a little block thing that showed all the dynamics. It was just an easy sell for small groups. And so we used it, and I Wonder if, like Cliff and Joyce Penner's book that's in your study and based on actual rubrics, far superior in actually helping a couple develop intimacy because they're not as slick in the marketing. It's not had quite the small group, you know, buzz that love. It just never caught on in the church the same way. And I think sometimes we have to be aware of, like, maybe we've used something just because a lot of people use it and it fits well, but we haven't read slowly enough to really ask, is this the kind of message that's helping our whole church, men and women, grow into the fullness of the relationships God intended for them. So I, I just, I appreciate that you're being really honest about things that probably a lot of us, even those of us as pastors who led the study, we just didn't ask the right questions because, like, oh, nice small group study. Let's use it. We emphasize the parts we liked. And yeah, I remember when I read through some of these things you're talking about, I noticed, but just like, yeah, you know, just moved on and focused on the good stuff, you know. But I think we need to call the question where there are things like this is damaging people. And. Yeah, and like you said, didn't damage everybody. And there may be people that benefited from it, but let's take an honest look at the dark underside of it so we can analyze is this useful or not?

Well, and Sheila, I think one of the things I remember an email we got about the perspective of love and respect, you know, like, and it was a strong email, you know, wanting to defend it. And one of the, one of the things that was talked about was the us versus them mentality. And, you know, and I personally struggle with this too. The idea of how critical do we need to walk into a new resource or someone's teaching or someone's theology and just tear it apart and like, well, this is where they're wrong. This is where they're wrong. This is where we're wrong. And what I hear you saying is not that perspective. You're not just being critical for being critical sake. You're not just being critical so you can, you know, create a new paradigm or rethink, you know, how to do this. I think what, what we're doing is we're looking at the effects and trying to think through it, as I think, Nick, you were just saying, not just how I interpret this, but think about how this can be applied widely to the people around us and evaluating Is this the best message we can teach? Is this the stuff that's actually helping people? Because as we're talking, I just hear that. I hear someone maybe saying, like, well, you're just being too critical of it. And I think that we need to just.

1500 emails, stories like, exactly, exactly. That's. Man, that's a serious number.

But what I'm getting at, though, too, is that it's not just that, like, you are not being this awful, terrible pastor because you were using this new book. Like, but what. To me, what's important is if we realize that we have 1500 stories and it gets a zero out of 48 in this rubric, that then we have the humility to say, okay, we were wrong. Okay, I see that this has impact in a negative way for so many people. And then not only, like, humility to admit that to yourself, but then also to talk about it, to be public about it, like, look, we did this. This wasn't the right resource to bring to our church, and here's why. And not in a way that you're bashing these people. You know, love and respect is stupid. The author's a moron. He knows nothing. It's not that. It is like believing the best out of that person. The heart is there, but the application is wrong. And look at the damage that it is. So I. I just. I'm thinking about that person who's listening, thinking, you're just being way too critical. And I want to speak to that person and say, that's not the heart of what we're talking about. The heart of what we're talking about is something that maybe was written for the right perspectives that over time we have seen has done far more damage than help in specific areas. And it's okay to call that out, and it's okay to deviate from that perspective in that line of thinking.

Yeah. And, you know, I used to hold up love and respect at marriage conferences and recommend that people read it. Like, my husband and I teach at marriage conferences. And. And I assumed it was a great book because everybody was reading it, and I had never read it, and I just assumed it was good. And then when I sat down and read it and I realized, oh, crap, this. We are just. But, you know, Jesus. Jesus tells the story of the fact that he is the kind of shepherd that will leave the 99 to go after the 1. And we need to be the kind of church that says, if someone's hurting, if this has harmed people, that should matter to us. It shouldn't say, well, it didn't harm that many because one matters to Jesus and it should matter to us. And it's far more than one. This is the one that is the most of. I'm not saying it's the most harmful Christian book, okay. Created to be, as Help Me by Debbie Pearl is far more harmful. But of the mainstream best selling evangelical books, this is objectively the most harmful. If you look at its effect on abuse and its effect on sex. And we do need to grapple with that and ask, okay, how can we start looking at resources that don't harm, that do have good messages that don't enable abuse? And I think that's really important.

