Sheila: Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast.  I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage.  And I am joined today by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach.

Rebecca: Hello.

Sheila: And we are going to talk about something that we were talking about together, not because we are mother and daughter, but because we are fellow researchers in sex.  So we are going to talk about orgasm.

Rebecca: Can’t emphasize enough how much it’s not because we’re mother and daughter.  This is the weirdest part.  Yeah. 

Sheila: This is all research based stuff.  Before we do that, I want to say thank you to those who make our research possible.  So our patron group is just amazing.  They have funded us for a couple of years now.  We get new people added every week.  Even if you just give $5 a month, you get access to our Facebook group and some unfiltered podcasts, which is amazing.

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  Unfiltered podcasts are the $8 a month tier, I think.  Yeah.  

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  And then we also have the Good Fruit Faith Initiative as part of the Bosko Foundation, also helps fund what we do, our research, getting our stuff translated into different languages, and more.  And if you are in the U.S., you can get tax deductible receipts for that.  But this is all relatively new.  The patron and Bosko.  For years, when I started my blog, the way that we financed it was through courses and merch.  And we were trying to create courses that would actually help people, like would get them over some of the biggest hurdles in their marriages and really bring the biggest results.  And one of those courses that we created right—just after we had done the research for our book The Great Sex Rescue based on our survey of 20,000 women—but before that book came out was our orgasm course.

Rebecca: That’s right.  Yeah.  And we also didn’t just use our research.  But we went into all the research that I could find on the determinants of female orgasm.  My search history was wild while we were doing this course.  The targeted ads I started getting on Facebook were really something.  

Sheila: Yeah.  Just not what people want to see.  But you did all of that hard work, and you figured out what the research shows that goes into orgasm.  And we haven’t talked about this in about four years.  Back in October 2020 when the orgasm course was out, we were talking a lot about some of the problems with orgasm, why it can be so difficult for people.  And we were creating this course, which got into the nitty gritty of how to actually make it work for you.

Rebecca: Well, and I think that in us doing this podcast, we talked about it so much four years ago that often we’ll talk about how—and, obviously, we know this about orgasm.  And then we realized, actually, a lot of people only started listening to us in the last two years.  And some of the stuff that we set the stage for four years ago that we discussed at length, you might not have actually heard.  And also we did so many podcasts on it.  One of the people who work for us had this great idea to take the highlights of all those podcasts, in essence our anthology on female orgasm, and take, I think—what was it?  Six or seven podcasts in total?

Sheila: Yeah.  I don’t know.  I think it’s pretty close to that.

Rebecca:   Seven hours of content kind of stuff and break it down into the top tier moments so that if you’re someone who you listen to all the podcasts but you’re looking for something quick to send to someone so they’ll get it, or you’re like, “I don’t know how to explain this particular thing,” these might help you—kind of remind, “Oh, right.  That’s the key takeaway.”  But if you’re someone who is kind of new to our podcast, who for some reason you haven’t had the time to listen to five years worth of content—I mean, really, let’s get on that, right?  If you’re a new listener and you haven’t heard these things, this might also be a really great way for you to kind of get the SparkNotes, in essence, of what we did four years ago.

Sheila: So we’re going to talk, in this podcast, about some of the reasons that women can have a really difficult time reaching orgasm.  And then we also have this amazing course, the orgasm course, which can help you then translate—figure out what are my roadblocks and what do I need to do and what can I do to get over them and really experience sex the way—the awesome way that we’re supposed to.  And so we’re putting the orgasm course on sale this week until Monday at midnight, which I think—is what?  September 23rd at midnight?  

Rebecca: I’m going to be honest.  I have two kids under—four and under.  Days mean nothing to me.

Sheila: September 23rd at midnight.  You’re going to get our men’s version of the orgasm course for free when you buy the women’s version.  So the link for that is going to be in the podcast notes.  Now, before we bring the clips, Becca, let’s just share some of our basic numbers with everybody.

Rebecca: Oh yeah.  That’s right. 

Sheila: Okay.  So one of the things we talk about a lot here on the Bare Marriage podcast is the orgasm gap.  And what we mean by that is—well, why don’t you explain?

Rebecca:   Well, what we mean by that is that while many studies have found that—this is a pretty standard number—95% of men during sex will almost always to always orgasm.  Okay?  So pretty much if something is not happening for him there’s probably a problem going on, right?  So 95% of men almost always or always orgasm versus only 48% of women, which means there is a 47% disparity between men’s experiences and women’s experience.  So what we should be seeing, if there is an equal experience with sex, is that then 95% of women are always—and that’s obviously not what’s happening.

Sheila: Right.  So we have a huge orgasm gap.  And to give you some more figures, so 48% of women do say that they almost always or always, 33% very rarely or never reach orgasm, and then there’s 19% that are intermittent.  And the one thing that I really want all of you to know as we’re going into this podcast is that a lot of the people who are in the 48% started off in the 33%.  Okay.  So just because someone always or almost always does not does not mean that was always the case.  For a lot of people, this was a learning journey, a learning curve.  And if that is you, if you are currently in the 33%, you can be in the 48%.  And we’re hoping that throughout this podcast you’ll get some glimpses as to why maybe that has been difficult to and that we can point you to some resources that can help.  So I want to jump in to one of the earliest clips we have where—this was back when I used to do my podcast—a lot of them by myself.  They weren’t a conversation.  And here I am talking about why it is that I’m talking about sex.  I know I write about sex all the time.  And one of the problems with writing about sex and talking about sex and doing all these blog posts and podcasts about sex is that people get the idea she must do it really well.  If she’s talking about this stuff all the time, she must be really good at it.  And what I always tell people when I speak is that sex was really the most difficult part of our marriage when we first got married.  I suffered from vaginismus, which means that the vaginal muscles contract and make it very difficult for penetration to happen at all.  Or else if it does happen, it’s really painful because you tense right up.  It’s involuntary.  You’re not deliberately causing it.  It really isn’t anyone’s fault, but it causes a lot of pain.  And Christian women tend to suffer from vaginismus at twice the rate of the general population.  So there’s something going on with us and the messages that we’re getting about sex which cause vaginismus.  So here I am.  I’m getting married.  He has a really high libido.  I have vaginismus, and it was just a big, hot mess.  And it took us a couple of years to figure everything out.  And what I find is that people tend to write and speak in the areas of their lives that have been the most difficult because, otherwise, you’d have nothing to say.  If it was always easy, then what do you have to tell people?  So when I write about this stuff, I understand where people are coming from.  I understand the anger that why is sex so easy for him and so difficult for me.  Why would God make something this difficult for me and then tell me that this is the only way he can feel loved?  Why does he feel loved from something that causes me pain or from something that makes me uncomfortable or from something that triggers flashbacks of abuse or whatever it might be in your case?  Why do I have to suffer for him to feel loved?  And that’s what a lot of us are going through, and that’s a terrible, terrible burden that many of us are carrying.  And I just want to tell you I get it.  I hear you.  I don’t think that we talk enough about how emotional it is when you can reach orgasm.  How difficult this is when sex isn’t working.  It’s really hard for people.  And I think what compounds it is that when sex is terrible but the message is you’re supposed to do it anyway it feels like God is telling you, “Hey, you need to let your body be used.  You need to go through this kind of pain or this kind of discomfort or just this kind of awkwardness to make God happy.”  And it’s just a really toxic combination.

