Step into the inaugural episode of an enlightening series on human sexuality with hosts Jason and Lauren Vallotton, accompanied by special guests Cole and Caitlin Zick. Together, they embark on a journey of exploration and discovery, unraveling the complexities of desire, intimacy, and spirituality in the context of God's design for sex.
In this foundational episode, they delve into four fundamental questions that set the stage for deeper exploration in the episodes to come:
Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
Step into the inaugural episode of an enlightening series on human sexuality with hosts Jason and Lauren Vallotton, accompanied by special guests Cole and Caitlin Zick. Together, they embark on a journey of exploration and discovery, unraveling the complexities of desire, intimacy, and spirituality in the context of God's design for sex.
In this foundational episode, they delve into four fundamental questions that set the stage for deeper exploration in the episodes to come:
Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
Welcome back everyone to dates, mates and babies with the Valentines Babe. This is a wonderful day.
Speaker 2:This is a good day.
Speaker 1:We've been waiting for this for a long time we have.
Speaker 2:We've been planning this. It's been in the works. You guys, this is the first week of our series on sex. Now I know you're excited. We've been telling you about this for a few weeks, so you've been anticipating it. But you're really in for a treat, because for the next five or six weeks we're going to be diving into all kinds of topics nuanced around sex. Yeah, and today, to kick off the series, we're really excited to have our very close friends Cole and Caitlin Zick with us. Yep, welcome, cole and Kate. They've been guests on the podcast before, and only once though.
Speaker 2:Only one time. I can't you know what. We've only been doing this podcast for a year, so that's fair.
Speaker 2:So we had them back today. We wanted to have this conversation with them because maybe I'll actually let Caitlin kind of explain what they've done with their life for the last half a decade. It gives context for why they were our top choice to be in this conversation with us for episode one of the series on sex. But yeah, it's going to be a good episode. Kate, do you want to kind of tell us a little bit about your family, what you guys do for work and then what you have done? That would help our listeners know who you are and why you're having this conversation with us today. Yes, amazing.
Speaker 4:Cole and I met when I was a senior in high school, fell in love.
Speaker 4:He swept me off my feet, but if he would have met me just two years prior, it would have been a different story.
Speaker 4:So I was kind of this promiscuous party girl who found Jesus when I was 16.
Speaker 4:But he was kind of the poster boy for purity and so we collided shortly after I got saved and fell in love and so, honestly, I think the trajectory of our life stories coming together and what that meant in our early years of dating and then in our early years of marriage, really made us super passionate about the topic of sex from a young age, when we were 19, we would dream about leading a sexual purity movement and speaking into it, and so we were youth pastors for 10 to 13 years leading youth movements until we moved here to Reading to lead moral revolution, which, if listeners, if you're not familiar with it, it was started by Chris Valton in 2009 and it's an amazing movement that exists to tell the world a better story about sex.
Speaker 4:There's resources for all things whether you're a parent, whether you're a single, whether you're dating, whether you're married all things on God's design for sexuality. So Cole and I got to lead that ministry together for six years and we are currently lead pastors and we got to stay here in Reading with all of our friends and lead pastor of the church Risen King here in Reading.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Cole and Caitlin have been kind of in and amongst our community for the last six or so years, but recently took senior pastor roles at a neighboring church in town, which has been amazing. But back to what Caitlin said they led a movement focused on telling a better story about human sexuality in the context of relationship with God, and I don't know any better speakers on the topic, honestly. So no brainer. They live down the road. Why wouldn't we have them as guests on this podcast episode?
Speaker 2:But today, you guys, in order to kick off this series again, it's probably going to be five or six weeks long on sex, we wanted to talk specifically about human sexuality in general, not necessarily focused at married couples, not necessarily focused at single people, but actually just big questions that you know we have to be able to answer as people that walk with God. Why did God create sex? Why did God create us with a sex drive? What happens to us during sex? How do you manage a sex drive? These big questions that every single person walking with God has to navigate at some point.
Speaker 1:And add something. Yeah, of course, these are topics that a lot of people don't talk about. It's very hard to find Christian leaders that are actually tackling these topics head on and giving people not just the science, like behind sex or talking about why God created it, but actual practical tools, and so that's a big part of what we wanted to do with this series. It's to really set people up for success. Talk about the topic and then set you up for success, right?
Speaker 2:So context wise too, just to say I mean this. Our entire aim with this podcast is to help equip people for relational health in the context of relationship with God, and so our sexuality is an incredibly part of that key part of who we are as people, created in the image of God, and so you know, unfortunately, very few of us were taught this level of information.
Speaker 2:growing up, we didn't receive this information. Largely we didn't receive this information from our parents, from our churches, from our youth leaders. Like a lot of us didn't grow up understanding what we're going to unpack today, and so I just want to be the mom to be like. Put your listening ears on. This is a very important conversation.
Speaker 3:Where's old woman Valentine coming out?
Speaker 4:and maybe ear buds if you're listening around your little children. There you go, thank you.
Speaker 2:Mom and Kate. Yes, you're right, absolutely not an episode, probably for little kids.
Speaker 1:There's so much brokenness, in pain inside of our stories because of we never actually had healthy training and teaching about sex and sexuality, and how to manage your sex drive and why God created it and so there's so much shame you can't even ask questions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, something's not going right. The idea of asking questions is terrifying.
Speaker 1:So this is so fun to like break this open for everyone and really dive in and equip people. I want to let's start with. Why did God create sex? Great question it's my favorite story around this. I'm just going to tell it really like I'm sure we'll tell it later, but is we were like three years into marriage.
