Episode 311 - Sam Jolman, "The Sex Talk You Never Got, Part 2"

Welcome back to "Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick." In today's episode, Michael dives deep into a conversation with Sam Jolman, author of "The Sex Talk You Never Got: Reclaiming the Heart of Masculine Sexuality." Sam’s groundbreaking book, set to release on June 11, explores the often misunderstood landscape of male sexuality, emphasizing that true sexual healing involves far more than just avoiding lust or overcoming shame. Instead, Sam introduces the concept of reclaiming innocence through awe and kindness, leading to an integrated, holistic experience of our sexuality. 

Michael and Sam challenge traditional perspectives, shifting the focus from purity as an end goal to embracing our sexuality as a means of drawing closer to God and experiencing life’s profound beauty. They also address the pivotal question: what is the true goal of male sexuality? Join us for this enlightening discussion that promises to reshape how we understand and experience our deepest desires and connections. 

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Transcript

0:56

Hey, everybody, welcome back to restoring the soul. I'm Michael John Cusick, and I'm talking with Sam Jolman, author of the sex talk you never got, reclaiming the heart of masculine sexuality. And the book is right here. It comes out June 11, Thomas Nelson, available wherever fine books are sold. Sam, we were talking in part one all about how male sexuality, we were created to be lovers. We are lovers. We are created for beauty. We are talking about sex not being about our genitals, but about an integrated part of who we are that is connected to our masculinity and our deep, deep capacity for connection. We touched on the real sex education and how evil wants to come against our story as lovers and basically put shame upon everything related to our masculine soul and our sexuality. So in this part, I'd like to talk about the recovery of innocence. And as I've done podcasts and shows for twelve years now around my book and sexual brokenness into wholeness, you know, I always get this question at the end, so how do men stop lusting and how do men stop looking at porn? And you don't do that. You do talk about the path, the only path forward for healing. But again, you talk about a way of being instead of something to do. So, number one, innocence. When we hear the word innocence, you know, we think about guilt versus innocence, or we think of like a vulnerable, silly little child that's so innocent and that's not realistic. You're talking about something different. Yes, that's right. And, you know, it's, it's, it's easy to want to write off innocence as that thing we all outgrow and leave behind right, in childhood. But I was changed in this perspective, wildly, by our friend Dan Allender, who spoke. I was in a lecture that he was giving twelve or so years ago where he said this line, innocence is the ability to be in awe. Innocence is the ability to be in awe. And right away what I thought is. So you're saying if I can be in awe, I can recover my innocence? Is instantly how that struck me, that if I'm a person of awe, then I can be innocent. And I remember in that moment, I thought right away of my own sexuality and my own sexual struggle and my own sexual brokenness and a sense that there's no way I can recover my sexual innocence. I've seen too much, I know too much, I've done too much. Sexuality can't be recovered in its innocence. Maybe I can be forgiven, but that's about it, is the sense, or maybe God can sort of heal me. But innocence, you're saying innocence can be recovered. To me, was a wild, wildly exciting idea. And, yes, innocence is the ability to be in awe. I'm convinced of that now. And awe is this. As I say in the book, it's this kind of opposite place we can go in our hearts, in our sexuality than lust. In fact, I would say often lust is actually the way to kind of temper or take us away from awe. As I sit with men. So you think of awe. Awe is this idea of saying, wow. It's this idea of reverence, of being undone by goodness, right? You think of, like, you know, a thundering waterfall. You know, just the sheer force of it, but the beauty of it, right. It's wow. I mean, you just feel it reverberating in your body. That's awe, right? Or you're, you know, you're behind the inch of glass at the zoo with a lion, right? And you hear it roar. And there's a sense of, like, wow. I mean, look at this wildly powerful animal and the beauty, in many ways, of its design, right? That's awe. And you can have that same awe. In fact, it's the place research has shown that we have the greatest experience of awe is actually with each other, with other humans, in what's called moral beauty. Or it's this idea of when people are doing amazing things or courageous things. We have this sense of awe for people. And lust is a kind of shutting down of awe. As I sit with men in my practice, and I imagine you experience this too, there's a sense men who are really taken with lust, they don't really see people anymore. They often just see body parts. There's this kind of mutilating quality. I remember asking a man steeped in sex addiction something about. He was describing