Rebecca: Yeah.  And as a result, we found—and if any of you have read Great Sex Rescue, you will know that message actively hurts people.  It’s not just like a, well, oh well.  It could be better.  No.  It’s actually causing harm.  And it’s normal to not really see something that you felt has hurt you in the past is a good thing.  That’s a normal thing.  That’s something that our brains are designed to do, right?  It’s the same reason why if you stove once you’re not going to do it again, right?  Our brains are designed to protect us.  So what do you do if your brain has felt like it needs to protect you from sex, right?  So I do want to validate.  That is not abnormal.  That’s a very normal and logical reaction.  So how do we reframe this?  Because we know from data, we know from research, we know from a bunch of different areas that sex is a good thing, and it’s a really good thing for women.  So let’s look at some of the research that shows what actually makes sex orgasmic for women.  

Sheila: And we’ll bring on Joanna, our amazing statistician, to help us do that.

Joanna: But it’s pretty much get back to basics.  The first thing that we found that if your marriage overall is better you’re more orgasmic, which makes complete sense.  So if a woman can speak up and say what feels good and what doesn’t during sex, she’s much more likely to orgasm.  And it makes sense that she would be more likely to be able to speak up during sex if she can also speak up about the dishes or the laundry or just what movie she’s like to watch or whatever other discussions you’re having.  So if women agree that in their marriage their opinion mattered as much as their husbands, they were 2.26 times more likely to orgasm frequently.  That is quite a big difference.  

Sheila: Cool.  Yes.  We need to be able to feel like—yeah.  Like we matter.  Like our opinions matter.  Like we’re heard.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sheila: That makes sense.

Joanna: Exactly.  Yeah.  So you’re like yes.  Indeed.  Okay.  Next one, what also makes sense for orgasm is that sexual satisfaction affects orgasm rates.  So women who report having duty sex or having sex only out of a sense of obligation were 3.75 times less likely to frequently orgasm, which, again, also makes sense.  If she’s not going into sex thinking, “This is going to be great for me,” and is instead thinking, “Okay.  Yeah.  I know I need to do this,” she’s less likely to have fun and less likely to enjoy it.  

Sheila: And we also found—and that’s a little bit of a chicken and the egg thing too, right?  Because it’s like the more women orgasm, the less likely they are to have sex only because they have to.  So it’s like if you want women to have sex because they want to, then give them something to want.  Give them something to look forward to.

Joanna: And that’s actually one of the really big challenges I’ve had with analyzing the statistics.  I’ve done very simple correlations so far, and I haven’t gotten into the heavy duty model building stuff that I learned a lot about in my degree because everything is correlated with everything else.  Because you’re saying, okay, how is duty sex—it’s super correlated with libido because, of course, if she has no libido, she’s also probably, whenever she has sex, having it because it feels like a duty.  And so it becomes very difficult to build a model or do some of the more fancy statistics because everything is correlated to everything else which makes sense.  It’s all—everything is cumulative, and it builds on each other.  If the foundation is faulty, the odds of getting up to orgasm are lower.

Sheila: I know one thing we found when we looked at our chapter two, Don’t Sleep with Someone You Don’t Know, is that in our focus groups when we were talking to women we were able to realize that, yeah, if you have a better marriage you’re going to orgasm more.  But orgasming more doesn’t necessarily give you a better marriage.  Sex couldn’t fix your marriage.  So in that sense, we kind of did find which one comes first, and it does look like marital satisfaction comes before sexual satisfaction, which, again, makes sense.

Joanna: Absolutely.  And that makes complete sense.  I tell people all the time that The Great Sex Rescue is health class, the book.  This should be simple.  The other thing we found—it was really interesting—was that beliefs both before marriage and now affect how frequently women orgasm.  So if women believe before they are married that boys are going to push their sexual boundaries, they are 24% less likely to frequently orgasm now.  And if they believe that lust is every man’s battle now, they are 31% less likely to frequently orgasm.  So it’s really—I was fascinated that we were able to pick up the differences that just a belief have on the downstream effect of orgasm.  It makes a lot of sense that if you look at how your opinions are treated in your marriage that that—we would be able to pick up a correlation with orgasm.  They’re much closer when you think about a causal pathway.  A leads to B leads to C.  I don’t feel heard, so it’s hard for me to speak up during sex.  So I don’t orgasm.  Those are very boom, boom, boom.  Whereas I have a belief that may impact me in these subtle ways, those subtle ways make it less likely to orgasm.  It’s a lot more—there’s a lot more steps involved in the cascade, but we were still able to find that that’s how much of a big deal these beliefs are.  They are still affecting in a statistically significant way women’s orgasms.

Sheila: It’s amazing how one of the big findings that we had was that speaking up during sex is so important.  And yet, a lot of our resources have actually normalized the idea that women shouldn’t speak up.  I mean I remember one of the big things we talked about in Great Sex Rescue with the book The Meaning of Marriage where there’s this anecdote where Tim Keller says if—in those newlywed days, if after sex, he asked his wife how it was and she said, “It just hurt,” he says, “I would be devastated, and she would be too.”  And so many women in our focus groups told us that that anecdote—the message they got from that was that if sex hurts you’re supposed to do it anyway without speaking up.  Because he said—so they would have sex.  And then he would say, “How was it?”  And she would say, “It just hurt,” but he never then talks about—and so I said to her, “Hey, I never want you to do something that hurts.”  No.  The conclusion was we’re just going to keep having sex without trying to bring each other—without worrying about our own pleasure.

Rebecca:   Yeah.  And that’s what I found so interesting from that particular anecdote was that was exactly the solution.  The solution was, well, trying to make sex good for each for—trying to make sex good for ourselves making sure that we reach orgasm was too stressful.  And so we just stopped worrying about whether or not she reached orgasm realistically.  And you know what?  That’s a route that a lot of couples take.  But as you’ll see in this next clip, that’s not what research suggests.

Sheila: Yep.  And here we are from episode 92.

Rebecca: That one of the largest studies on the female determinants of orgasm that’s ever been done—so this is a really big study.  It had over 24,000 heterosexual women alone.  And they were talking about—

Sheila: We had 20,000.  

Rebecca: I know.  But that—

Sheila: That shows how big ours was.  Okay?     