Speaker 2:I don't know that we were that far.
Speaker 1:Maybe it was two, I don't know.
Speaker 2:It was earlier.
Speaker 1:No, we're at the second house that we lived in.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And I remember you sitting on the bed. It was just like a really painful season. I was coming out of a nervous breakdown. We had the just blended a family. Everything was crazy.
Speaker 2:Great school age kids. Yeah, so stressed out and super easy stuff and Lauren starts going.
Speaker 1:I don't even know why God created sex, because all the pressure and the anxiety and what is the point for sex drive being lower and again we talk about we'll talk about that later on when we talk about marriage and stuff. Yeah, but that is a real question of why did God design us and design sex to be a part of our life.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Let's go Cole. It's, I mean it. Probably asking that question is a super critical question that a lot of people don't ask. It's actually a question.
Speaker 3:I spent a ton of time searching the Bible trying to understand why would the Lord create us this way? A couple other things in that that help unpack that is. Number one, identifying how different it is for humans from animals. Right, because that actually is a big part of it. When you're understanding the way human behavior works, humans have primarily learned behaviors, whereas animals are almost all instinctive. Where it just comes to them, where sex is instinctive for animals, for humans it's not what we experience and some psychologists would still put it in the instinctive bucket, but they say that it. Even if it's instinctive, it breaks all the instinctive rules. Here's why this matters.
Speaker 3:The reason that this is a big part of it is because you have an entirely different intention. You look at your relationships your dad, your mom, your sister, your brothers, your friends. A healthy person doesn't have sex with anybody besides their spouse. I mean just the idea of doing that with a family member, no matter how close you are to a family member, is disgusting and could make you vomit in your mouth instantly. Maybe you're vomiting right now, just from me painting that picture. That gives you a pretty good indication and understanding of what he means in Matthew 19 when he says leave your father and mother cleave to your wife. What God brings together, let no one separate, and he says the two will become one flesh.
Speaker 3:Now that we've understood even what goes on in the mind and the brain when you're experiencing sex. Your brain is releasing neurotransmitters that are bonding. It's just tons of bonding juice, tons of happy chemicals dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin. This isn't probably new to most people. I think at this point that's pretty common knowledge, but at a level that you don't experience it in any other way.
Speaker 3:A man doesn't experience dopamine on a camping trip with his dad the way that he does with lovemaking with his wife. He doesn't experience it from playing football the way that he does having sex. He doesn't experience. A woman doesn't experience it when it's done right. He doesn't. There's no other place in your life that you get as concentrated of a spike as you do in lovemaking. And when you, as you start to look at scripture and he says he's the bride groom, we're the bride. Your marriage with each other is meant to be an earthly representation of how deeply I love humanity. Well, he then had to create a bonding agent that would cause me to irrationally leave the comfort of my childhood home, leave my dad's bank account, leave my bedroom, my parents, my dad, I left a three to four thousand square foot house to move into a 600 foot apartment in Sacramento where we couldn't even barely afford our food.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I couldn't wait to go be broke with Caitlin.
Speaker 2:Totally yeah, it's real and I literally it didn't matter.
Speaker 3:We had our futon was like this wood futon. We had to glue it together like every six months. Our mattress was donated gross. Our dining room table was donated. I mean, we had nothing. I had an old Ford probe that you actually didn't have even had that. I had a van that you couldn't shut the door. I mean, I, we couldn't have been more broken. We got married, yeah, and I couldn't wait. Yeah, why? Because there was this drive inside of me to bond to her in a way that I'd bonded to no other human. And now that psychology has advanced and we know what's going on in the brain, we've discovered oh, sex bonds stronger than any other experience, Wow. And so it actually empowers us to fulfill the mandate to leave your father and mother cleave to your spouse, two people becoming one. And now that God's brought that together, let no one separate. They were actually biologically bonded to each other through sex to have a unique relationship that we don't have with anybody else. That's incredible.
Speaker 1:That's the why I mean. It's amazing. Right Like the God, god's design is so crafty that he would go. Every time you are intimate with your partner, with your spouse, you are deepening and reinforcing this bond Absolutely. It's unlike any other relationship that you'll ever have. Yep.
Speaker 2:So I think this is all great in the context of marriage, yeah, which we're going to dive into in a deep way later in this series.
Speaker 3:We should probably stop seeing deep in these conversations, because every time someone says deep, my mind goes.
Speaker 1:You're supposed to. You're in charge of your relationship.
Speaker 3:Alright cool, we're going to talk about how to manage this. I'm not the only one. If you're listening, comment, if you relate, it's okay.
Speaker 2:I will refrain from that word. Anyways, I think this is great when we're talking about marriage, but the reality is we might spend two, three, four decades of our life as very sexual beings that aren't married. Yep, and so understanding. Why did God create me with a sex drive if I can't actually do anything with that sex drive outside of marriage?
Speaker 4:He loves torment.
Speaker 1:Right, I just think this is an important question Torture what would we say about that?
Speaker 3:That's just like why I love watching my children pull weeds in the backyard.
Speaker 4:Okay, I have a thought here. So God obviously gave us a desire to have sex, because it's what I think Cole kind of depicted was this burning desire to unite ourselves with someone else. And so he gave it to us as something that would draw us in such a unique way that isn't like a sibling or a friend or a parent. It's this unique drawing and yearning and I think we spend those years pre marriage hearing that sex is just a physical encounter. So I think that's the confusing part. So when we hear you know, I grew up anybody in our age demographic grew up hearing like you ain't nothing but mammals. Let's just do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. Uh huh, we just heard we're. We are different than that.
