Sheila
Who carries the mental load and emotional labor of sex? Hello, 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 husband, Keith.

Keith
Hey, everybody.

Sheila
And I want to answer that question because there is a lot of mental and emotional labor when it comes to sex. And I think sometimes we put a lot of it on women and not enough on men, and that has tremendous repercussions on how we see sex. So I want to work through all this today before we do that. A big thank you to a certain group of people. So if you if you enjoy our podcasts and you want to join our community, you want to get to know us better. Please consider joining the patreon group. It is wonderful. We have a great Facebook group with hundreds and hundreds of people. People post all the time. They talk about wrestling through with faith issues, all kinds of stuff. And it’s where we go to to get rejuvenated and to find our safe space as well. So you can join for as little as $5 a month. For $8 a month, you get access to Joanna’s monthly book club. We’re working through Pride and Prejudice, which is I’m super excited about having fun with. And of course, when you support our patreon or when you give to the Good Food Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation, you help us get stuff done that we couldn’t get done otherwise. Like all the papers we’ve had published in 2026, the translation work we’re doing, especially in Spanish, you’ll hear more about that soon and all kinds of stuff. So yeah, just helps us, helps us expand our reach. So thank you for that.

Keith
Yep.

Sheila
Okay, Hun. We’ve talked a lot about mental labor. Do you want to do you want to talk about what like mental load mental labor means?

Keith
Yeah. So we talk a lot about there’s a lot of debates about housework all the time. And people think of it solely in terms of who does what. Right. So they think the debate is that he should do X proportion of the housework. But we often omit all the planning and the background stuff that goes into it. So for instance, I might say to you, hey, give me a grocery list and I’ll go pick up the groceries. And so you give me this list and I go pick up the groceries. And I feel like I’m the hero and I did all the work today.

Sheila
Yeah. You did the grocery shopping.
Keith
I went and got there and did the grocery shopping.

Keith
But I didn’t look through all the cupboards, figure out we need to plan the meals for the week and then use all that information to create a list. All right. So I guess so. And then I basically thought that I’m doing everything, but I’m really kind of doing the smallest and easiest part of the task because all that other stuff is what we call mental load. It’s like having to keep track of it. Like, you know, if you you’re the one who knows when it’s so-and-so’s birthday or keeping track of the family plan, like what we’re doing at different times and like that kind of stuff. That’s all mental load.

Sheila
Yeah. The fact that Susie has allergies to, you know, this particular thing. And so if she’s invited to a birthday party, you’ve got to make sure there’s none of that.

Keith
Yeah, the family knows that.

Sheila
You know who who has dental appointments, who’s scared of the dentist. And so they have to bring their woobie or whatever it is.Right. Like, yeah.

Keith
Yeah, so there’s things that go behind the actual thing you’re doing that often are overlooked.

Sheila
Yes. Right.

Keith
Yes. And and often it disproportionally falls to women.

Sheila
Yeah. So the planning part then there’s also emotional labor and we haven’t we’ve touched on that I think we’ve used the term a lot. But we haven’t defined it quite as much. And and so I think that this really fits in with this discussion today because emotional labor is the work that is done to manage the relationships. Right? So it’s it’s noticing when the kids are fighting with each other and doing research on how to figure out how to get them to stop fighting and, and get along with each other. It’s research on emotional regulation. It’s understanding that, oh, there’s distance between us. And so I better read a marriage book. I better do something so that we can grow. It’s realizing you’re in a bad mood. And so no matter what I’m feeling, I am going to try to help you get out of that bad mood. So yeah, the emotional labor is managing everybody’s emotions around you and the relationships.

Keith
Yeah. It’s like human connection requires maintenance work. And that is something that not everyone does well. And a lot of people depend upon other people to do it for them, like that sort of thing. So we talk about in The Marriage You Want. There’s a lot of marriages where the husbands mother’s birthday is remembered by the daughter-in-law rather than, you know, the husband, right? Like, his wife, right? She remembers the birthdays of his family, she gets Christmas gifts for his family, that kind of stuff. And those are emotional connections with that family that are being maintained between the mother and son by the son’s wife, instead of by the son himself. And that’s another example where sometimes emotional labor is being done by the person who’s not in the relationship.

Sheila
Yeah. So and we talked about this in The Marriage You Want quite a bit and how this plays out. Like we actually have data for it. We have numbers for it. It looks like in about half of evangelical marriages that we measured and we measured healthier marriages than most. So in about half pretty much this is shared. And then in the other half she does pretty much all of it. So it’s very rare for him to do almost all of it is either shared or she does it. And what I wanted to look at today is what this has to do with sex.

