65. Sex Series Week 4: Sex in Marriage, Part 2 (Dr. Glenn and Phyllis Hill)

Jason and Lauren Vallotton host Dr. Glenn and Phyllis Hill from Connection Codes as guests in Part 2 of a profound exploration of the intimate conversation about Sex in Marriage. 

This episode delves into the intricacies of emotional connection and how it fuels a more fulfilling sexual relationship. The Hills unravel the complexities of sex in marriage and explain that emotional safety is not just complementary to intimacy—it's foundational. The Hills' candid reflections on their journey and the practical tools they've developed, like the Core Emotion Wheel, provide actionable steps to help you articulate your feelings and desires, ensuring a richer connection with your partner.

Intentionality is the key to an enhanced intimate life. Together with Dr. Glenn and Phyllis Hill, the Vallottons explore the importance of understanding the unique triggers— 'brakes and accelerators'—that influence the transition into the realm of intimacy. Discover how setting the stage with the right atmosphere and a foundation of emotional connection can significantly enhance arousal and satisfaction. Sharing insights into the art of discovering what makes us feel desired, the hosts offer strategies for couples to communicate their needs effectively.

This conversation isn't just about improving your sex life; it's about elevating the entire standard of marital intimacy. Candid sharing illuminates the highs and lows of building a sexually fulfilling union, piercing through the layer of silence that often shrouds this delicate aspect of marital bliss. This episode promises an unvarnished look at the journey from purity to passion, unpacking the weighty influences of past experiences and the sheer power of connection and vulnerability between partners.
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Discount on all Connection Codes courses with the code JAY!
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Hills' Bio:

Dr Glenn Hill is a marriage and family therapist, clinical sexologist, Connection Codes
coach and author with a private practice in Nashville, TN. He considers his greatest
credential to be his 40-year marriage with Phyllis. He enjoys doing absolutely anything
with her, especially traveling and spending time with their family of twenty.

Phyllis Hill is an entrepreneur, Connection Codes coach and the engine that keeps
everything running. She enjoys the partnership and adventures she and Glenn share
and loves being “Honey” to their ten grandchildren.

The pain of their early married years along with decades of research and experience led
the Hills to the founding of The Connection Codes. They counsel couples, families,
individuals, churches and businesses in building deep connection. They are passionate
about the Connection Codes because of the effect on their relationship, as well as
seeing the effect for countless others. It is the Hills’ mission to take the Connection
Codes to everyone on the planet.

Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins this week. Y'all, we are in the middle of our sex series yeah, we are. And we're really, really enjoying this. This has been so much fun.

Speaker 2: 0:18

Yeah, we spoke last week with Jenna and Aaron Zint and talked about sex and marriage, and this week we have some incredible guests with us who we've enjoyed teaming up with over the last couple of years doing all kinds of different things.

Speaker 2: 0:32

They've been a part of our marriage intensive the last two times that we have led our marriage intensive. But Dr Glenn and Phyllis Hill of Connection Codes are with us today and these guys are absolutely phenomenal. Dr Glenn isa, clinical sexologist, psychologist. His lovely wife Phyllis and he have been doing work related to relational health through connection. They're going to tell you all about much more about what they do, but one of the most impactful things about their work for us has been conversations around sex, and so today we thought it would be incredible to unpack with you guys, our audience, a little bit about communicating about sex through emotional connection inside of marriage, and so we're going to probably hand it over to the Hills in a second, but, guys, thank you for being with us today, thanks. So we're going to probably hand it over to the Hills in a second, but, guys, thank you for being with us today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 3: 1:29

Wow, thank you guys. We always love these opportunities with y'all, so thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:35

Yes, what a gift to us. I suppose we'll just dive right in you guys, but specifically talking about sex through the lens of emotional connection and how that is, our primary focus in marriage is to build a solid connection, bond with one another. Could you speak a little bit to? Can I add something?