a scene where he was struggling, and I asked what he thought of the woman. He says, oh, I don't see a woman. I just see body parts that are lust inducing. Right. That are titillating. It made me think, like, lust is really this mutilation at some level. But also it's a kind of stopping of awe. It prevents us from taking in the fullness of a person. Yes. Because I think if we did, we wouldn't lust. Right. There would be this kind of reverent experience of the glory of God in another person. Yeah. That is so good. You can't have awe in looking at a body part any more than you can have awe looking at the tuning peg of a Stradivarius violin. Versus listening to Itzhak Perlman play a concerto on that violin, which would put you in awe. Or as you talked about yo yo ma on the cello. I love that. So you also talked about awe as. And you get into some of the linguistics of it, that something that were stopped in our tracks, that were, as John Blaise said, and you wrote slack jawed, that we're caught up in it, we're afraid and drawn at the same time. And there's that tension, right, where we're drawn in, and we can't not be captivated by it, but we're afraid as well. And that brought me back to junior high, where there was a girl, or girls, that over the years, especially in those formative pre puberty and puberty years, that I had crushes on, but because of my sexual abuse, I was terrified, more than the average guy, of being terrified to ask somebody out. And so my wound shaped the degree to which I could even enter into that awe. And so from a distance, I would not per se lust, but look upon these girls like they were the golden haired maiden. And it brought me so much clarity, the idea of awe as drawn, but also afraid. Afraid in a good way, a humble way. This could consume me. So we look at that lion behind the glass and. And we're in awe, but we don't say, gee, I want to jump over and pet it. At least a rational person doesn't. We see that waterfall and we stand back and we know that if I were to fall over or if I were to jump into that, I would, you know, woe is me, I'm undone. Yeah, that's right. And. And therefore, awe has a lot to do with holiness. That. That which is holy is really that which we are in awe of. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, it's interesting, in research that has been done on the experience of awe, there is this threshold place. In fact, you know, the best definition I read in my studying of what awe is, they said it's an emotion. It's a studied emotion on the upper reaches of pleasure and on the edge of fear. And what they noticed is that actually, if you creep too far into fear, awe disappears, the pleasure goes away. Right? So fear and sex can be harmful. Right. In fact, that's often what people might describe as their experience of sexual abuse is there was arousal and terror. Right? And so we're not naming a kind of abusive terror. This is mostly pleasure with a little bit of fear. Right? And the fear, there again, is not a lack of safety. Right? It's safety, you know, has been said. Safety is not necessarily the absence of all danger. It's the presence of comfort. Right. And so, you know, sex is meant to be mostly pleasure, but that sense of naked vulnerability. Right. Or in the sense of you're describing, and I've heard that story, that same story of people who, when they first begin to encounter their own sexuality in their body. Right. And having a crush or a girl that is almost too beautiful to go approach. Right. There's meant to be a goodness to that awe, but not too much. Right. And now you're crossing into, again, where evil can come, to twist awe, to bring danger or harm or to make sex terrifying or violating. Thank you for that. I want to begin to move toward the healing path, but I just want to say one of the things, and I know I keep saying one of the things that I appreciate, but one of the big things that I appreciate it and I think is going to be really helpful for readers of your book, is how you talk about reclaiming male sexuality in a healthy way, as formation. And I do a lot of work in speaking in spiritual formation circles, and that's where I talk about the integration of sexuality and spirituality. And you wrote that what is left unformed will only become malformed. And so, again, the moment of reclaiming our male sexuality is not just a moment, but a series of moments and days and weeks and months and years as we move forward. And I remember Dallas Willard talking about indirection, that if we just try to become a godly person and obey the commands, we'll fail. But if we. If we try to obey the commands, we'll fail. But if we try to become the kind of person that obeys the commands, we'll actually succeed. And one of the thoughts or templates I put over the book was that you're really inviting men to become the kind of men who live in and integrate all of these aspects of being a lover and being able to be present to beauty without consuming it, and being able to be in awe and to not have to dial it down and to be able to attend to the other without contempt, to be able to be naked and unashamed instead of allowing shame to drive it. So thank you for that, for the formation. Free to comment on that, but if you will address