I just want to remind our listener too that Sheila and her team interviewed, I mean, or surveyed 20,000 women, lots. Not like they had a couple of conversations at the corner coffee store and made these conclusions. And it's like, this is based on a lot of work and effort. And so I'm super impressed by that, the, just the breadth of the study you guys did.

Absolutely. So let's keep going. We're talking about, we've already talked about this, that sex and porn being like opposites, right. Looking at them, but then also, like, the way to avoid porn is to have sex. Right? Like that whole perspective. So how might a spouse who knows their husband or wife is simply using them as that replacement for porn? And you talk about this a little bit in the book, like what one Christian book actually recommends as it being his methadone quote, which I don't even know what that word means, so could you define that for me, please?

Yeah. So every man's battle, when it was first written in 2000, literally called Women the methadone for their husband's sex addictions. That said, you know, when he quits cold turkey, be like a merciful vial of methadone for him. Now, if someone is addicted to opioid, opioids like heroin, that sort of thing, and you're trying to wean you off of them, doctors will often recommend methadone because it isn't addictive in the same way. It gives you a sort of high, it's like a substitute. But then they can slowly wean you off of the methadone. So it replaces the opioid. You do it with a prescription, with a doctor's help, and it weans you off. And so calling women methadone is highly problematic for several reasons. Because first of all, it's saying to women what he really wants is this other thing. But you can be this cheap substitute which will satiate him temporarily, you know, to keep him from going after the thing he really wants, but it's not ever going to cure him of wanting this other thing which is better than you. Wow. It's just so terribly dehumanizing and terribly. It's just awful in every way. And so, you know, I tell women or men whose wives are struggling in this area, this is. This is primarily an issue of intimacy issues, shame issues, you know, addiction issues. And that's what needs to be dealt with, you know, and so go to the accountability groups, go get some counseling, and then work on how to rebuild intimacy in other areas of your relationship so that you can truly be vulnerable with each other. Because it's only when you can rebuild, like, real vulnerability, when you can. When you can truly see each other inside and out, that you can grow a healthy sex life anyway. And the problem is that people who have addictions of some sort, whether it is a sex addiction, pornography addiction, or even a video game addiction, a drug addiction, alcohol addiction, whatever, they're not able to be vulnerable because there's so much shame and there's so much running from the truth in their life. And so we need to overcome that in order to really grow the intimacy from. From which sex derives.

Yeah, we really want to help the couple recapture what sex is meant for and how it's a part of. Just a part of an overarching, healthy relationship that's moving towards greater intimacy, greater trust, greater, you know, fun together and celebration. And when all of that is wrapped into the growth of our sex life versus just trying to fix someone's problem, it becomes a different ballgame. And so, you know, as a follow up to that, Sheila, what would you say to the spouse? And, you know, and we're talking primarily wives here, that they. They genuinely want to help their spouse who in the past has had addictive issues, struggled with pornography. And in this question, I'm kind of assuming that that spouse is. They're working on their. They're in some kind of recovery group. Like, they've genuinely repented of their struggles and want to be free of it. And so the wife wants to be a part of helping in that process. How can they interact with their spouse sexually so that, on the one hand, they're not enabling the problem or taking them back into it and just being objectified and being part of a struggle, but at the same time, can they help? So what do you say to that spouse in a scenario like that?

Yeah, so if we're talking about an area where, first of all, she needs to feel safe. I think that's really important, especially if a porn addiction has been long standing and there's a lot of betrayal, trauma or something. So we need to be in the space where we're assuming that he's heavily into recovery and trust has been rebuilt and all of that stuff.

Yeah. Or at least they're on their way.