Speaker 1: 1:59

Oh, yeah, yeah, I think so many people experience a disconnection inside of sex. It's probably one of the most disconnected conversations that people have that and money right, so where? Where's all of our money going? And can we have sex tonight? And why don't we? Why don't we have sex and why is it always painful? And and so what I love is this is supposed to be one of the most exciting connecting, bonding experiences journeys that we go on in life, but so many people are experiencing it the opposite way, and so our goal is that people would learn how to connect emotionally and so that their sex life would be amazing, regardless of where they're at right now in their sex life, and so I think that's the big deal with bringing you guys in is to talk through how do we grow that emotional connection that leads to a more connected, healthier sex life. That's great.

Speaker 3: 3:03

Yeah Well, many of your listeners know and have heard bits and pieces of the connection code. So you know, for the sake of time I want to just kind of jump a little further into it instead of giving too much of the background. But definitely, sex for us was the topic we fought about, not money, just sex. And it was so painful from the get go emotionally and kind of worked through a lot of that over the first decade of our marriage and then kind of went into a season where I especially me I thought you know, if I just get really good at this, then we're not going to have any more conflict. And you know, about 20 years in, 25 years in, it was like okay, sex is really good, but we're still having conflict. And that is where, you know, glenn went back to school to get his doctorate and had so much time to do the research that really brought out the emotional piece that we never realized we were missing. And you know, now we've been married 41 years, going on 42.

Speaker 3: 4:29

Wow, I cannot believe what a big, big part that emotional safety plays in our deep sexual connection. And it is phenomenal to me, when you really think about it, how incredibly vulnerable sex is anyway. It is such a place of if you're really gonna have dynamic sexual connection, you got to very much feel safe and you've got to let yourself be able to go, even having dynamic orgasms. I would say, especially for the female, probably more so than the male, it's like we got to really let ourselves go, we have to lose control to have really dynamic orgasms and if I don't feel safe with Glenn, I am not going to go there.

Speaker 3: 5:16

And you know, I think there's a lot of humor around sex, even movies, you know, old movies like when was Harry Met Sallymeece, sally, or some kind of movie where I think she fakes an orgasm and it's like we laugh and laugh about that. And yet I think for a lot of us there's such a reality in that there's we, we can disassociate really well in this arena because we can act, we can fake it just to get it over with. But to really connect we've got to feel safe emotionally and that is a ton of the work that, through Connection Codes, we have done, is just to understand the language of emotion, for me to be able to show up in this space and for Glenn to to be able to say I feel just you know, sexual joy or sexual loneliness. That's been huge for us because I want to know how he's, I want to be safe, for him to be able to say I feel sexually lonely and it not lead to a big fight.

Speaker 2: 6:24

Right.

Speaker 3: 6:30

Where in the old days it was like you know it would be. He would come after it more like we haven't had sex in days or weeks. You don't even care about me, you don't ever think about it, and there we go, we're on a fight.

Speaker 4: 6:39

We're surprisingly, was not connecting.

Speaker 3: 6:41

No no.

Speaker 4: 6:43

Sounds like an acting language to me. I mean, I'm accusing her, I'm inviting her putting her on the witness stand, and I won the court case.

Speaker 3: 6:50

So there you go and you're welcome I mean, I we've we had countless fights like that where I was trying to defend myself, saying you know I'm tired, I'm emotional, I know I've had a rough week, like I was trying to show myself, but he was of course coming at it like, well, you don't even like sex, and so we would just stay in that fighting mode. And you know, we went through a season where we just kind of I was smart enough at some point in our married life where I was like kept a calendar, like oh my word, it's been way too many days. I better make that a priority. And then I would just make it happen, but we would never talk about it. It wasn't like Glenn felt that he could just tell me about his loneliness or the sad around it and I never felt like I could. I could go there either around it, and I never felt like I could get I could go there either. And it has just been phenomenal for us to bring the emotional side into it.

Speaker 3: 7:51

And you know, I mean, even as we work with couples I just think about for a lot of us we have trauma from previous relationships or encounters or maybe things that have happened even in our own marriage. That was early on, that was painful, and how do you talk about that? Like, how do you make safe space to talk about all of the things without where? I think for me, I avoid fights, like I'm a conflict avoider in most relationships, not just my like I just if I think that that person, I may have a conflict with them, I'll just do anything I can to avoid going there. And so I think there's many more people like me and just in your marriage you're like oh, I don't want to be in conflict with you, so I'm just going to agree with you, which is very dangerous, because then we don't show up authentically and we're not creating safe space where we both can feel that we are being heard by the other without judgment.