Keith
Right.

Sheila
Because I get I get so many reels and stuff sent to me on social media, like, have you seen this? Have you seen this? And sometimes I see common patterns. And one of the themes that’s kept coming up in people’s messages to me in reels lately is that so much pressure is put on women to make sure that the sex life is happening, to make sure that it’s romantic, to make sure that it’s kinky enough, to make sure that like, like she is responsible for sex. And and yet he is the one quite often who wants more of it. So he wants more of it. But she is the one who’s responsible for making sure that all of it happens.

Keith
Yeah. So it’s, it’s presented as a male need. Right. And so therefore she needs to give it to him. But then that’s hollow. That feels awful.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Nobody likes that. So then we guilt women into making it better so the man doesn’t feel hollow.

Sheila
Right.

Keith
So she has to actually want it. We don’t tell the men, make her actually want it. We tell the women, get yourself in a mentality that you actually want it. So he feels wanted, not just placated.

Sheila
Yes.

Keith
And so. So not only do we make her the person who has to do all the work of sex, we make her do all the planning and emotional aspects of it too right for herself and him.

Sheila
Yes.

Keith
That’s crazy.

Sheila
Yeah. So I want to break this down and I want to walk through this because sex has actually a lot of different components. Okay. If it’s going to be good. So I want to break it down into just some of the basic practical stuff, some of our idealized notions of it, and then actually get into some of the emotional labor of it.

Sheila
But I want to start.

Keith
So, when you say like, idealized notions of it. You’re going to talk about some of the ways we talk about sex that is not healthy.

Sheila
Yes.

Keith
Like the whole transactional kind of sex.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Because the whole thing is if you think of this as something that is a mutual thing that we do together, this whole idea of who’s doing what. It goes out the window because we’re both working to make it good for the other person.

Sheila
Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So first I want to start by setting the stage by reading a quote from the book His Needs Her Needs.

Keith
Perfect.

Sheila
Which is one of the best selling marriage books in evangelicalism. I will put a link to our podcast and our download where we talked about the problems with the book. So we have if your church recommends it, if your counselor recommends it, please give them the download. But and we’re not going to talk about this book a ton, but I do want to read this quote. Okay. So the author, Willard Harley, says “he [meaning the husband], makes this commitment, [meaning marriage], because he trusts her to be as sexually interested in him as he is in her. He trusts her to be sexually available to him whenever he needs to make love, and to meet all of his sexual needs, just as she trusts him to meet her emotional needs.” So..

Keith
Oh my gosh. So so men need sex, so she needs to give it to him. Women need to have emotional connection, so he needs to give that to her.

Sheila
Right.

Keith
And it’s just like men don’t need emotional connection? Like and then it’s like so when he does emotional connection for her, that’s a benefit for both of them. But she’s supposed to just like make it good for him about sex. And there’s no to think that, nothing to the man to tell him to make sex good for her.

Keith
It’s crazy. Sorry.

Sheila
Okay. So. She needs to, she needs to meet all of his needs, which means she needs to prioritize sex.

Keith
It was pretty, like broad brush there. All of his needs.

Sheila
Whenever he wants it basically, yes. This is the obligation sex message on steroids. And we’ve talked about how destructive the obligation sex message is, how it’s heavily implicated in women’s anorgasmia, an inability to reach orgasm, heavily implicated in the reason that evangelical women have twice the rate of sexual pain as the general population. Obligation sex doesn’t work. There’s so much better ways to talk about it. But let let’s go into some of the different ways that women are told that they need to bear the burden for good sex. Okay. And at its most basic, let’s talk about hygiene and appearance.

Keith
Right.

Sheila
And the discrepancy here. Right. Because even just basic hygiene.

Keith
Yeah. So let me take it, take a step back first okay. So because basically we’re talking about here is all these evangelical marriage books say you need to do this more, men want this, you need to give it to them. They never ask the question, why don’t our women want sex? Because they’re taught that the evangelical church has two messages about sex. So to people outside the church, they go, stop having sex all the time. But in the church, they’re saying you need to have sex more. Do they not think, what is it that we’re doing that’s making these people who we have to tell out here to stop?

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
What makes them have to kick start them in here?

Sheila
Yeah. Like, if the idea is all these, all these horrible women outside the church want sex, and aren’t they just all harlots? And yet in the church, we have to get women to want sex as if, yeah. What’s the matter?

Keith
So like. And I’m not saying that means that we need to, like, give up our sexual ethic. I think I think the Christian sexual ethic is very healthy. Not the way that it’s preached in these books, but the Christian sexual ethic of faithfulness to one person and all that stuff is really good. But, you know, when you see that happening, why don’t they say, honestly, why don’t our women want sex?