Rebecca: Yeah.  No.  This survey, in total, had over 60,000 participants between men and women.  And they looked at what exactly is it that makes each demographic, homosexual versus heterosexual men and women, or—but women who are in heterosexual versus homosexual relationships in essence, right?  What makes them orgasm versus others?  To try to figure out what makes sex good for each sex, right?  One of the biggest determinants for heterosexual women is speaking up during sex and demanding for what they want in bed, is asking their partner for what they want, is speaking up and knowing—

Sheila: A little to the left.  

Rebecca: Exactly.  But here’s the thing.  Why wouldn’t a woman speak up in bed?  Why wouldn’t?  And this is what they talk about in the article too is what they said is the number one thing that we need to do in order to help women orgasm is more is tell women that their orgasm matters.  This is what a lot of research I was looking at was all saying is that we need to empower women to understand that sex is not for men and might be for them too.  Women, who are in heterosexual relationships like many of us are and who are reading most of our conservative Christian books, are going to be in heterosexual marriages, and they need to be told—explicitly told your pleasure matters.  Because if they don’t believe it, they’re not going to speak up which makes it far less that they’re going to orgasm which leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy of, “Well, I don’t really enjoy sex, and he loves it so much.  So I don’t want to be selfish.”  And then they go, and they read these books.  And these books all talk about how much he needs sex, and they don’t mention that she needs sex.  And so then what happens is they start having sex, and they think, “Oh, this doesn’t feel like anything,” or, “I wish he would do, but he’s having such a good time.  And I don’t want to destroy this for him.  I don’t want to make him feel—have any sort of self confidence issues here.  I don’t want to make him feel like I’m saying he’s doing a bad job, so I’m just going to fake it.” 

Sheila: Yeah.  Because in a lot of books—For Women Only says that what men really need is to feel like you’re an enthusiastic lover.  And so it talks about how it’s very important for you to reassure him during sex.  And she actually says, “First, know that you’re responding to a tender heart hiding behind all that testosterone.  If at all possible, respond to his advances with your full emotional involvement knowing that you’re touching his heart.  But if responding physically seems out of the question, let your words be heart words, reassuring, affirming, adoring.  Do everything in your power using words and actions your husband understands to keep those pangs of personal rejection from striking the man you love.  Leave him in no doubt that you love to love him.”

Rebecca: So now picture all those women that multiple studies have found don’t orgasm and it’s probably because they aren’t speaking up in bed and she’s thinking, “Sex doesn’t feel good for me.”  Is she going to have confidence that she’s not a terrible wife if she tells him this is doing nothing for me next time they have sex?  Is she going to confidently be able to go to him and say, “Listen, I have sexual needs too.  And I need you to take care of me”?  Or is she going to be scared that she’s going to make him have pangs of personal rejection that are going to strike the man she loves?  She is being told by one of the best selling Christian marriage books that her job is to leave him in no doubt that you love to love him.  What if she doesn’t?  And what if that’s his fault?  

Sheila: And that can lead us to one of my favorite analogies that Keith and I put in The Good Girl’s Guide and Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex.

Keith: Here’s why telling a couple to just have sex can totally backfire as marriage advice.  To explain, let’s not talk about sex for a minute.  And let’s talk instead about restaurants.

Sheila: Imagine a world where what women need in order to feel loved is to go out to eat at a restaurant at least once a week where they talk and enjoy a delicious meal.  This is the pinnacle of marriage to her.  And this is what marriage books tell couples that they must do.  

Keith: Picture a couple, Tracy and Doug, who tries to live by this.  One Tuesday night our intrepid couple heads to a restaurant.  They order appetizers, a main course, and a dessert.

Sheila: The waitress arrives with Tracy’s appetizer, a steaming bowl of cheese and broccoli soup.  Tracy finishes it and declares it delicious, but nothing comes for Doug.  Then Tracy’s steak arrives.

Keith: Doug is still wondering where his appetizer is, but Tracy starts slathering the butter and sour cream on to the baked potato and takes a bite of the steak with peppercorn sauce and asparagus.  She declares it scrumptious.

Sheila: So now Tracy is finished with her steak, and the waitress heads toward the couple again.  And in front of Tracy, she places a steaming, luscious molten lava cake.  Tracy squeals in delight as she scoops some out.  And just as she is down to the last few spoonfuls, the waitress finally arrives with Doug’s chicken wing appetizer. 

Keith: Doug is ecstatic.  And he digs in eating one quickly and then another.  But before he can get to his third one, Tracy stands up ready to go home.  “Dinner was amazing,” she declares as she heads for the door.  He follows behind her glancing at the uneaten chicken wings still on his plate while Tracy says, “I love doing this with you.”  Imagine that Doug and Tracy faithfully do this every week for 10 years.  How do you think Doug will feel about eating at restaurants?  Not too fun, is it?  Well, when we tell couples how important sex is and how she should enjoy it because of how much he likes it and how all she really needs is the emotional closeness anyway we set up a situation where pretty soon she’ll start to see sex the way Doug sees going out to a restaurant.

Sheila: If you’re both going out to a restaurant, you should both get to eat.  And if you’re going to have sex, you should both enjoy it.  Sex isn’t just one sided intercourse.  Sex is something which is mutual, intimate, and pleasurable for both.  

Rebecca: The next clip we have is actually from a more recent podcast, so some of you may have heard this.  But it’s worth listening to again because this is what I think is one of the funniest—it’s not funny.  But the way they wrote it was so funny.  

Sheila: It was funny.

Rebecca: The funniest research article that I have read on this was the concept of how, for women, sex is actually a fundamentally different experience than for men because of this disparity in orgasm rates, okay?  So the way that they described it is if you asked two people, “Do you like ravioli,” and one of them—their experience with ravioli was that their grandmother ran an authentic Italian restaurant, and they remember being an eight-year-old boy sitting in that kitchen with Nona’s ravioli—the smell wafting from the kitchen as it comes to him.  And this beautiful tomato sauce.  And I think that’s what ravioli is, right?  

Sheila: Yeah.  I think so.  

Rebecca: Little stuffed pasta shells.  All right.  Yeah.  And the—I don’t know.  The ricotta or sausage or insert whatever is stuffed inside of ravioli here comes to the table.  And it’s beautiful.  And the pasta shells are handmade.  He’s going to say, “I love ravioli.  Ten out of ten.  Best dish ever.”  Now what if you talked to Samuel whose experience with ravioli was Chef Boyardee eaten cold because he was a college student.  And he was like, “I don’t know.  I guess people eat this.”  And that was his only experience with ravioli.  He’d think, “Oh, ravioli kind of sucks.”  But you can’t measure those two responses against each other because one dude is talking about Nona’s homemade stuff.  And the other dude is talking about, “Well, I had a can opener, and I didn’t have a kitchen.”  So those are fundamentally different experiences.  And that’s what these researchers found was when you ask women, “Do you like sex,” they are describing and responding to a different experience than when you ask men, “Do you like sex.”  So we have to question the results of studies that show that men desire sex more than women do because—well, yeah.  No duh.  If you got Nona’s handmade ravioli versus Chef Boyardee cold in the college basement dorm.  That’s two different things.  