Speaker 4: 8:54

Yeah, and I would suggest that I mean for typically and of course we have to be careful overgeneralizing but typically the male is more frequently and more easily activated sexually and typically for most heterosexual couples the male can orgasm easier. But that doesn't mean that it's connecting for him. You know Phyllis uses the term dynamic orgasms, which I totally agree with. A guy can have an orgasm and it's like, well you know, I mean, there was a dopamine hit. Agree with. A guy can have an orgasm and it's like, well you know, I mean, there was a dopamine hit. There's no question about that. That was a pleasurable experience.

Speaker 4: 9:31

But thus far and I'm getting pretty old and I've got a lot of seat hours I've never sat with the man who doesn't want bonding, who doesn't want emotional connection with his wife through sexual interaction.

Speaker 4: 9:44

And, again, if all he can get is just, you know, a tab a and the slot b experience, well, what the heck I'll take that you know twice a week, three times a week, over nothing. But I've never met the man who would not prefer that she is connected, that they're connected with each other, and that she, uh, is experiencing pleasure through it. We were so disconnected, certainly emotionally but sexually, for so many years we were just clueless, we just didn't know, and even when we got good at the logistical stuff about sex technique and just how to do it, and again it became a pleasurable experience, but it was not connecting relationally, and certainly for me if I could go back and redo all of that, because in the process there's also harm added to the interaction and so then that adds up and then the guy finally gets like well, I didn't really want to be involved sexually, we'd like just a, a, a dead doll. You know, I mean, you're here, I like you, I like your body, I like your boobs. But I wasn't really just wanting to put tab a in the slot B, I really wanted this to be relational, but certainly for me and most men I know they're clueless. Well, how do you do that?

Speaker 2: 10:57

Can I interject a question, cause, as you're talking, I'm thinking about how, um we often hear that in in marriages, women, um men are driven for a sexual connection and women need more of an emotional connection, and what I love about what you guys bring is that, uh, actually we shouldn't separate them in the sense of.

Speaker 2: 11:22

You know just what you explained to Dr Glenn, and so I wonder if you could, for anybody that might be new to the conversation about emotional connection as a part of, or as the basis of, a thriving sex life. What would you say is like the one, that maybe the key or the most important thing that somebody would hear in order to make that mindset shift. Like no, no, no, it's not. We can't go into a sex life in marriage and think it's going to be great if we believe that the woman needs emotional connection and the man needs sexual connection.

Speaker 4: 11:57

Yeah, you know we've been doing this for a while and many years ago we developed the phrase and it's one of the early sexual in the Connection Codes. Sex masterclass is that sex is designed as a party for the female and the male is invited, of course. What we've done for centuries is we said, oh no, no, sex is about the male. It's a chance for him to get his rocks off. She just needs to show up, be available, be a sperm receptacle. And I thought I don't know when we started doing this, but a lot of years ago I thought that I would get pushback from pick a number 5%, 10%, 20% of males going wait a minute, that's not fair. It should be 50-50. You know how come she gets the party.

Speaker 4: 12:40

I have never sat with that male ever and I'm just like are you kidding me? And I mean I've sat with some pretty narcissistic pigs in my day that I'm like okay, this is going to be the first one. You know this guy's going to be like wait a minute, that's not fair. I've never sat with that guy. Every male they're sat with is just thrilled and signed on like oh. And I always tell them it's a buy one, get one free ticket. So don't worry, dude, you get a free ticket to the party and as long as he gets to be a part of the party, he's like great, sign me up, give me my role, my script, whatever. I just want to be there for her. So I believe that men want that. And again, if they're not emotionally connected and they're not involved sexually, well, yeah, he'll take just the sexual activity, which I'm not even agreeing or voting or condoning on that. But I've never met the male who just wants sex.