They're moving that direction, so they're good. I really, I think a lot of exercises that are just practice being naked together. You know, Andrew Bauman, in his book the Sexually Healthy man, wrote about what it's like to just be naked together and just look into each other's eyes for a couple of minutes. It's extremely vulnerable, you know, or pray over each other's bodies. Right. Like spend some time just touching each other. Don't just get right to the main event, but actually spend a lot of time really experiencing intimacy in every way. And that can be a very, very scary thing. Like it's. It's weird to look into each other's eyes for a long time. You want to look away. You feel like, ah, like what are they thinking? You know, but. But lean into that. You know, lean into some of these intimacy exercises. And it really does help you feel like I'm seen. Because one of the things that women really need is to know that they're seen. But also he needs to feel safe seeing her, and that can be kind of overwhelming. And he needs to feel safe being seen as well. And so, you know, lean into more of those and do a lot more just play where he's honestly just exploring her body and seeing what feels good as opposed to seeing what he feels good with. Yeah, right. Like really learn her body. And I think that can help both of them just get into things slowly and have it feel a lot more like this is us doing something together where we truly are knowing each other rather than this is me having sex.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think a couple things that come to mind for me, just from some former conversations we've had on the podcast, like it's okay to have a period of time where you aren't having sex, where it's a planned upon thing that the time that maybe we had done that in the past or the evenings, you know, if they have a schedule or they're planned, which I'm learning is actually sexier than like I originally thought before I got married, planned sex. But what I'm getting at it. I'm sorry. What I'm getting at is that spending that time, like playing cards or doing a puzzle or going on a walk or doing something interactive. My wife and I just got back from vacation and when we're walk, we went and walked on the beach, which was actually like less romantic than you would think on the Oregon coast. But what was cool is that it just facilitates an opportunity to have conversation. And we got a lot deeper, a lot faster than I even thought we would. And so creating situations like that, which down the road, if you are doing the recovery work and you are establishing trust, will make your sex life better. It will. Because you're getting to know each other on that intimate level. And so I think that's probably the only one that I'd share is just. That's something that I think is really important, is that planned upon abstinence, if you will, from that specific arena of your marriage to help invest in other ways that are going to actually make it better in the future. Yeah.

And get a hobby, you know, Get a hobby you could do together. Like just something that's fun, where you're laughing. I think people need to learn to laugh again. And laughing is very hard to do unless you're just spending time together. That's low key. Laughing doesn't naturally happen unless you're just. Yeah, unless you just got time together. So.

Totally. So let's get into some of the research that you guys did. What effects do you see, like direct effects that pornography has on sex inside of marriage, both male and female perspective perspectives?

Pretty much everything that you would think. Okay. Especially for. For women. I haven't. I know we analyze the data for the guys. I haven't read that manuscript in a while, so I forget. But I mean, especially for women. I know that the more that he uses porn, the more she has sex only because she feels like she has to. And the more that her overriding emotion after sex is one of feeling used rather than feeling close, the more that her primary motivation for having sex is to feel is to feel good. Like going into it knowing I am going to feel good, then the less likely she is to feel used afterwards. Okay. But the more that he uses porn, the less foreplay he does. And ironically, the more the better lover he feels he is.

Huh.

So there's an irony there.

So you know, she is not, if she's going into sex knowing he's not going to do a lot of foreplay knowing that he doesn't really. Because remember that what porn shows women like is not what women like in general. Like, porn gives a very unrealistic picture of. Of women's sexual response cycles. And so a lot of guys don't realize that what they're doing does not, is not it. And so, you know, going back to the beginning and relearning everything you know about sex is so important. Like, if you're not married yet and you have porn in your background, realize you know nothing. In fact, if you have porn in the background, you now know less than nothing. Like, you know, negative.

Right, Right.

Yeah. And so when you get married, realize you know less than nothing. And so just start with learning how each other's bodies work. Now, if you're already married, you've been married for a while, realize you might need to go back to the beginning and just. And really understand how our body works. And. Because I think a lot of. A lot of women haven't stressed to their husbands what they need, because, first of all, they often. They don't know. Women don't always know what we want. We don't always know how our bodies work either. So we need a guy to help us figure it out. But also, if you are married to someone using porn and you feel like, I have to have sex who doesn't watch porn, then you're kind of having sex under threat. So it's. It's far less likely that you're even going to tell him, please help me feel good. And so you just. You need to go back to the beginning and realize, let's just focus on making sure this is good for both of us, and let's learn each other's language in this. Let's discover our own language, how we're going to talk about it, how we're going to tell each other what we like, how we're going to figure it out, it doesn't need to happen overnight, but that should at least be the goal. And just going back to the beginning on that, I think, is really, really key.