Sheila: And the main takeaway we want you to have from this is if you feel like you have a super low libido, maybe it’s because you’ve been getting Chef Boyardee.  And so let’s figure out how to get you Nona’s ravioli.  But then the biggest thing, the biggest thing that this article talked about, was just the centrality of male-centric sex.  And this was the biggest thing, which is great because this is our big thing that we talk about too.  And so I really appreciated this article. But they said this, “No evidence suggests that women are less skilled at bringing themselves to orgasm, less biologically inclined to orgasm, or that they experience orgasm more mildly than men do.  Instead the orgasm gap results from specific heterosexual practices, each of which privileges the male sexual experience.”  And then they go on to look at some of those practices.  So the fact that women are far more likely to reach orgasm through oral sex performed on them.  And yet, this is not prioritized in most heterosexual relationships.  

Rebecca: I love how you had to emphasize—oral sex performed on them because of the weird things we’ve read in Christian books about how, oh, don’t you love doing all these sex acts.  And it’s like okay.  But she also needs to get some.

Sheila: I know.  Yeah.  The fact that we consider penis and vagina the main thing in intercourse, and they talk a lot about that.  About how other forms of sexual pleasure are seen as extra.  And often, men will prioritize penis in vagina and not the things that bring her pleasure.  And so the conclusion of this is just, hey, we shouldn’t be saying women like sex less than men do— 

Rebecca: When they haven’t even had a fair shot at experiencing good sex.

Sheila: – when it could just be that the sex that women are experiencing is very different from the sex that men are experiencing.  One of the things that I really want us to understand is that when it comes to sex, if we are going to talk about sex being good, it means that women have to reach orgasm.  It really, really does.  I’m not saying that you can never sex if you don’t reach orgasm.  I understand that for many women it’s difficult.  And you want that closeness anyway.  But I don’t think we should give up on that goal, and I don’t think we should settle for that.  And so here we are talking about that in episode 168.

Keith: That very quickly can lead to the person in the relationship who has the higher drive feeling that it’s not my responsibility to engage them so that they want this like I do.  It’s their responsibility to provide it to me because that’s the deal.  You know what I mean?  And that’s typically men because men tend to have the higher drives especially in evangelical circles.  But it breeds selfish lovers because it’s an expectation as opposed to something that’s naturally flowing out of where we’re at.

Sheila: Right.  Right.  And I think this is why our sex lives often get put into this pit and why we end up in this pit.  We don’t know how to climb out of it is because we see sex in the wrong way.  And we need to redefine it.  That sex is not merely about the penis.  Even the way we think about sex, right?  It begins when the penis enters.  It ends when he finishes.  And anything extra is extra.  Anything else is extra.  And that’s not the way most women receive pleasure.  And so we need to get out of this male focused idea of sex, and we need to, instead, see sex as something which is holistic.  Okay.  Even those ideas—and I used to say this.  Oh gosh.  I used to say this all the time, and I will change this line in my talk that I give.  I would say that sex helps you sleep.  Right?  No.  It doesn’t.  Orgasmic sex helps you sleep.  

Keith: Right.  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sheila: Sex alone does not help her sleep.  It’s having the orgasm that makes you sleep.  And if you don’t have the orgasm, sleep can actually be more difficult.  

Keith: Because you’re frustrated.

Sheila: Exactly.  Or you feel used, if you’re one of the women—I think it was 18% of women.  Their primary emotion after intercourse is negative.  I feel used.  I feel disconnected.  Whatever.  So if sex is making you feel disconnected, sex is actually making your relationship worse.  And the more we have sex like that the more you create distance between you.  And then when that distance happens, assuming he’s the one with the higher sex drive, he wants even more sex to prove to himself they are still close, and so you get into this terrible cycle.

Keith: Yeah.  And it’s the only way he knows how to express his need is through sex.  And then what we do in the church is we tell her to give it anyway.  

Sheila: Right.  Here is one of the problems when we don’t prioritize her orgasm, and I want to give you some stats here.  I was looking for a podcast where we shared these stats, and I couldn’t find one.  And so I’ll just do it again.  I know we have on ones before, but here we go.  Okay?  So one of the neat things about our survey for The Great Sex Rescue is that we had all of these questions.  And when we surveyed men for the book The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex, we asked them the same questions.  We just changed spouse, your wife, from you.  And so we asked both men and women, does he do enough foreplay?  And does he prioritize her pleasure?  Okay?  Now when women reach orgasm, over 90% of men—and I think it was 88% of women say that he does enough foreplay.  Okay.

Rebecca: Which makes sense.  That’s logical.

Sheila: Yeah.  But it’s kind of funny that it’s not 100% of women.  It’s like they’re saying, “Well, you know even though I reach orgasm, it could still be a little more.”  Okay.  But when she doesn’t frequently reach orgasm, 71% of men and 52% of women still say he does enough foreplay.  And you know what that tells me?  That tells me that both men and women are saying, if she doesn’t reach orgasm, it’s her problem.  She’s broken.  He’s doing everything he’s supposed to do.  But the problem is with her.  And I think that one of the biggest roadblocks to orgasm for women is that we feel like we’re broken.

Rebecca:   Yeah.  And I think for many women we’ve talked to it’s this feeling of, well, he’s been trying for three minutes.  I’m still not feeling anything.  And so I don’t want to hold him up any longer.  We hear that from a lot of women as well.  This idea that I don’t want to be, in essence, a roadblock to him having sex and pleasure.  But the thing is, again, we’re looking at these 95% versus 48% stats here.  He’s going to have a good time.  You can take a little longer.  You get to matter too.  So let’s talk about that.

Sheila: Yeah.  Yeah.  And when we take his experience as the norm, then we often don’t even remember to talk about her pleasure which is something that we discussed a lot on episode 92.  But one of our most interesting findings, I think, is not what books say about women’s orgasms.  It’s what they don’t say.

Rebecca: And it’s how many don’t say.

Sheila: Yes.  How many books say absolutely nothing about the fact that sex is supposed to feel good for her too?  

Rebecca: Yeah.  And it’s so funny because then we get messages saying, “I read that book.  I don’t remember them saying that women’s sexual pleasure doesn’t matter.”  And I’m like, “Yeah.  But can you remember saying it does?”

Sheila: Exactly.  And that’s the thing is—Love and Respect has sex entirely in the men’s section.

Rebecca: No.  And, again, I know I say it all the time.  I just think it’s so perfect.  If your husband is typical, he has a need you don’t have.  