Speaker 3: 13:37

Well, and it doesn't. I would say, the longer you are in this relationship, you begin to realize how cold the act of sex is when there's no emotional connection. And you know, we do have generational curses that we are up against and I think it's really important to realize that many of us have been handed this by the previous generation, that we have just not understood. You know, I think women still, I hear women still use the, the verbiage. Well, it's just not understood. You know, I think women still, I hear women still use the verbiage. Well, it's just my duty. Or you know, they just they feel the pressure like that is a common. Well, I just feel pressure and it's-.

Speaker 4: 14:20

And they say I have to meet his need.

Speaker 3: 14:21

Right, I have to meet his need instead of realizing. You both have a need here, and you know those are some of the generational curses that we've been handed to think just, we just don't understand. We don't understand even how we are created, like how this is. This was designed to be the best pharmacy ever known to man is our own sexual body and our. You know what, what we get through orgasms and what that does just for our hormonal balance, and you know the dopamine that Glenn talks about.

Speaker 3: 15:00

I mean, there's so much that we gain from it, both and that. But yet if we don't understand that and we don't know about that, we can be stuck in just a cycle of I don't like it and he likes it and that's the end of the conversation, instead of realizing. Oh man, the even to hear a woman say I don't like it, it's so. There's so much sadness in that for me, because I can already know your story, like I can tell where you've been and where you've come from, and that you're. It's sad. There's sadness to me in that that you've never experienced what it was all, what it was meant to be, and and so there is a need for both to really understand the power in it and the beauty of it.

Speaker 1: 15:51

So where do you, where do couples start? Cause so many couples just have such a hard time? I mean not even when they're talking about sex connecting emotionally. What's the like, what's the small stepping stones into emotionally connecting? There's so much fear around it.

Speaker 3: 16:15

Yeah, I love that and I don't want to oversimplify it. The core emotion wheel is just a tool that we've created and part of the simpleness of it was for me, because when all of this started, my mom was dying of cancer and I had no capacity to unpack even my own emotion just around her and I just said to Glenn I can't read a book right now, I can't even listen to a podcast right now. I I need something really simple, need something really simple. And he was doing all the work and all the research and he starts talking about these eight core emotions and I'm like, okay, just I hear you Give it to me, really simple.

Speaker 4: 16:55

And he said well, in all fairness, I would bring home like a literally 195 page research project that I'd read Like babe, you should read this, this is amazing, she's like, and of course it's a seven page abstract. She's like I'm not reading that, Are you kidding me? And she was in business at the time, which was just phenomenal, and it was wide open. She was 24 seven. She always took off Christmas day for some reason, but other than that she was always working, so she didn't have time to read all this stuff that I was discovering. And she said keep it simple, dude, make it. Make it so I can digest it in literally a couple of minutes, not an hour and a half, because I'm not doing that.

Speaker 3: 17:34

Well, and for me, I just didn't understand my own needs and I didn't know how to connect to my own needs. And in discovering, I didn't even know how to connect to my own emotions because I didn't know I had emotions. I had opted out many, many years before, not knowing. That's not a choice. Emotions happen to you. So it was phenomenal to me, with this core emotion wheel, to start doing it every day, because I didn't know how to tune into myself. So you know, even the idea of sex should be a party for the female. I don't know what I need, so I don't know how to create that party. I don't know how to communicate what I need. I don't know. I take care of everyone else's needs in the world and so, of course, I take care of Glenn's needs, and that sex falls under his need.

Speaker 3: 18:21

That's kind of where I was, and so for me to have this challenge of what do I need? What brings energy to me? I'm like I have no idea and it's like, well, let's talk about emotion. What is your sad? And I'm like I don't have time for sad and move on, and it was like I just went through all of them. I'm like, you know, I focus on joy and that's it. So then I was missing all that, my brain was firing, which means my body was simply storing it, and which is very unhealthy. And eventually my body told me that, gave up and said I'm sick of storing all of your emotions. And that's when I had to really come to that moment and and I think that this has been such a huge journey, even sexually, because I once I opened the door to emotion, I saw how much I was missing in my life and just had to be able to talk to Glenn this.