the chapter and kind of the big question that I imagine the reader has and the listener of this podcast, how do we move forward? How do we start to walk down a path to reclaim healthy male sexuality? Yeah, right away. Gosh, what a big question, right? And so, you know, I'll. I'll take my words as yes. I'm attempting to obviously sort of blaze a trail in that, as many have, including you in your book, surfing for God. So let me just say I'm trying to join a chorus here. But as I say in the book, evil's greatest hope is to join shame to your arousal. Evil's greatest hope is that if you are stuck in shame, you will want to shut something down inside of you, or you will want to divide or split from something that feels bad in you, so namely your sexuality in some way or even more, you know, on point, maybe your lover heart. Right? And so most men live with some degree, certainly not all men, but it seems the majority of men live with something of their sexuality in the shadows of their life. Meaning it doesn't. It's not as integrated into who they are. It's something they maybe hold in shame. And there's really only two paths out of shame, and not much in life is this black and white. But I'm convinced really the only paths out of shame, and really there's only one that's healing and can restore you to wholeness. But those two paths are contempt or kindness. And the path of contempt is the flinch reaction, which is the protective reaction, which is to go to some form of either self hatred or contempt for others through some sort of acting out. That can be a form of contempt. And often, obviously, these are join together. There's a form of self hatred and other centered contempt. But the only path that I found out of any kind of sexual struggle, sexual woundedness, sexual shame, is really the path of kindness. And that might seem rather innocuous at first. Like, how does that heal anybody? But there has to be some willingness to receive the kindness of God for yourself and to be willing to participate in kindness to your own story and that you are seeking out places for kindness. Right. We know it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. And obviously not all sexual struggle is sin. But I'm convinced kindness is really the only thing that rightly sets us free from shame. We're really pain as well. I love that. And so many people will first divulge their shame or their secret stories to a therapist. And it's such an honor to be that person where we get to hold their story and hold space and simply offer kindness. And over 30 years, I've just seen that disarm people of, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm actually seen and loved, and this person didn't run away or throw up or abandon me. And I'll never forget going to counseling for the first time as an adult before I was married, when my story was not my personal story, but the prostitution ring that I've been paying for sexual services, not knowing at the time or thinking that those women were trafficked and there not by choice in the traditional sense of the word choice, that was all exposed in the newspaper. So I was terrified I'd be exposed. Went to a counselor. I expected him, even as a christian man, to be all over me and to tell me, you know, pull up my bootstraps, read my bible more. Or I expected him in an ultra therapeutic way to say, you know, go to this program, do this. And as I talked nonstop for 55 minutes, he just looked at me and he said, you strike me as a very lonely man. And he had tears in his eyes, and his face was kind, and he was strong. And I just had this sense of, this is a safe person that I can tell my story to. So I love that the kindness that we receive from others, and then eventually, as part of this formation as well, we have to. It's essential, we have to learn to show kindness to ourselves. Mm hmm. That's right. Yeah. And, you know, most often, it's something we receive first. Like you're saying, you know, I remember at age 19, going to a counselor for the first time after I had been caught, you know, in my pornography habit, and thinking very similarly, like, and even probably at some level, I could say I kind of wanted to be beat up. Right. It seemed appropriate to what had happened. Like, you should probably beat me up. And that's probably what I need is, you know, to be raged at or, I don't know, like, you know, condemned or yelled at. And maybe that's what will bring me to healing or get me to stop. Right? And similarly, I had an incredibly kind man sit with me and ask curious questions. I remember the first session sitting and waiting for the moment he was going to turn on me. And instead, he spent that hour being curious about me and my story, my life. And I remember at one point just breaking down, crying at just the pursuit he had given me. And I think a lot of men, in the attempt to kind of crucify the flesh, which is what we're called to, we end up feeling like we need to repent of having a body and repent of every desire that led us to where we are. But again, as our friend Dan Allender says, even in our worst sin, we cannot eradicate our glory, that there's always something that God wants to have a conversation with us about in our acting out. Sam, let's wrap up with