Sheila: Yeah.  So you don’t need sex.  

Rebecca: It’s just so funny.  

Sheila: So sex is in the men’s section.  It’s something that he needs.  It’s not something that she needs.  It just never mentions.  At one point, he uses 1 Corinthians 7 to say that each spouse is supposed to meet the other’s needs, but that’s all it says.  It’s like a throwaway line, but everything else is about how your husband will come under satanic attack if he doesn’t get release.  And he has a need for physical release whereas you have a need for emotional release.  I think we should have some emotional release.  

Rebecca: Does it just mean that you need to scream into a pillow?  

Sheila: I was thinking more like a bonfire, and you’re hopping around a bonfire.

Rebecca: Oh, like all the naked Druids.

Sheila: No.  Kind of like Sandra Bullock in The Proposal.  Where she’s out in the forest with Betty White.    

Rebecca: Yes.  Is that emotional release?

Sheila: That’s what I always picture.  

Rebecca: What would be an emotional climax then?  There’s all these questions because yeah.  Remember.  This is just what we find so funny.  And this is not a negative thing.  We just legitimately find this funny is that you read through all these books and you realize they never mention that sex should feel really good for women.  That, hey, women, you get this.  You like sex too.  Why does no book assume that women will understand that sex is good?

Sheila: Yeah.  And to be fair, I think I made that same mistake as well in some of my earlier books.  

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  Yeah.  And there are books that do it really well, right?  Like The Gift of Sex by the Penners.

Sheila: Gift of Sex does it really well. 

Rebecca: Emphasizes women having sexual needs as well.  

Sheila: And I should say Act of Marriage does too.  I mean that book has a lot of other problems, but that’s not one of them.

Rebecca: Yeah.  It scored really well on that part.

Sheila: Sheet Music as well.  A lot of other problems, but that’s not one of them.  There are a lot of books that do emphasize a woman’s pleasure.

Rebecca: But in general, we found we were looking through with all the books that are specifically about sex emphasize that women should have pleasure.  But the books that are about marriage, in general, emphasize that a husband should have pleasure, and then they just kind of don’t mention the womenfolk.

Sheila: Yeah.  Now there are some—Boundaries in Marriage does.  When it talks about sexual desires, it makes it gender neutral.      

Rebecca: Yep.  Which is great.    

Sheila: Which is great.  Sacred Marriage certainly does that as well.  So there are some books that treat this well.  But a lot of the marriage books just don’t mention that women can orgasm or that they should.  And now I would like to share one of my favorite clips that ever happened where Keith—my husband, Keith, and your husband, Connor, were talking.  Connor was leading the discussion.  About something that Emerson Eggerichs said.  And my big question is does he even believe that women can orgasm because—see what you think?  Because I don’t think it’s clear.

Connor: He says—this is a quote here.  “You turn on a woman sexually by not having anything to do with her sexually.”  So what he’s doing—

Keith: Hold on.

Sheila: Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  I’m processing.

Keith: Okay.  So hold on a second.  So he’s trying—

Sheila: What?

Keith: – to give guys advice on how to get their wives to have sex with them more?  Or is he trying to give guys advice on how to make their wife not cry in the shower?  I’m serious.

Sheila: Or try to arouse her.

Connor: So let’s go into this here.  What he’s doing is he’s taking those three components that we talk about, the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual, and he’s splitting them up.  He’s saying the physical is the guy’s.  And the spiritual and emotional are the woman’s.  And he’s saying women don’t get turned on by the physical stuff.  They get turned on by—you turn them on by not having anything to do with them sexually.  It’s all the emotional stuff.  It’s doing the chores and everything like that.  

Keith: So he’s talking about—he’s trying to talk about being emotionally connected to your wife rather than just going after her for sex.  Is that what he’s trying to say?

Connor: Yeah.  

Keith: Well, that’s not a terrible thing.  It’s unfortunate.

Connor: It’s not terrible.  Yeah.  But we’ve got some more—he gives a caveat.  And I think this is important because I think it is really damaging to tell women and to tell men that the physical side of sex is not for you, women.  This is not for you. You can get turned on by this stuff here.

Sheila: But does he even mean turned on?  Or does he just mean willing to have sex?  Does he actually mean—

Connor: He means turned on.  He’s talking about how can you get your wife willing to have sex.  Sorry.  Right.  Yeah.

Sheila: But that’s two different things.  Does he even believe that women can get physically turned on?  Because I’m not sure that he does.

Connor: He believes that if you do—he says if you do the emotional stuff, the chores, and the reading a book with them, and all of that, then that can get them willing.  And then when you start having sex, then they can get their gears going.

Keith: Okay.  Okay.  (inaudible) This is, I think—and I haven’t listened to the podcast, so I don’t know if this is what he’s saying.  But this is a thing I see in the evangelical church all the time and I suspect it’s probably what he’s trying to say is—okay.  There’s this thing called sex.  And sex is a physical thing that happens between two people.  And that’s all sex is.  Okay.  And so women don’t really like this physical thing, right?  But if you are emotionally close with them and you do all these things, then sometimes they’ll engage in sex.  Again, it’s the whole idea that sex is only physical.  How is that a Christian sexual ethic in any way, shape, or form?  I mean it should be something more holistic than just tab A in slot B.

Connor: Yeah.

Sheila: But I want to go back to this.  I’m still not convinced that he actually believes a woman can get physiologically aroused because, remember, he never once mentions it in his book.  He never once says that women have any pleasure.  In fact, he says that women don’t need physical release.  We need emotional release.

Connor: Well, let me tell you.  He actually does mention that women can get turned on physically and want to have sex.  He gives a caveat that there may be three days a month when a woman is capable of becoming pregnant, and, in those times, she can absolutely have a sexual appetite.

Sheila: Okay.  But, again, if he’s saying—okay.  So she only wants—

Connor: I’m sorry.  That’s so wild to me. 

Sheila: You know what?  I’ve gone through menopause, so I guess I’m done because I don’t ovulate anymore.  I’m really sorry, hon.  To use absolutist language.  I guess you’ll never—

Keith: Okay.  There’s going to be TMI if I start talking now.  Okay.  

Sheila: No.  I still want to harp on this just a little bit because there’s sexual appetite is still about—

Keith: Okay.  Hold on a second.  Hold on a second.  Hold on a second.  Hold on a second.  So three days a month the stars align, and there’s a hormonal rush.  And she actually likes sex.

Connor: Because she can get pregnant.

Keith: Because she can get pregnant.  Okay.  Okay.

Sheila: Because she can get pregnant.  Okay.  But sexual appetite is still talking about libido.  

Keith: Oh my gosh.  Oh my gosh.