Speaker 3: 19:20

Actually, we just had this interaction a few weeks ago. We were driving and I just had this overwhelming sadness come upon me and it was just a memory of in our early life, you know, probably year five and and it was a just a lot of sexual conflict back then and and, for me, trauma, and it was just this huge sadness. And I sat there in the car and I said, said to myself, I can share this with him now and risk having a conflict, what I always have fear over, or I could just share it with him and if I don't share it, I'm going to have to disassociate for us to have a fun sexual encounter later and and I'm not going to do that anymore, I did that for decades of my married life is just disassociate in the moments that we were sexually involved. I'm not going to do that anymore. And so I risked.

Speaker 3: 20:21

I took the risk and I told him, and Glenn responded so beautifully. He made space for what I was sharing. He ooed my emotion. He touched my arm or my leg and I felt his presence. No judgment, no frustration on his part and he was just oh, babe, I missed so many times with you when we were early in our married life and I feel so much guilt over that. And it was such a beautiful encounter and I think for couples, that's where you've got to start.

Speaker 3: 20:59

You've got to be able to share on that level emotionally about your past. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 21:04

And it was startling that whole thing because pretty much every marriage therapist, marriage counselor I know would have said to Phyllis in that moment that's a bad idea, Don't bring up a pain experience. You're about to have a sex date. You're going to ruin the atmosphere, kill the vibe and it actually multiplied it. We're faith-based. I believe there's a God designer behind this. I think that reflects the genius of God, because that is so redemptive. Now I'm glad that she felt pain 30 years ago and that she shared it this day, because now we're more bonded literally 40 seconds later than we were before which is bizarre.

Speaker 4: 21:42

It's like, well, that didn't make any sense. Wait, the pain was a benefit. Yeah, actually it was. Now the reality is what how we have learned to dance through. That is and and specifically what you're saying, jay, because we do. We want people to know exactly what to do, so we developed what's called the core emotion wheel, where people train themselves, they exercise their emotional muscle the vast majority of people, probably men, are worse off in this regard in this culture than women that the emotional muscle is atrophied to the point that I mean you think about, if you put a cast on your leg for a year and a half, you take the cast off, you can't even walk. I mean you literally would fall on your face. So for most people, especially men, they just fall on their face emotionally. They have no idea how to use that muscle. So the core motion wheel is a two-minute exercise. We encourage people to do it every day. It's two stinking minutes. We tell people you brush your teeth every day, do the core motion wheel every day.

Speaker 4: 22:36

It's the eight emotions. Every human on the planet has five neural regions connected to emotion that are the central command center. Emotion occurs throughout the body, but the central command center is in the limbic system and this teaches people. There's five regions but there's eight core emotions. That's too complicated to explain in this brief, but they get good at doing that. Then they're able to recognize in the moment, because what we're doing is training them by doing the exercise so that on a Tuesday afternoon at 315, he's able to recognize and go, and that leads us to what we call the three phrases.

Speaker 4: 23:11

He goes oh, what just happened for me? What did I miss? What did I miss? What did I miss? Ooh, I felt hurt by her. He wasn't trying to feel hurt. I'm not even blaming her. I'm not saying she had anything to do with it. She literally may have done a positive thing and he felt wounded by it. He's able to say to her I felt hurt just now. Not an indictmentment, not an accusation, he just felt pain. And if he does not process that pain and it may seem like a little things like, oh, no big deal, just just skip that, shrug it off, set it aside, brush it off, suppress, deny, step around whatever, if he doesn't do that, that's a? Um, a one pound weight he puts in his backpack no big deal, it's one pound. Come on, jay, you can carry a one pound backpack, you big weenie. Well, then, a little bit later he's going to put another pound in there and by that night, by the next day, he has 140 pounds in his backpack. Well, jay's a tough guy, he can still do that. A week later he has 600 pounds in his backpack. And then Lauren's looking at him like dude, what happened to you? You're so, you're exhausted, you're so distant, you're. So he's carrying around a 500 pound weight. He can barely function. And then, if he dumps it on her, he finally gets the backpack off and he manages to dump it on her. Oh, my gosh, now she's wrecked.