this. You raise a question which I thought, I bet you 99% of your readers will never have even thought of this question, but it's such an important one, right? Because, okay, what is sexuality? What's my desire? What does it mean to surrender this to God and have it become healthy? What does it mean to live on? A shame. But your question was, what is the goal of male sexuality? Like, whoa, there's a goal to my male sexuality? You know, besides getting as much as possible or making babies? How could there be a goal behind it? But talk about why that's an important question. And then what you answer, well, you. Know, it's an on the nose question, but I think I'm asking it because I think men have had or have sort of absorbed an answer to that question already, which is, well, the goal of my sexuality is purity, right. And coming out of purity culture or accountability groups, right, that the goal is purity, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all doing here? And I think that's a really bad goal. So that's why I asked the question. I think purity is obviously something we're called to, right? But purity is never meant to be an end in itself. It was always, yes, it's preparation for worship in the purity rituals. So, as I say in the book, I think the goal of your sexuality is awe. It's something designed in you that's meant to lead you to say, wow, thank you to God, that you're left slack jawed and moved by life, by God. And not just, you know, specifically, you know, strictly just in terms of sexual activity or sexual experience, but that you, as a sexual being, again, you're a lover, and there's a whole world of pleasure and beauty to discover and know that's meant to lead you to God to say, wow, thank you. It was also Dan Eller that years ago talked about, and I took his human sexuality class, I think 32 years ago when he was a pup and when I was a pre pup. And he talked about how sex could be evangelistic, how it would tell the story of God, and not in the sense that couples are going to be having sex in the street and people seeing that. But as you're talking, the place my mind goes to is that all awe is intrinsically evangelistic. That is, as people see persons in awe in that kind of submitted to something so much larger and utterly beautiful. That those people are captivated by people in awe. And because you're from the Lake Michigan area, I want to just share the story that's been going through my mind. I think I might have told this to you when we had bagels. I was with my family at Saugatuck, and we went for the evening Lake Michigan pleasure Sunset cruise. And I was like, really? We're going to do this. You know, this is going to be old folks and folding chairs, and it's going to be boring. And we went out, you know, I don't know how far. And unbeknownst to everybody, the captain came on the loudspeaker and he said, don't be scared. I'm going to shut off the engines and we're going to drift for a little bit. And if you turn, you know, to your right and stand still, you're going to see the cloud pass, and there's going to be a beautiful sunset. So the cloud passes and this flaming orange sun starts to in full circle, just go lower and lower. And there was lots of rabble rousing, and people had cocktails, and people were laughing. And then suddenly it got quieter and quieter, and everybody moved to one side of the boat. I'm guessing there were 150 people. And as the sun went down to the horizon, you could hear a pin drop. It was utterly, utterly silent. And then it went halfway, three quarters. Then there's just a sliver of this flaming orange sun, and it disappeared. And for what must have been 10 seconds, but it felt like a minute. There was absolute silence, and there were 150 people standing in awe. And then, without any instruction, everyone burst into applause and they gave a standing ovation. And this was not a christian pleasure cruise. But I thought in that moment, that is one of the holiest moments where in that moment, if people weren't christians, it was as if they were saying, that's what I want for the rest of my life. That's what I want to give my heart to, that kind of beauty, that kind of something bigger. And I just got the sense that also to mix the metaphors from your book, that was a moment of play. People were paying money to go have this awesome experience. It wasn't work. They were just there. And your refrain through the end of the book is, we just show up. We just show up. We just show up. We put ourselves in these places. So thank you for writing this book. Thank you for allowing your life experience, your clinical experience, your educational experience, and even stories of loved ones to be vulnerably shared into this. And I just wish you and pray all the success to be able to tell the story, to take this message to men and to women, to change the world. If I had had this book 35 years ago, I would not have caused the pain and the harm that I did in my marriage. And I know that this book is an answer to prayer. So bless you. Thank you, Michael. That means so much. I almost don't have words for your blessing on it. And yes, may it be that my greatest hope is that men are able to sit differently with their lover hearts and that the world is changed.