Sheila: We’re still not talking about physiological arousal.  I am not convinced he knows women can orgasm because remember that he says in Love and Respect—

Keith: He must know that.  It’s just physically—

Sheila: Okay.  But I think he might think it’s a myth or something or that it’s only—

Keith: You mean the way he talks about it sounds like he must think it’s a myth because—yeah.

Sheila: Yes.  Because he says in Love and Respect, why would you deprive him of something which takes so little time and makes him so happy?

Keith: Well, and here’s the deal.  If you are a husband who wants to make your wife happy and you know that there is this thing called orgasm and you’re writing books about marriage, why wouldn’t you spend at least a sentence or two saying, “Hey, this might be something you might try and give you wife because it’s a good thing”? 

Sheila: But he never, ever once mentions.  He never once mentions.

Keith: It never comes up.  Does it come up in this podcast at all about female orgasm?  Does that come up at all?

Connor: Nope.  Nope.  You know what he does say, though, which I think is another red flag, it says, “You can’t tell if a woman is turned on.”  

Sheila: Oh my gosh.  I actually spit—I actually spit.

Keith: That will go in the blooper reel.

Sheila: I’ve got to get a towel.  Here you go.  Okay.  I’m sorry.  You can keep going now.  I’m sorry.

Keith: All right.  Okay.  In Eggerichs’ defense—okay.  Was this a—

Sheila: He can’t tell if a woman is turned on.  Oh my gosh.  Okay.

Keith: Tell me when we’re going to go into the actual podcast.

Sheila: Oh, we’re in it.  We’re in it.  This is in it.  Okay.  Go.

Keith: Okay.  So tell me, Connor, is this—in Eggerichs’ defense, do you think this was an awkward attempt to talk about the concept of arousal nonconcordance?  That maybe—

Sheila: I don’t think he knows that at all.

Keith: No.  Maybe.  Maybe.  Maybe he’s read about it or heard about.  You can’t tell if she’s turned on because—for instance, you get this sometimes where people say a wife says she’s turned on.  But maybe the physiology isn’t working exactly, and she wants to.  And we talk about how that—we talk about those kinds of things, right?  Is that what he was doing?

Connor: No.  This was not a nuanced attempt at a deeper conversation about arousal nonconcordance.

Keith: I’m sorry.  I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Connor: This was leading up to him making a joke about how there is no subtlety to the male arousal.  

Keith: Oh, yeah.  Yeah.  It’s a hard on joke.  Okay.  Gotcha.

Connor: Yeah.  Yeah.

Sheila: I think our foreplay stats make sense then if you look at how he doesn’t even really understand arousals.  It’s scary.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Exactly.  No.  No wonder a lot of people are saying that they’ve done enough when there’s no actual measure of doing enough if we don’t even realize what arousal is.  It’s just sad.  And if you’re someone who is like I don’t know if I know what arousal is, good news.  We’ve got a course for you.  Hint.  It’s the one we’re talking about all day today.  But in all seriousness, how can we get to a point where we understand how men can take that—can take women’s pleasure, make it a priority, with making her emotionally safe, have her voice, all those things?  So that’s what we talk about in the next clip.  Because I was just curious to see what does the secular world actually say about sex.  So I’m reading all these Men’s Health articles or Guardian articles and Huffington Post articles.  The kind of place where your non church dudes are going to figure out why don’t my one night stands ever call me back, right?  Because I was just curious because we work in this world, and I wanted to see what they all said.  And I will tell ya.  Secular dudes writing about hook up culture and how to help a woman orgasm are really proud of being good in bed.  And the difference in how they talk about sex versus how married, Christian authors talk about sex is astounding.  It’s all like, “Dude, women can orgasm.  So if your woman is not orgasming, you’d better look at yourself.”  That’s what they all are.  And it’s actually hilarious.  And they do say things like, “For a lot of women, there are psychological factors.”  But they don’t say, “So it’s not your fault.”  What they say is, “So make sure she feels safe.  And make sure that you’re connecting with her.”  Which I do think is kind of an oxymoron when—

Sheila: Because that’s not going to work in hook up culture.

Rebecca: Connect with the chick you met at the bar.  No.  But I think the big thing that I was just floored by was how much more these men cared about how the women felt about having sex with them than Christian books about married couples do.

Sheila: Mm-hmm.  And I wonder how much of that is actually the hook up culture because, if you’re not good in bed, you might not get a second date.

Rebecca: Now and I do think, obviously, there’s a lot of guys in hook up culture who are literally just trying to get the first date and they don’t care at all.  And so these articles are more written for men who are kind of like why don’t I have any success with women.  And so I think that there’s a self-selected group among the non Christians who actually want to be good in bed.  But I do think that there’s more of an incentive for men to be good in bed if they’re not Christians because Christian men are expected to not have sex until the woman is married and having bad sex is not a viable reason for divorce in many Christian churches.

Sheila: Right.  So we just need to change the expectation in Christian churches.  And this is one of the big things that I’m quite passionate about and that I want to—I think I’m writing an article on this later in our orgasm series this month is how the church needs to talk about women’s orgasm.  We never even talk about the fact that female orgasm exists.

Rebecca:   Yeah.  And also we say don’t have sex.  Don’t have sex.  Don’t have sex because he’ll want it so much.  And so once you have start having sex, you’re not going to be able to stop.  But we don’t talk about how don’t have sex, and also, for her too, she might want it took.  It’s not don’t have sex, and so you make sure—you, girl, make sure that he doesn’t take it from you.  It’s more you know what, guys, don’t awaken love before its appointed time.  And I think if we talked about having sex as that awakening love mentality I think that would make more sense because we see sex as this taking your virginity thing where it happened and now it’s done versus I think, actually, biblically the idea of your first time having sex is more this is the start.  

Sheila: Right.

Rebecca: And we talk about it like it’s the end.  And I think that’s one of the big issues is it’s not about losing your virginity.  It’s about wakening love too early.

Sheila: So I think the big thing that we’re learning here is that we have to rethink the entire that we talk about orgasm.  The way that the world talks about it—like you said in the last clip, we’re not hook up culture.  We don’t want to be hook up culture.  

Rebecca: No.  Gosh, no.

Sheila: You can’t experience real safety in hook up culture.  We need that committed relationship.  But at the same time, we’re not going to have amazing sex unless we put sex in its perspective where women matter too and where we don’t see sex primarily from a male-centric viewpoint.  There was a really neat time where you and Connor were both on the podcast.  It was a long time ago.  And you said something, which I think is important to remind people of.  Because sometimes when we’re talking about orgasm, when we’re talking about sex, we get so focused on sexual needs and making sure that sex is awesome.  And that’s important.  Yes.  But we have to keep this in its proper perspective.  And so here’s you and Connor from episode 74.