Speaker 2:We have a desire, right, I know like how did that get approved?
Speaker 4:Like how was that? A thing I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:But so yeah, the world tells us over and over it's just a physical encounter, like, why are you so emotional? So we spend our pre marriage lives thinking, why am I so emotional? Or we learn how to sear our emotions toward it and we basically, instead of preparing for marriage, are practicing divorce because we're together, separate, together, separate, together, separate. So we're not learning sex, we're not learning the intimacy.
Speaker 3:We're not learning lovemaking yeah.
Speaker 4:We're learning this, we're not understanding that it impacts everything. We can't separate spirit, soul and body. So when we get to understand why God created sex, from the beautiful part of this unity, this bond, this thing that causes him to be jealous over me and protective over me, you're like that's beautiful, I want that. But I think for most of us, or myself, when I would have asked the question, why did God create sex? It's because I had only heard of it or experienced it by the hands of the world, not the way God defined it.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, and I've got a theory on this that I mean I can't prove. One of the challenges when they try to look at this the results of pornography they can only assume what the results are. The reason that they can't do a real study is because they can't get a large enough control group of people that haven't ever looked at it to compare those who have looked at it.
Speaker 2:Wow, it's sad, it is sad.
Speaker 3:So that's one of the interesting things to me is when you look, when you look in Song of Songs and he says do not awake in love before it's so desires. What he's saying is do not awake in love until the right time. The challenge with our culture right now is sex drives are being awakened way too early. Yeah, so yes, God gave us a sex drive, but he didn't intend it to be awakened so early in the life of an individual as it is right now, Totally and here's where this I have a strong belief around this. So you guys know my story. I've never looked at porn, never been with any woman. She's been it for me.
Speaker 1:I would barely even her. Oh, my gosh, not today yet, but yeah so for me.
Speaker 3:I actually there was a point when I was like 20 or 21, before we got married when I was 22. And I actually was like I wonder if I have something wrong with me, because all the guys I knew couldn't stop masturbating, couldn't stop having sex. Guys that I've that I looked at. I thought, man, they love God and yet they can't stop having sex. Or love sex God, and yet they can't stop having sex or looking at porn or chasing girls Like it created a massive conflict in me and I thought, rather than thinking, oh, that's a broken way to do it, I thought I must, I might have something wrong, because I don't feel like I need sex, the way that they need sex, and but the reality of it is still at 21. I mean, I had never masturbated, ever. I had never awakened my sex drive.
Speaker 1:It's the difference between never growing up on junk food right. You grew up in a home where you were introduced to junk food and your brain and body Crave it. It never craves something it doesn't know.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly Right.
Speaker 1:And but. And then growing up in a home where you're fed a bunch of junk food Well, you crave what you crave.
Speaker 3:That's what you want you want stickers, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so that's it. When I look at you growing up like you didn't get introduced to that so you didn't have an appetite for it. Yeah, but we know that the average kid is getting introduced eight to 11 years old now.
Speaker 3:Yes, Well, that's just porn. Yeah, that's not talking.
Speaker 3:that's not even addressing the sexualization of advertisements and TV shows and movies and all of the different media that is teaching sex drive really, really early. Now, I'm happy to say, I got married, began to have sex and discovered I do have a sex drive and I like having sex. As a matter of fact, I love it and it's awesome and that's I've always said I wish that I could have. I wish I would have known at 12 what was going to happen and that I would have hooked up to a psychologist that I met with weekly and let them test me as I went so that we could see the difference. I am convinced that the reason most people make the statement why did I have a sex drive so early, why would God give me this? Is because it was actually awakened by outside circumstances before it was supposed to be. So now that doesn't is it super helpful for most people because, regardless of why they have that.
Speaker 3:So now it becomes. I think that the thing that is helpful is you're not just damned to be led by your sex drive. You're not. You're not just a product or a. You're not at the mercy of this drive. That's uncontrollable. It is because you, it's a learned behavior for us. As you just said, we can't want what we haven't experienced. Because it's a learned behavior, you actually can teach yourself a healthy thought process to step back from that drive and not allow that to control you as you wait for manager the moment.
Speaker 1:We're going to go deep into how to manage it at the end of this podcast, but I also think deep into it. I also think I'm not even going to bite on that.
Speaker 3:You just bid on it by stopping and saying I'm not going to bite on it.
Speaker 1:I had to set a boundary. I also believe that part of God's design is we do have desires for things that he doesn't just give us now, and we see it in a bunch of areas of our life right?
Speaker 1:Is you desire to be married, you desire to be financially wealthy, you desire to whatever, just I mean even just dumb desires Like? For me it's the hunting and the fishing, Like, I have things in my life that I can't have right now, and part of that is is it is it builds character, right? Yeah, builds perseverance, and in James, chapter one, it says consider it pure joy or hilarious laughter when you fall in unexpected trials, for the testing of your faith produces perseverance, and when perseverance runs, of course, you'll lack nothing. Right. And so, like God is not afraid of us going through a trial, going through something where it's stretching, where we need help, where it feels like it's a little bit beyond us and we have to actually grow in character.
Speaker 1:We have to grow in connection, we have to grow in strength, because that's part of what grows you into a strong human being. I mean, what we're trying to do for our kids is, as they grow up, we want to give them challenges. We want to give them things that are a little bit beyond where they're at today so that they can grow in confidence and competency and they feel stronger. And the other thing is like if you got all the way and my dad talked about this a lot but if you get all the way to your marriage bed and I said to Lauren, I save myself for you what doesn't really mean anything if there is no temptation.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It doesn't really mean much if it's like I saved a million dollars. Yeah, but money grows on trees and, like you, just went outside and you collected the struggles in the value, the fact that I actually pushed aside my desires. I am not my temptations, I'm the virtues and values that.