Speaker 4: 24:30

So we have to get good, which is what we're coded to do. That's what's called the connection codes. We're hardwired this way from birth. We have two new grandkids, number 11 and 12. Malachi is three months. Rowan is six months. They are phenomenal connection coders. They never let and you guys have little ones, you know this. They never let anything build up. They process immediately. And it's not because they're so dang smart, even though they are so dang smart, they process because they're hardwired that way. They always convey everything that's happening for them. Well, that coding never changes. Glenn's coding is the same as the day he was born, phyllis's is, jay's is and so is Lauren's. So we just want to get people back to being able to process instantly in the moment. We call it the first time, every time, anytime, all the time.

Speaker 1: 25:17

Well, this is something that I mean honestly. We could talk about this for hours, and we want people to become experts at it, right? So you know, this is part of why we love partnering with you guys, because you're experts on couples being able to dive deeper and become really proficient at it. There's no way that you're going to get really good at navigating through these big emotions every single day without really practicing and being diligent and becoming experts, and so you know. But we wanted to start the conversation and give people some tools and a place to go, and so, obviously, at the end of the podcast there's links to what you guys offer, and they can get a 40% off discount code using the code word J. But we want to dive just a little bit, before this is over, into how to intentionally create a thriving sex life through. You guys are very intentional when you plan dates. You're very intentional with the breaks and accelerators. Can you just take 10 minutes and talk through? And again, these are topics that we can talk hours on.

Speaker 2: 26:26

Yeah, this is a taste test.

Speaker 1: 26:27

And need that, but we want to get couples in this series. We're not trying to solve everyone's problems, we're trying to go. This is the standard. This is we want to raise the standard for marriage, in our sex life, in marriage, and this is what it can and should look like. And here's some starting points and some tools. And so can we go back and just and finishing this episode, can we talk through what does it look like to intentionally plan out dates for you guys? And then, what are those breaks and accelerators that make things harder or make things better for us?

Speaker 3: 27:04

Yeah, I love that and you know, I guess in this segment I always feel like I'm talking to the women. But guys, you got to really really listen and part of it is the idea that this is a party design for a female, and the reason we say that is because of the way our bodies are made. We're so, so different than the. You know the counterparts and it's it's. It's just interesting. I think Glenn can get activated so quickly. It takes me so much longer.

Speaker 3: 27:36

So it's like, okay, I have to create a different atmosphere for me to even show up. And it's super important to understand that. And it's not a because something's wrong with me or I'm broken. This is the way God designed me. Wrong with me or I'm broken, this is the way God designed me. And it is just the beauty of that is just that we then have to be intentional and we have to slow down for each other and we have to connect emotionally to even get there.

Speaker 3: 28:05

And so you know, that is what many of us have missed all these years, and we learned it early on all four of our kids were still home is when we decided to have sex dates one day a week, and at that point. It was always at night, after the kids went to bed. But for me, I realized I have to figure out how to transition from being a mom to being a lover, to being, to showing up in space feeling sexy, and that was not something I could get to in just a few seconds, where I would say what I always experienced with Glenn is he could show up in that space in just a few seconds, no matter what's going on, it's like 12, 12 seconds.

Speaker 4: 28:50

Well, it does.

Speaker 3: 28:51

It was like he was never affected by the thought that the kids were not asleep yet and I'm just like, but what if they come to the door? What if they knock on the door? I was so affected by those things where he could have cared less, because 12 seconds in and about 12 seconds later he was happy. Is that fair, okay? So you know, I didn't even show up yet, my body was not even awake yet. My body was, was not. So it kind of goes back to feeling safe. So you've got to be able to emotionally feel that in support of that and then to be able to figure out your own needs. And I think for women we have a hard time understanding our needs. So that is quite the place to start. And you know, to some degree it's like you are also showing up in that space, being able to say I want to understand my body, I want to figure out what is the pleasure parts of my body. That's quite the journey right there. You know that's quite the adventure to be on is just figuring out your own body. Many of us have to overcome quite a bit of childhood shaming and things like that where we were not allowed to show up in that space. But yet we, you know now, are trying to be that, we're trying to, but yet we, you know now, are trying to be that, we're trying to be the sexy you know, we're trying to, you know, understand that about ourselves. And and so it's quite the journey. So we set aside very intentional time so that we could figure that out and we could see how to do that.