Rebecca: When we’re talking about all of these issues about orgasm and whether or not she experiences pleasure during sex, a lot of times we do end up with very one-sided sex where one spouse is having a lot of fun and the other spouse just isn’t and is kind of left in the dust.  And we were talking about this awhile ago in a different context when I was writing The Great Sex Rescue with my mom and with Joanna.  You, Connor and I, were talking about this on a walk about how maybe a lot of these problems would almost just be fixed before they even start if we just start seeing sexual needs differently in marriage.

Connor: Mm-hmm.  Well, because what I was saying is I was just musing to you as we were walking.  And I was saying the thing is people don’t have—we keep talking about men’s sexual needs and women’s sexual needs and how the conversation has often been about how you need to meet your husband’s sexual needs otherwise he’s going to (inaudible).  People don’t actually have a sexual need.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  We have sex drives.

Connor: We have sex drives.  We have a need for food, oxygen, water.  These are things that we need and things that we can’t survive without.  But sex—I mean we’re expected to go for a good portion of the beginning of our lives without it.  And then suddenly, we get married, and it’s a need.  No.  I don’t think it’s a need for individual people.  However, I think that it’s a need for the relationship.  And I think if we start seeing it in terms of what are the relationship’s needs, which can differ from relationship to relationship.  But if we see it in that light, I think that really changes the conversation.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Because we don’t want to negate—we’re not saying, “Oh, well, then you never feel sexual needs, or you never feel a sex drive.”  No.  Of course, individuals have a sex drive.  We each have sexual desire that shows in different ways.  And, of course, that happens in varying levels as well.  The idea of a need is often very difficult, and we talk about this because—yeah. You aren’t going to die if you don’t get sex.  But a marriage does not—is not healthy unless there is a sex life unless there’s something else going on.  If you have a cancer diagnosis and you’re just going through chemo and you just don’t have sex for a long time, that’s still the—we’re not saying you have to have sex during the postpartum period or anything like that.

Connor: And sometimes there are going to be other things that the marriage needs more than sex.  As individuals, our needs and what is most important from moment to moment will change, and that can happen for a marriage too.  So yeah.  Like Rebecca said, sometimes sex might go on a hiatus, or sometimes there might be other things that the relationship needs to focus on.  But, in general, sex is for the sake of the relationship.  It’s for the sake of you and him or you and her bonding and coming closer together, and you both having sex drives and experiencing those through each other is part of that.  

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  That’s a healthy part of a marriage.

Connor: Yeah.  But it’s not an individual need that is separate from your spouse.

Rebecca: Yeah.  And that’s why seeing it as a relational need can help us not superimpose our desires on our spouse.  And seeing it as a relational need helps us not to take our own desires or wants or even our own cravings and put them above our spouse’s legitimate need or their emotional wellbeing or even their own pleasure, right?  Because if it’s a relational need, then, obviously, both of you need to have a sex drive.  Both of you need to enjoy sex.  Both of you need to have something to look forward to.  And so if something isn’t going right, it’s broken because even if you’re getting your sexual needs met, if your spouse’s sexual needs aren’t getting met or sexual drive or whatever you want to call it, their half of the equation, it’s clearly got a relational issue that you need to work on.

Connor: Yeah.  And the way that your relationship meets its sexual needs might look very different from how someone else’s relationship meets those sexual needs.  But it’s about learning what those needs are and the best way for you and your partner to resolve that need.

Rebecca: We’re really not trying to downplay sex drive.  Yeah.  We’re not saying that if you feel like you’re in a sex starved marriage or you’re really desperate because you’re just like, “Wow.  Yeah.  We don’t have sex ever, and I really don’t know what to do about this,” we’re not saying that your needs and your wants and your desires aren’t valid.  What we are saying is that, in general, we need to understand you don’t have a sex life apart from your spouse.  And so it isn’t your own personal sexual needs.  It’s your relational sexual needs.  And if we look at it that way, likely, we’d create the kinds of sex lives that, frankly, prevent things like a complete lack of libido, a complete lack of orgasm, and a lot of these conflicts that happen around sex.  It really is wild how off kilter the advice has gone from mainstream evangelical resources.  It’s one of those things that I am still not over how obvious it is once it’s in front of you.  But how many people totally miss it, right?  The idea that women should matter.  The extremes are arguing against us in that.  But your average couple going to a mainstream evangelical church is like, “Of course, her pleasure should matter.”  They just don’t believe it actually can happen, right?  But these ideas of she should enjoy sex.  Sex should make you feel close.  She should feel safe.  She should be able to speak up, all these things.  Everyone agrees on them, but then we don’t put them into practice.  And why?  It’s because many couples have been trying their best to have this great relationship, to have a God-honoring relationship, to feed into their marriage, and they’re being given poisoned water, right?  These books that they’re reading, these sermons they’re listening to online—there’s a lot of podcasts out there from evangelical big names that are supremely toxic.  I mean we discussed a clip from one in this podcast, right?  And what we did in our research was we really shined a light on where those toxic messages are coming from.  What is the well that these are drawing from?  And it’s a well that says, women, our job is really to serve men.  You serve him with your body.  You serve him by letting him have sexual release using your body.  And if you feel great about it, if you enjoy sex, then that’s great because that makes the sex even better for him.  That’s a thing that books say.  They tell women you need to act like you’re having a good time because men are really into enthusiastic bed partners.  And I’m sitting here like you know what makes a woman enthusiastic in bed.  A freaking orgasm.  But that’s not really the main priority in these books.  And that needs to change.  That is really one of the reasons why we did make this orgasm course because the research is clear.  Women can orgasm.  Women can actually orgasm a lot.  Women can actually orgasm more than men can.  And let’s actually figure out how to make this work.  Because if you’re someone who you’ve been doing everything you can—you’ve been trying to do everything right.  You’ve been reading all the books, going to all the seminars, doing all the stuff, and none of its working it might be because you started to get water given to you from a poisoned well. 