Speaker 1:I embrace, right, like that's part of what creates nobility. I'm pushing aside what I want for what I know is the best thing. I have a way to create trust. I have a way to be noble, I have a way to protect you and me. And so to me, like a lot of the reason why we have a sex drive is, honestly, if you didn't have a sex drive, there would be very little motivation for a man to go choose a woman. I would go choose some great adventure, some endeavor, some. I'm going to go make money. I mean, how would you actually fulfill the command of God, like be fruitful and multiply, if you didn't have a sex drive that was driving you to have sex? Because my drive isn't to raise kids, my drive is to be sexual with her. The result of being sexual with her is whoa, I've got these kids that we need to raise, and that desire comes as you're a father and not that I don't desire any of that.
Speaker 2:Can I chime in and say? And the result of your sex drive is that you actually feel bonded and connected to a woman that then you want to actually live life with. And when you're away on your hunting trips, to your own surprise. You miss me and you want to come home.
Speaker 1:Well, if part of your sex drive is, it does drive you back home.
Speaker 2:Well, my point is that it's not just that we're in these marriage bonds because you need a sexual partner, although that is part of how you're wired and it is motivating. It is the act of sex, it is sexual encounters with each other that bond for, especially for you, that bonds us to one another, that actually there is even more connection.
Speaker 3:That comes this longing for actual partnership and companionship and team that you get when you are in covenant with your sexual partner, and I would say this with it, because I know I'm certain there's people listening that are hearing what Jay's saying and thinking you're saying the only reason a man wants a woman is for sex and there's no other value. Here's the thing that we have to do is we have to disassociate this negative sex connotation with sex.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that's. It's a bummer. That that's the reason why a man wants.
Speaker 3:This is something that Kate and I had to work through a lot at the early part of our marriage to say I desire you sexually and that's actually a really good, beautiful thing, as opposed to me being dirty because of that or Jay being dirty because of that. Now, I don't know that. I would say to strongly, as Jay just said it, like I do have desire and Jay's doesn't even believe that like Jay, like to the point where, like Jay wants to be with you, it's not just he wants to have sex with you, he wants to be with you. I'm one of his close friends.
Speaker 3:I can tell you that if you're thinking that you miss understand what he's saying, but that sex drives down actually a bad thing, and the only reason we think it is, is because we've attached a lot of negative beliefs to sex. And so when I've got negative beliefs attached to it, when it's a product mentality, a performance mentality, it's a live up to mentality. Yeah, hey, make sure you're having sex with your husband so that he doesn't want porn or doesn't go out on you, or da da, da, da, da. Well, now, all of a sudden, the desire is a prison.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right Now, this, now, if I desire her sexually, oh, that does sound gross. It actually doesn't sound gross at all If you strip it away and just say, wow, god made me to want to bond with her more closely than I bond with anybody else, and the best way to bond is love making.
Speaker 1:You know, when I was young um, about probably 10 years old uh, my first sexual experience, like my first orgasm, happened at a hot tub with a bunch of bunch of, uh, my guy friends, and that was the first time. I don't remember if someone showed me. You know like memories are. I don't remember if one of the boys showed me, uh, because they were all older than me, but that was my first experience and once I experienced that I was, it wasn't short. It wasn't long after that that I was completely addicted to masturbation, like like full blown addiction, and what I know now is I was using that to cope with my anxiety.
Speaker 3:So I had.
Speaker 1:As far back as I can remember, I I have anxiety, had anxiety lots of anxiety that I didn't know how to talk about, right.
Speaker 1:So I was using masturbation to to deal with that, and then eventually pornography at 14 and all that stuff. And at 16, I had completely rid, uh, rid myself of masturbation, of pornography, and went down the road of masturbation, fighting for my purity, abstaining from sex. And it's really interesting because we're talking about, like the sex drive and how much you have to fight for it, where you didn't awaken that in your life and didn't feel it at all. I think I awoke it, but then like abstained for.
Speaker 3:I mean years, which is pretty wild yeah.
Speaker 1:And was able to really manage it. And I just want to tell people, like if you've already awoken your sex drive and you feel like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:Which is basically anybody that's listening above the age of five years old probably, probably.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like being able to reverse it, being able to manage it, being able to have control over it, is massive. I want to talk about before we talk specifically about how to manage it, cause we're going to do that what happens during sex? Cool, like, I know that we talked a little bit about the brain, but can you actually go in?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, there's a general answer than there's a specific answer. The reality of it is, what happens during sex is different for every individual based on their earliest and most frequent experiences, right? So for somebody, let's just go. Here's a pretty common scenario for Christian couples. They get onto the wedding night. The let's say they've waited till they're married. The woman now feels a ton of pressure to have sex because that's the expectation on the wedding night. They push themselves through. They have sex or some version of sex like they do, whatever it is that they can figure out how to do. He feels super satisfied. She feels like she just had to do it as her marital obligation. Well, sex now is going to be completely different for both of them from that point on. Yeah, that's great, because they're if that was her first experience, her first experience just attached obligation to it, it just attached duty to it, it just attached half to it, and it's actually going to take a long time to unravel that and a lot of intentionality. And so what happens? A lot in marriages.