Yeah.

Yeah. I want to go back to something you said at the beginning of that question, Sheila, that if. If you're a married couple or person listening to this podcast and you're wondering, do we have a healthy sex life? I think the best measurement is how do both of you feel when it's over? It's not how frequent is it happening. It's not how strong or powerful is the climax. It's that question of when we're done, do we both feel appreciated, valued, seen, joyful, grateful? Because if only one of you feels that way, but the other one feels, like you said, used, not noticed, unimportant. Like, that's not healthy. And it may mean in those conversations, having a willingness to ask that question of, how do you feel when we're done having sex? And if your spouse says, yeah, like, I'm glad it's over, or like, you got what you needed, like, okay, something. Something is needs to be addressed here, because even if you're having sex all the time, but that's how it's leaving one spouse or the other feeling. There's work to be done.

Yeah. It's not playing its role in the marriage that it's supposed to.

Yeah.

Yep. And I think one of the other things that came up in our surveys, which might interest your audience, is that I think men have been taught that if I have a sexual feeling, so if I. If I experience something which I might interpret as lust, again, I'm not actually sure it is. I think often we can just have sexual feelings, and they're not less. But if I have a sexual feeling, this is now a threat because this means that I'm either sinning right now or I'm about to sin. And so therefore, what I need to do is have sex with my wife so that I don't sin. And so I get. I get lots of women writing in saying, you know, my husband wants sex at least once a day, if not more, because I'm supposed to do this so he isn't tempted.

Yeah.

And. And I think a lot of the. The language that we've used around lust has taught guys, lust is such a problem, and the only way to defeat it is to use your wife.

Yeah.

And that just needs to change, because that's not healthy.

Yeah.

So talk a little bit more about that, Sheila, what does it look like to rescue our life from pornography? What culture has taught us, what we've learned about lust and fearing it and how to fix it. Like how. How do we rescue our sex life so we can have the. The kind of intimacy within marriage that God intended for us?

I think it begins with understanding, and I believe we talked about this on the last podcast. But the. The definition of sex is not intercourse. It's not his ejaculation. It's not his physical release. Sex is an intimate, mutual, pleasurable experience that you both feel, and I love how you just put it, where afterwards you feel seen and valued, etc. Etc. That's what sex is. And so now the question is, how do we build that?

Yeah.

And that's going to look different for different couples. You know, for some couples that are going through a big recovery, It's. It's actually quite a large job, you know, and it's going to take a lot of humility for other people. It just simply takes that mind shift of understanding it and then get there quite quickly. And I have talked to so many couples where porn has been in the past, and it honestly is in the past. Like, I know more couples who have gotten over this than couples who are currently dealing with it. And I think we have a very defeatist attitude about porn often, you know, that this is going to wreck my life forever. That's not of Jesus. It really isn't. I'm not saying it's not a real struggle for people, and I don't mean to diminish the struggle that a lot of people have. I just want to give some hope and some perspective in that. Yeah, this is real. But when we start adopting God's mindset for sex, and then we start working it specifically building into our marriages, you know, how can I build that intimacy in? How can I help my wife feel seen? How can I help my husband feel seen both in and out of the bedroom? I think we can get there, and we don't need to see sex as something which is always going to be this difficult thing because I'm in recovery, but it can actually be this beautiful thing which can make the recovery and everything else seem so much smaller because we've understood what life in Jesus fullness is all about.

Yeah. Gosh, there's like, again, and this was the first time we interviewed you, too. I felt the same way. Like, there's just so much to think about, and there's so many different applications to this, both in my personal life and also in the way that I communicate with other people about pornography, sex, marriage, relationships, intimacy, all of that. This is so good. All right, so this is a big question, and it's something that we have a lot of people who listen, who are in leadership of church, who are pastors or have some sort of influence in their church community. How should the church teach on pornography from what you have researched, from the stories that you've heard from, you know, the understanding of these damaging messages that we've gotten from Christian literature. And what. What do you see the Bible teaching on pornography? So what? Two questions. So what does the church need to teach or how should it teach? And also, what do you see from Scripture on pornography?