Sheila: Yeah.  And you’re not broken.  I just know so many women who are so sad about this.  And I get it.  But you are not broken.  So here’s a message that I had for women way back four years ago when we first put out this course.  And I want to play this for you.  I want to put a little bit of a different spin on this, okay?  Having those issues doesn’t mean that you’re broken.  Having those issues—please listen to me here.  Having those issues means that your brain and your body have been guarding yourself for very good reasons.  Your brain and your body have been acting exactly right based on what they’ve been taught to believe or what they’ve been taught is safe.  Okay?  So if your brain and body have been taught that your body is dangerous and it can cause men to lust, which is a message that many of us grow up with, how are you supposed to embrace your body once you’re married?  Okay.  If you’ve been taught if you don’t have sex with your husband, he’s going to lust or he’s going to watch porn, how are you supposed to embrace your sexuality?  Because basically, you’re having sex under threat.  That’s not sexy.  Your brain knows that sex is supposed to be a deep knowing.  Your brain knows that sex is supposed to be the ultimate way in which you are connected to your husband.  And if that ultimate way is sex that is supposed to be a deep knowing is now reduced to you need to have sex or he’s going to watch porn or you need to have sex every three days or he’s going to explode or not feel loved or not be able to pay attention to you or the kids or he’s going to be grumpy, if you hear all of these messages, then what your brain hears is this ultimate knowing isn’t really about you.  Your husband doesn’t really want to know you.  Sex, which is supposed to be this deep intimate thing, is actually something which is threatening to you.  Because if something which is supposed to be this deep intimate thing, a deep knowing, becomes instead something where he is using your body, then it’s no longer a deep knowing.  It becomes a rejection.  And your brain is trying to protect you from a rejection.  That’s often why women’s bodies aren’t responding.  Now please hear me.  I am not saying that your husband is necessarily giving you these messages.  In our focus groups that we did for our upcoming book, The Great Sex Rescue, we found so many women who believe that obligation sex message.  I need to have sex with him every 72 hours or he’ll explode or he’ll lust.  My body is dangerous.  They grew up with all these messages, but it wasn’t their husband who gave them these messages.  It was Christian books.  It was our Christian culture.  It was what they heard as teenagers.  But your brain and your body—they took these messages.  They internalized these messages.  And it made your brain and body want to reject sex.  It made your brain and body want to think I am not a sexual being because sex is  now  threatening to me.  Sex isn’t about me being deeply known and deeply knowing someone else.  Sex is only about someone using my body.  And you know what?  Your brain and your body don’t want to be used.  Your brain and your body are saying, “No.  That’s something that I need to run away from.”  And so your brain and your body are doing exactly what they are supposed to do to protect you.  Your brain and your body are not broken.  They’re actually acting exactly right.  It’s not that your brain and body don’t work.  They do.  It’s just that often the messages that we’ve been taught about sex and the dynamics of our relationship make it so that our sexual response is elusive.  And so the solution is to change what we believe and to change the relationship dynamics.  That’s what this is all about.  It’s about learning how to embrace your sexuality.  But the only way we can do that is by telling our brain and our body and teaching our brain and our body that sex isn’t about you being used.  Okay?  Sex isn’t about someone else getting their jollies off of you.  Sex is about this deep knowing.  Sex is about you feeling pleasure.  Sex is about you experiencing something amazing.  It might take awhile for your brain and body to understand that and for you to embrace that message.  But just understand that you’re not broken.  There’s nothing wrong with you.  There’s nothing wrong with your clitoris that means that you can’t reach orgasm.  There’s nothing wrong with any of that.  It’s just that often the root to orgasm isn’t necessarily learning greater sexual technique.  It’s learning how to truly embrace your sexuality.  This is so much of what our orgasm course is going to cover.  We’re going to look at the things that are holding us back from embracing our sexuality.  Then we’re going to look at the things which can help us embrace sexuality.  And then we’re going to look at sexual technique and how to get you there.  Rebecca, I got an email last week from a woman who has been married for 30 years.  And she and her husband took the orgasm course.  And it’s finally working for them.  And I’m just thinking, “30 years.  That’s such a long time.”

Rebecca: Hey, but they’re here now.  

Sheila: But they’re here now.  And we’ve published things on the blog of other people who it was 16 years and then they finally had an orgasm.  17 years.  We get these all the time from people who take the course.  And it’s possible.  You’re not broken.  You really are not broken.  There are so many things that go into orgasm, and your body learns what’s good and what isn’t.  And then your body is just trying to protect you.  And we’ve had so many bad messages, and we just want you to know it doesn’t need to be that way and that you can have fun and that you can get to the other side.  And so whether you’ve been married for 30 years or 3 years or 3 days, please 3 days.  Get this early.  

Rebecca: Sheila, I just got back from my honeymoon, and things didn’t work.  Get the course now.  Don’t get it in 10 years.  Okay?  

Sheila: Get the course now.  It is so much easier early.  But the good news is it’s never too late.

Rebecca: That’s exactly right.

Sheila: It’s never too late.  So please check out the orgasm course.  When you buy it this week, until September 23, the men’s version is free.  So we have two versions.  The biggest one with the most modules is for women.  But we also have an accompanying men’s version, which takes about, hey, here’s the impact of obligation sex.  Here’s what the sexual response cycle actually looks like for her and why you need to ride that response cycle and not just go with what your own body is feeling. 

Rebecca: Yeah.  It has a lot more of the practical application for your husband as well so that—because—yeah.  You know what?  You actually do have a lot of impact on whether or not you orgasm.  You absolutely do.  But your husband also has a really big part of that.  And so we wanted to make sure that anyone who is getting the course, this week in particular, you get both versions.  So you and your husband can go through this together.  You can be a team on this.  And hopefully, you can have—it’s such a weird thing to say.  Have some fun together.  I don’t know.  

Sheila: We want that for you.  We do.  We don’t want details, but we want that for you.  

Rebecca: It’s a weird job.  Yeah.  Please don’t send us details.  You can send an email with just a little thumbs up or something.  I don’t know.  

Sheila: Generalities are good.  But we just know so many women who think that they’re broken and that they don’t—they’re just not sexual because you’ve read all of these books that say she wants clitoral stimulation.  And so he just immediately grabs for that or immediately grabs your boob, and it feels like a pap smear.  And I’ve said this so many times.  If he grabs you before you’re the slightest bit aroused, it feels like a pap smear.  It’s not a nice thing.  And so let’s learn how to listen to our bodies.  Let’s learn what our bodies want.  Let’s learn the sexual response cycle.  Let’s get rid of the roadblocks.  And let’s realize you’re not broken.  You really aren’t.  And you can get there.  So we talk a lot on the podcast about all things the church has done wrong, but we also want to build up.  And this is one of the ways that we are building into marriages is helping you get over that hump.  I don’t think that’s the right wording.  

Rebecca: I think, no matter what, it’s going to be the wrong wording.  It’s not the kind of course that has quote unquote right wording.  Yeah.

Sheila: But it’s there for you because this is something you get to enjoy.  It really is.  And God isn’t happy with you having terrible sex.  And a lot of us have felt like God is wanting me to keep having terrible sex because that’s the way that I serve my husband.  And it’s like no.  No.  You get to matter too.  You get to matter too.  So let’s make sure that you matter.  And check out the orgasm course.  The link is in the podcast notes.   

Rebecca: And we’ll see you next week.  

Sheila: On the Bare Marriage podcast.  

Rebecca: Bye-bye.

Sheila: And I hope you’ve enjoyed—I want to say too.  I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to us over the years as we’ve changed.  Our voices have changed a little bit.  The ways that we talked have changed, but it’s still, hopefully, the same message.  So maybe we’ll do one of these about something else one day.  

Rebecca: Maybe.

Sheila: Yeah.  All right.  Take care, everybody.      

Rebecca: Bye-bye.    

Sheila: Bye-bye.