Speaker 3:I think that one of the most common mistakes for a married couple let's just go married couple, wait until they're married. They're young, they're getting married and they're Christians and now, which isn't a ton of people, but there are people in that boat still at large numbers. The best thing that they can do that we tell people if there's somebody that's engaged or dating is take the weight of having sex the first night, or even on the honeymoon, off the table for everybody. Make the goal we want to be more intimate than we've ever been able to be Now. A whole bunch of guys just went oh, totally, and you know what you're going to have. Tell Deathdew you part to figure out how to have as much sex as possible.
Speaker 4:That's true.
Speaker 3:And if you force it before her heart is ready, you're going to attach a lot of negative emotions to that moment. And so then, what's gonna? And should her heart be ready, they're sure you could say that there's a whole bunch of shoulds. Shoulds will ruin most of your relationships, though, yeah it's true. So the reality of it. Everybody that I've given this advice to that has done it has had incredible experience where they finally began to have sex and very, very few people weren't having sex by the end of their honeymoon.
Speaker 4:Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:Like it's not a Because the pressure's not there.
Speaker 3:The pressure's not there. So what you do now is you allow both people to experience it in a positive emotional connotation.
Speaker 2:That's right, which is really helpful for your brain. Yes, totally.
Speaker 3:That one thing can prevent what will end up being years of counseling.
Speaker 1:Honestly, this is some of the best advice that I've heard. It really is it will save so many people and keep you from this unrealistic expectation that is put on us as human beings that somehow the best thing is to be as sexual as possible Totally, and to jump into the deep end, and that's where you're gonna get the most fulfillment.
Speaker 3:Totally, and so that pushing it there. So now let's go. People that have had sex before marriage. Really, the reality of it is this what sex was meant to do was released dopamine and serotonin, which are happy chemicals. It was meant to give you a more enjoyable, euphoric feeling than anything else you experience in your life, and it was meant to give you vasopressin and serotonin.
Speaker 1:Oxy-tosin.
Speaker 3:Oxy-tosin. Thanks, babe, those were meant to bond you. That's what I referenced a little bit ago. So what's supposed to happen is you're supposed to come together and both the woman and the man are supposed to have the experience of those neurotransmitters and those chemicals being released. But, based on your earliest and most frequent experiences, what is actually released is totally dependent on what happened first.
Speaker 2:Totally, it could be corduoso, it could be fight or flight it could be.
Speaker 3:I'm being controlled. It could be manipulation. So because sex is learned.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And I said that at the beginning. That is probably the cornerstone of understanding this, because it's learned however you learned it whenever you learned it in whatever unfiltered, unrestricted, no parents around moment that you probably didn't talk to anybody about for a year and a half to five years. Whatever context you learned depends what actually is taking place. Absolutely, the goal is to work through the unpacking of our own heart and mind and really begin to identify what were my earliest and most frequent experiences. How are they impacting my current reality? Do I need counseling? What do I gotta do to unpack this and get healing so that it can do what it's supposed to do, which is bond and create joy that I don't experience anywhere else?
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 2:I would say, I mean, this is an incredibly important conversation because, even as so, I would put myself in the camp of people who went into marriage a virgin not having had sex but having had sexual experiences with multiple people, and somebody that, from a pretty early age, was walking with Jesus and in the church.
Speaker 4:So I had a background very common.
Speaker 2:I had a background of sexual experiences, but I knew what was quote right and wrong when it came to the Lord's standards for sex. I didn't want to have sex before marriage. When people are in that boat, I think one of the most critical things that happens to people is they don't realize how culture has discipled their sex 100%.
Speaker 2:They don't know how impacted they have been by the culture that they grew up in and how ignorant they really are about the implications of that. And so I think what happens to me is I get married to a man who, honestly, thank God he had been married before, because I can't imagine what my early years of marriage would have been like if I had married another total novice, somebody who had no idea how to do covenant, who had no idea how to do long-term committed relationship. I actually counted, honestly, a like a help to have married someone that had been married before. Thank you, because I relied on him a lot to teach me. What does this covenant context mean for my sexuality? Because I had only experienced sexuality outside of marriage with an incredible amount of dos and don'ts and shoulds and shouldn'ts.
Speaker 2:I didn't actually understand how God made me or why God made me this way. I didn't understand how different the context of marriage would be, different to singleness, and I didn't know what the pressures of marriage and family would do to my sex drive. I had no idea. So thank God, I married somebody that had been married before Not like he had it all figured out, but it helped. The reason I'm saying this is because I think that the majority of Christians who do save themselves for marriage, or Christians who know they should have quote, should have saved themselves for marriage. They don't know how to start untangling this knot about their sexuality because all they can go off of is. I'm thinking about this experience I had two weeks ago. I was in home goods and I was walking behind this mom. She had two twin little girls. They were probably seven years old and she was dialoguing out loud with her seven year old girl twins and they were like this girl posse of three.
Speaker 3:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, it was awesome until it wasn't awesome, because about two minutes into following them through the store, I heard the mom talking to them out loud like they were the man haters club. And she was discipling her six, seven year old daughters in. And what do you do if a man comes up? You kick him in the knees.
Speaker 3:And you just know like this woman, can you?
Speaker 2:imagine how much pain that woman has been through in her life, that she is out loud vocally in home goods, discipling her girls in how to not trust men and how to not connect with men how to not trust them.
Speaker 3:Did you stop right?
Speaker 4:there and say let me just say, I felt so sad.
Speaker 2:I felt so sad, but all of this to say the culture that we grow up in even if we grow up in the church, it shapes us and there is a sneaky agenda. There's a very sneaky agenda of the enemy that would distort at every opportunity, distort our understanding of how God created us.