I think the very first message the church needs to. Needs to teach is that pornography contributes to sex trafficking and is actually a social justice issue. That's what is so Rarely talked about. We tend to frame pornography as a sin, which it is for sure a moral problem. Yeah, yeah. And you know what? Generation Z and the generation that is growing up after generation Zed, whatever they're called, I don't know. But the younger generations, they understand justice issues. They really do. And I think if we frame it that way from the very beginning, it's going to be so much easier for them to withstand it. It really is. So that's number one. Number two is to talk about it as something which many people struggle with, but not all.

Yeah.

And many people have struggled with it and they've gotten over it. And people not boys, like, don't, don't, don't frame it as a male problem because there are a lot of women who are increasingly using it as well. But when we talk about it as something which all guys will struggle with, like it's every man's battle, that is a really self defeating thing, as we've already talked about. And that can make guys think I'm not a real man unless I'm struggling with this, which is not true. So, you know, this is a potential problem for a lot of people, but it isn't for everybody. And then I would talk about deliberate things that you can do to make it less of a problem as opposed to how to, how to white knuckle to stop yourself. So, like, recognize your triggers. Fill your life with a lot of good things, you know, like don't have a lot of time where you're sitting around your bedroom by yourself on a screen.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, yeah, like, like volunteer, you know, get involved in ministry, help out at a food bank, like fill your life with big things. And these things are going to be less important in your life. And so instead of trying to make something smaller and, and always focus on the thing that we want to be smaller, let's spend a lot more time talking to our people about the things we want to be bigger. And I think that's what we're not doing enough of.

It's a good word.

Yeah.

And while I'm confident our Canadian friends all understand generation Zed, for our American friends, that's Jed. I appreciate the Canadian.

There's that cultural bridge that you just made.

I haven't heard Zed in a long time. So I really appreciate that. No, I, I love you said, I love you said though, about it being a social justice issue. Because I think one of the primary lies that men and women listen to who are struggling is no one is being hurt because we think of it as a moral issue that, well, yeah, I choose this and it's quote unquote wrong or sinful, but no one's really being hurt. It's just a choice I'm making. And if the church could just continually draw the connection to sex trafficking and abuse of women and devaluing of human life and bodies as commodities and all these things that are like so obvious and researched even in the secular world, and we're not even talking churches or faith that did this research. This is like the secular world saying pornography fuels the demand for sex trafficking and abuse and slavery. Well then when, when my little voice in my head says, well, no one's being hurt, it's like, whoa, whoa, no, millions of people are being hurt. And I do not want to contribute to anything that's a part of that. So it just, I think can really revolutionize the way someone thinks about pornography and what's in our world right now.

Yeah. And I think you can make tons of application and argument from the way that the one anothers are taught in scripture. Looking at the life of Jesus, how he valued people as. Sheila, you've talked about a lot on the episode, but just keeping that in mind that the Bible does speak, maybe not quote unquote directly to the medium of pornography, but it does talk to sexual purity, it does talk to intimacy, it does talk to valuing the imago day like seeing people as who they are in their identity. Sheila, this conversation has been great. Again, we have a lot of fun with you. We will absolutely have you on again. We're excited about your next book. We'll make sure in the show notes that great sex rescue is in there. Also your other books, your blog, website, all of that stuff. I know you have a great podcast, the Bare Marriage podcast as well. We just appreciate you what you are working toward and continuing to accomplish. And obviously with so many women sending you their stories, like what you're doing is working and it is valuable and we just appreciate you and appreciate being.

With us, the message we need.

Absolutely. So thank you.

Well, thank you so much. It's been great to be back.

And wherever you're at on your journey, pure desire is here to help create a roadmap for your healing. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual brokenness or betrayal trauma, go to PureDesire.org and let's start the healing healing journey today. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Each week we put out new content to help you on the road to freedom from the effects of sexual brokenness and betrayal, trauma. And lastly, never stop being healthy.