Speaker 3: 30:33

And you know, I think for me even that, just the time to figure out what is my sexy, I always thought that it had to be one thing when really that never felt that for me. You know, white lace, I never felt sexy and white lace. So I had to go on an adventure of figuring out. You know, almost a shopping spree and I mean there's really cheap ways to do it. But I wanted to figure out in what way, in what arena do I feel sexy? And you know the, even the idea of brakes and accelerators, it kind of falls under that to think, okay, what for me is a break? What? What stops this or slows this process down? And you know, the process very much for me is very different than others, right, like, for, for a young mom, her brakes may be very different than the age of life I'm in, but I still have breaks and I still have accelerators, the things that help me just get into this space.

Speaker 3: 31:35

And I and I know that for maybe those that are listening, it's almost mind blowing when you think, oh, I'm supposed to have this much like brain space for this topic and it's like, yeah, you are, you're allowed to think about it this much, you're allowed to go. Oh, okay, I actually need to figure out what I need and I need to figure out what is a break and I need to know how to communicate that. So if, if you know if your spouse is coming to you and wanting a sexual playtime with you and you're aware of all the other things, you need to be able to communicate that and be like babe. I would love that. And in this process, can you help me? Can you put the kids to bed and finish up dinner and put the dishes in the dishwasher? And I'm just going to go and I'm going to take a shower and I'm going to go, put my head into a very different space and I'll meet you later. Give me about two hours and in two hours I will be there for you and I think that for many of us, I know, when I was a young, when my kids were young, I never felt that I had the right to ask for that much time.

Speaker 3: 32:46

I never thought that I was allowed to speak up and say this is what I need. I need partnership in this. I need for this space to be made the way I need it to be made. I don't want laundry piled on the bed. I'm so distracted by that. I can't even think about sex. All I can think about is laundry and so to just show up and be able to figure out how to create the space that allows you to go there. But for many of us, we are so wounded in this area that we don't even want to give it any amount of thought or time.

Speaker 2: 33:22

Yeah, yeah, this is so helpful. This, um, this conversation right here was, was groundbreaking for me when we first started doing a connection codes work with you guys, and specifically in the late night course on sex. This was really helpful because I know that what happens to a lot of couples is, without a lot of good teaching or leadership in this area, you come into marriage with a whole bunch of ideas and assumptions about what it's going to be like and you get to the spot where you're like if it doesn't feel natural, if it doesn't come naturally, if we're not instantly good at this, if it doesn't look like the movies, if it's not as exciting as it should be, as it is in my imagination, then something's wrong with us, and I think what we. If I could even just sum up two of the things that we've learned from you guys, it would be that the basis of a solid sexual connection in marriage is a solid emotional connection, and then, secondly, you're going to get good at it as you practice and as you put the time into prioritizing and learning each other in these areas, and so I just want to thank you so much for these really practical tools and I want to remind everybody that this is just kind of a taste tester of some of this content.

Speaker 2: 34:43

If you want to go and check out the Connection Codes website, you can. They've got courses and groups and all kinds of things that you can investigate. Jason mentioned this, but they're so kind to give a 40% off code if you use the code word J, J-A-Y on their resources. So make sure to go check that out. I'm going to put the link to the Core Emotion Wheel and their website and some of their content in the show notes, so be sure to check that out. You guys. Um. Dr Glennon Phyllis, thank you so much for this conversation and you guys who are listening, uh, you get a real treat next week. You are going to get another part of this conversation, uh, in the podcast.

Speaker 2: 35:22

So, 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. Uh, 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 toolkit for how to approach covenant um connection with your spouse. We know that people experience pain inside of marriage and often it's just because they don't have the right tools to help navigate the hard a hard spot. So, um, jump over to Jason and Lauren Valtoncom and check out information about the marriage intensive If you're interested otherwise have an incredible week.

Speaker 2: 36:08

We'll see you next time.