Speaker 3:Let me even think about language. We use in the church the days for the, the ceremonies for the woman, the night times for the man, Like we're creating this idea that sex is for the male, not the female even in the church.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, I think from my experience. But I think a lot of females probably listening could attest to it. Even just growing up in a culture that teaches us to be sexual objects and be wanted by a guy, the beauty of the wanting when I hear it first from the male, it doesn't feel like beauty. It feels like I see it through this filter that I'm fully unaware of, as I'm just another object, Like I'm just a means to an end for you, because that was your earliest and most frequent experience, as you were an object.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And so knowing that, it's almost like you can't believe that, that would be a beautiful thing. It's not that you want me, you want it, I'm just an it. And so being able to realize and obviously then I was given the gift of a husband who I am it for him, like I'm the it, I'm the me, it's everything. He hasn't been somebody else, and it still took layers and layers of peeling back to be like, oh, he really just wants marriage, he wants me, he wants us. It's not this thing.
Speaker 2:You know what's crazy is, even as you're talking right now, I'm thinking about and I just invite you, like as listeners, like what was your earliest and most frequent experience? Because I haven't thought about this my earliest and most frequent experience was being a junior high school girl who had zero experience with it, with sexuality personally. But I was watching and listening to people in my class talk about their sexual experiences with each other and it was always about the boy wanting something from the girl. And in our early years of marriage I would tell you, I will tell you and you can probably remember this one of my biggest triggers was when I felt like he was acting like that junior high school boy and the actions that I would have attributed to. What does a junior high school boy act like? It's the playfulness, the giddy, the like.
Speaker 2:I'm infatuated with your body, I'm thinking about you, I wanna see you undress and all of that in the context of marriage is good and beautiful, but I would just be, graded inside, absolutely graded, because my first and most frequent experience even though it wasn't my own sexual experience was listening to these ridiculous quote junior high school boys not be able to control themselves.
Speaker 3:Well, that's why I'm saying it's not even a porn. It's not even when they were introduced to porn between eight and 11, it's all the other stuff. The line that Caitlin's used for years is she experienced lust for so long she couldn't believe love could be real.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3:Her brain and her heart would say love is too good to be true. Yeah, it's just too good to be true that sex would be pure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3:And so this is the narrative for a marriage that has to be addressed for most people. You have to unpack on a deep level. Can I believe that sex is pure?
Speaker 2:Yeah, can I actually believe that it is good?
Speaker 3:That it is good and that it is pure. Like sex is pure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like think of just that statement.
Speaker 3:That is a hard statement for people to wrap their brain around, absolutely. Sex is pure. God made it. God doesn't make impure things, and you?
Speaker 2:know what People might take it at first face value and say, yeah, sex is pure if it's in God. Okay, Do you actually believe that? Because A do you feel shame when you talk about sex?
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 2:C. Do you feel free about the idea of even talking to your kids about sex Right? C do you talk to your friends about sex? D like would you actually so? I'm?
Speaker 3:My point is Can you talk out loud with your spouse about sexual experiences saying vagina, penis, oral sex without you feeling uncomfortable or obligated? That tells you where you need to begin to.
Speaker 2:And so I would say, like for any listeners who are even triggered by these words, it's a great.
Speaker 3:Can I just trigger everybody?
Speaker 2:No, I'm saying like this is incredible, it's a great indicator. Like how do you feel right now about us having this conversation together?
Speaker 3:If we said you had to go talk to your spouse about this right now, what anxiety would be raised If your anxiety is raised even just listening to us discuss this.
Speaker 2:Maybe you're alone in your car and you feel like your cheeks are red. I'm saying, like you might believe in your head that God created sex, that we're created in his image and that sex is good. But take stock of how you're feeling right now. That's great. If this is triggering you at all, then there is.
Speaker 2:There are some contradictions going on in your head and in your heart and there's some things to dive into so that you can actually step into the freedom that God has for you in your sexuality as a human being created in God's image.
Speaker 1:Ultimately, what we're designed to do is for either one of us to be able to go. This is what I'm thinking about right now with you. This is the experience I'd like to have. This is I was thinking about you today, and this is my. This was my fantasy of you. Even that word, like just show it Totally flips people off Yep and even her.
Speaker 1:For me, if I was saying that to her, she doesn't have to do what I'm saying. She doesn't even have to partake in that. But if I'm coming at it from a pure place, like it's not a dirty thing, there's so many people. I feel so much shame about talking about what they desire, and so we suppress and repress all a whole bunch of our emotions and desires, but ultimately what we're doing is eroding our connection, cause I'm hiding pieces of myself from you.
Speaker 4:It's good Jay.
Speaker 1:And so we're trying to get people into full freedom, which doesn't mean that you do all these crazy things. It means that I don't have to hide from you, because that's what happened when Adam and Eve the forbidden fruit right Is they? All of a sudden, the next thing that was introduced was shame. You can't see me. I need to be covered. What I'm really going through I don't want you to know about. It's all that stuff.
Speaker 3:So Well, Jay, can I say something on that? Cause that's one of the things and maybe you want to jump in cause. This is a message. Kate preaches a ton. She's got an entire message called. Who told you? Because when they were naked and they said to God, we're hiding, we've clothed ourselves cause we're naked and his response was who told?
Speaker 4:you naked.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's one of the things that we will do a lot with people is walk them. Who told you that? Who told you sex was dirty? Who told you it was obligated? Who told you go back and identify the voice or the experience that told you that sex is what you think?
Speaker 2:it is Wow, that's really helpful.
Speaker 3:Because it's probably introduced by a serpent somewhere along the way. Totally, and if you can identify the who told you, you can start to pursue the healing in that area.
Speaker 4:Interesting. Yeah, A super helpful tool that is like free, you need a piece of paper and a pen is to create a story timeline. Like Lauren said, if you could go back and say what was my first and most frequent experience, but if you actually created a timeline and put the bad and the ugly on there so maybe you had a good guy or a good girl that was like you could trust and they didn't break your trust but if you explain everything and you lay it out there, it gives you so much empathy for yourself and your story. You'll have so much revelation and aha moments of like that's where. That's why. When Kelly Reese told me as freshman year you have to test drive the car before you buy it, I believed it. When I saw that in a movie, I thought that's how girls treated boys. When I heard them whispering in the movie theater, I thought I go, lay down Like. You start to look at your story and you're like that's why that's why that's why.
Speaker 4:that's why and you realize how you got to where you are right now, and then you can also identify. Maybe I need a professional to help me unpack some of this. And that's the only that was my path to freedom, that got me to realize and peel back the layers of who told you, Cause they go. It's so crazy to hear your junior high boy story. You're like it wasn't even happening to you, it was something you just heard.
Speaker 4:I observed it, you observed it and I think that the thing Cole said, sex is from heaven, but we've just only heard it or experienced it from hell and it feels so impossible to think that it could be pure, that it could be from heaven, because we've just seen it in this perverted way. So you're like, how do I completely break up and cut all ties with that version of it and to be able to experience fully and or look forward to, if I'm single, this beautiful gift that's actually from God?
Speaker 3:Or look forward to it if you're married.
Speaker 1:I'll say that I wanna talk a little bit about how to manage your sex drive, and I think when we're talking about this, you first have to understand a lot. I talked to men about it. Like you gotta understand that you are the creator of your sex drive.
Speaker 2:And we're not the creator.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't wake up one morning and go. You know what I'm gonna want sex today. I'm gonna like five foot nine, blonde hair, blue eyes, boobs and a butt and a vagina. Like that's what I want to desire. I didn't. I didn't create that. Like God created that and we already talked about why he created the sex drive. But so many men and women feel so much shame because they feel tempted. So many Christians feel shame the moment they feel tempted. And the truth is is Jesus was tempted in every way. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And can I say like even the word tempted is tricky for Christians, because so many Christians don't just feel shame when they feel quote tempted. Christians feel shame when they feel attracted because they.
Speaker 1:Well, you can't peel the two apart. You can't peel the two apart.
Speaker 2:But I'm saying like when's the last time you decided what you were attracted to, like Jason just said?
Speaker 1:You don't get to.
Speaker 2:So to be tempted is simply to be attracted. It's not like you're in sin, and so you're tempted.
Speaker 1:It's right. It means that you're a human being, and so to temptation means that I want it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Temptation means that I have a pull towards it. There's a drive, there is a force that is pushing me, I have an appetite for that, yes, I have an appetite, which means again, I like to bring it back to Jesus, because he's our perfect model. Like Jesus had an appetite for a woman, jesus had an appetite for someone else's wife. Jesus had an appetite for homosexuality. Otherwise he wasn't. He was tempted in every way.
Speaker 3:I mean, he's not wrong, no, it's strong statements If he was tempted in every way that man is tempted.
Speaker 2:Jay's just breaking down what that looks like I'm saying, like people are gonna be listening and their brains are gonna be going.
Speaker 3:Guys, just to clear it up, Jason did not say Jesus was gay. Oh my God.
Speaker 1:I just want to make sure we know that I like to talk about it because Jesus was tempted in every way.
Speaker 2:He says he was tempted in every way and it makes him human, and that he was acquainted with how we felt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it makes it so that the guy who goes man I just talked to this other dude's wife and I'm feeling a pull is like, yeah, jesus felt that and he managed it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So when we look at Jesus, we go he's the man. He's the man because he didn't let his temptations drive him. You are not your temptations, like talked about. You are the virtues and the values that you embrace. And here's the thing that I said earlier is that if you, if there was no temptation, then there would be no nobility, there would be, there would be no victory in I save myself for you. There'd be no, there'd be no fight in.
Speaker 1:The truth is that we're tempted in so many ways. We're tempted in to eat too much, we're tempted to spend too much, we're tempted to work too much. I mean, we're constantly Managing our drive, constantly, and so our, your sex drive is no different. And and so you know, the first step to that is realizing you're not bad, something's not wrong with you. Yep, that's so good. Because that shame Starts the cycle again. The shame will not get you free. It won't. You cannot shame, or even will, your way Into abstinence. Yeah, you can't do it. Your willpower runs out and shame drives you back into the, the cycle that you're trying to break out of. Most people are trying to break out of, like a porn cycle or, you know, sexual sin, that type of thing, and so how you begin to manage your sex drive is you meet your needs in a healthy way.
Speaker 1:You begin to understand that not every desire is simply Driven from your sex drive, not, not every sexual desire that I have is driven from my sex drive. Yeah, a really good example of that is sometimes I feel insecure, and when I feel insecure, like Sometimes I want to run away and sometimes I want to actually be aggressive, and sometimes I want like or Maybe a better example is like if I'm really tired, if I'm tired, my go-to is adventure. If I can't sleep, then I want to go do something fun. Emotionally tired.
Speaker 1:Yeah and so it's like I remember walking into a grocery store filling this massive pole towards a woman and Sitting there for a second and thinking like what's wrong? Are you okay? What's going on? I was just. I was literally taking inventory.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:And I asked myself like, what did you want from her? And my first, my honest answer, was not sex, cuz one. And I had been Intimate the night before. But I remember sitting there thinking like I wanted to win.
Speaker 4:I wanted to like.
Speaker 1:Win her over and I realized right then like, oh, I'm looking for adventure, yeah, I've had it was. It was the Thursday. I'd counseled people all week. I'm emotionally tired like I want to go win this woman's attention. I need to go fishing, and why this is so important is great. What you miss diagnosed, you miss treats such good and so if I would have said, ah, dang it.
Speaker 1:I thought I killed that 16 year old perverted boy who always I you know, I'm 30 years old I thought I dealt with that. Now I go back home with a bunch of shame, yep, and I have to decide. Am I gonna tell Lauren that I had this drive towards another woman? If I tell Lauren? Now I'm carrying her, she's carrying this weight and I'm carrying this weight like what's wrong with me. I thought I dealt with this thing and instead of going and getting an adventure, I'm Diving and driving myself into emotional like pain, yeah, eriness. And so then eventually I act out because I don't actually understand that what I really needed was adventure. What I really need good connection.
Speaker 1:What I really need is Processing with someone. What I really need very there are times when it's just my sex drive is like my hormones, you know, the testosterone going through my body or whatever the testosterone, and Lauren and a podgester, what all those things that drive us Towards one another. That can be part of it, yeah, but a large part of our sex drive Isn't actually just simply I want to have sex with you. It's I'm trying to meet. This need in sex is one way to meet it.
Speaker 3:And can I explain why that is because our brain subconsciously knows the dopamine you want. From a fishing or a hunting trip you actually can get quicker in sex. Yes, your subconscious mind knows that, so it's. It's really for us. There's a big difference between fishing and sex. Yeah we consciously say that, but the way that your brain works, it's just looking for a dopamine doesn't care how we are the most dopamine addicted generation ever. I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 3:There's no stats to prove it but we have to be Right so when your subconscious is caught, it doesn't care what size of dopamine, it's just looking for that. So when you're at the end of a busy week, your brain is looking for that.
Speaker 3:One of the practical things I always encourage people to do is look at the last time that you acted out and and then actually look at your calendar and what happened right what was going on the few days before that, or the week before that, or the month that that happened, or the season, depending on it, what it is, because it, let's say, you were working 16 hour days or 20 hour days, then you can probably know oh, exhaustion is a trigger for me.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:Next time I'm exhausted, I should set up some accountability, right? You, if you look at that counter, you look at the schedule and you're like oh, I did this on this Thursday, monday, I got fired Rejection that's a trigger for me, insecure my brain said you need dopamine because you feel rejected. Quickest way to dopamine is a Pornography or whatever that that act out. It's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true, and so so many people end up falling over and over again because you don't actually understand how to get your needs met.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I understand that it's not just your sex drive, and I think that that's it's been a really painful place in a lot of people's marriages, because I see a lot of women Over the. You know I've been a counselor for 20 years, so I see a lot of women trying to have sex with their husband to help him stay pure, and that's not an evil thing. So let me just say like no shame on you for doing that, but it and I'm sure that's gone both ways but the actual freedom isn't abstaining from pornography, although that's that is one step. But freedom someone said it best like the oh gosh. Now I forget. It's the opposite of addiction, is not sobriety, it's connection.
Speaker 1:Yeah so I can abstain from something and still not be free. Yeah right what we were designed to do is to learn how to manage our drives.
Speaker 1:It's great whether it's working too much, whether it's you know, money, whether it's. We have a drive for all kinds of things, not just sex, but we also have been given a mind in a way to go. You know what? I'm really hungry right now. Eating a whole bag of potato chips Not a great idea. You know what? I'm really thirsty right now drinking a whole bunch of alcohol Not a great idea. You know, I'm feeling really lonely right now. I'm just gonna go find someone to love me. You know we've all, in every area of our life, we're really having to partner with the Holy Spirit and With God and with the people around us and to go what's the best way to steward my life and my sex drive and my marriage, and so yeah, this is a great conversation.
Speaker 2:There's a great conversation guys.
Speaker 1:We really hope that you enjoyed the first.
Speaker 3:Yeah part I loved it of our sex you know what?
Speaker 2:next week, we're actually gonna talk about sex before marriage. We're gonna talk about why not? There's, there's a lot about why to the way that there's a lot that we're gonna dive into in the next few weeks.
Speaker 4:Specifically next week.
Speaker 2:sex before marriage that's our whole topic, so we've got a lot more to talk about. Zix, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4:Thank you, sir, we're having us.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, we do have our be on to I hear we do have the zinz later in the Dr Glenn, who are cool sexologist. Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 3:This is gonna be a great series sex himself, it's true, we're so glad that you've joined us.
Speaker 2:Thanks for this, guys. We wanted to let you know, too, about our upcoming marriage intensive. Starting on April 16th, jason and I are running a six-week intensive. Our goal is to get 30 couples to jump on board with us. We want to spend six weeks with you helping to shore up foundations or even lay some good foundations for marriage Help you level up your, your tool kit for how to approach covenant connection with your spouse.
Speaker 2:We know that people experience pain inside of marriage and often it's just because they don't have the right tools and help navigate the hard, hard spot. So Jump over to Jason and Lauren, to valetincom and check out information about the marriage intensive if you're interested.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, have an incredible week.
Speaker 2:We'll see you next time.