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Because sometimes it’s something as simple as he’s got B.O. and he never brushes his teeth.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Why do I want to have sex with that? Like. And we don’t like. If you’ve heard, we’ve heard sermons about telling women you need to make sure you don’t gain too much weight.

Keith
You need to look good for your man. When’s the last time you had a sermon saying you need to look good for your wife? You need to make it something make yourself appealing to your wife. Yeah. Like that. I never hear that.

Sheila
I know because and that’s what I mean. That’s the there’s a huge discrepancy. In this. Because think about what a woman has to do to her body to make sex work.

Keith
To make a guy find her attractive. Even though apparently, according to these books, he’s going to her no matter what. But she still has to make herself look good.

Sheila
So she has to shave, right? She has to shave her legs. She has to shave under her armpits. And, you know, a lot of people are going for the whole Brazilian wax thing. So she has to keep all her pubic hair gone, or maybe at least a lot of it. And that’s a lot of work. You get ingrown hairs. It’s it’s it’s seriously a lot of work.

Keith
The amount of time. On just like makeup and stuff like that. Like it’s.

Sheila
Yeah, now, she doesn’t necessarily have to wear makeup to go. I don’t know, maybe some women have to wear makeup to have sex, but like, you have to get your whole body to look attractive.

Sheila
You’re supposed to wear lingerie, negligee, whereas men can

Keith
With Saran wrap, you know, Saran wrap. The joke, they said.

Sheila
Yeah, men can come with holey pajamas, like, like, not holy h-o-l-y but like, you know, holes in your pajamas.

Keith
Or sweat pants.

Sheila
Right? And that’s okay. So, so even the getting physically ready for sex. A lot more falls on women than on men, right? And yet, like you said, there is a significant problem with the fact that women tend to have better hygiene than men. And this has been well documented. Whenever I talk about this on social media about, you know, do you have a problem telling your husband, hey, you’ve got bad breath, you need to brush your teeth and the floodgates open, like, this is a big issue that people have is, you know, my husband expects me to be available for sex all the time, but he never brushes his teeth, he doesn’t floss. His teeth are rotting. He won’t go to the dentist, you know, and I just find it disgusting to be close to him. Right.

Keith
And then we shame her for, how can you say that about your husband. But he doesn’t even get a simple dude, clean it up. You know, and it was so easy for him to do that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And again, if we had the mentality of service to each other, I’m like, why wouldn’t you want to make it better for your wife? Why not? Like yeah. Like unless you feel this is an entitlement right? Right. That’s disgusting. Whatever.

Sheila
Okay. So there’s there’s that. And then there’s just your simple body appearance, like you were saying about how there’s so many sermons about not gaining weight, but we don’t. So I have one to to to play for you. Okay. So this is Stuart Alan Clark from Missouri. This one hit the national news when he gave this this sermon. And here’s just a clip. This is I think this is it’s a news story. It’s a news channel talking about it at the beginning. And then you’ll hear clips from him. So we’ll just we’ll just let them go.

News Anchor
A Missouri pastor has taken a leave of absence and is now seeking professional counseling after his sermon went viral and was called out for being sexist, Pastor Stuart Alan Clark told women in his congregation that they need to look attractive for their husbands or else they stray because, quote, “God made men to be drawn to beautiful women.” But the 22 minute sermon did not stop there. Here’s more of what he said.

Stuart Alan Clark
Your man needs an attractive wife. Now look, I’m not saying every woman can be the epic, the epic trophy wife of all time. Like Melania Trump. I’m not saying that at all. Now most women can’t be trophy wives, but you know, like, her, maybe you’re maybe a participation trophy. I don’t know, but all I can say is not everybody looks like that. Amen. Not everyone looks like that, amen but. But you don’t need to look like a butch either.

News Anchor
Oh my gosh.

Keith
Okay, well, that was a take.

Sheila
That was a take.

Keith
I mean. I don’t like talking about people’s body shape or anything like that because I don’t think that’s appropriate. But like the hypocrisy.

Sheila
I know

Keith
Of this particular man. To talk about you know, anyway, it just really bothered me.

Sheila
Yeah. Yeah really bothered me. Yeah, yeah. And he goes on to say like he talks this wasn’t in the clip because it was like a 20 minute sermon. And this is all he talked about for 20 minutes. Right. Basically. But that he knows someone who has a divorce rate where if his wife gains more than 60 pounds, he divorces her.

Keith
The these churches preach that a woman can’t leave her husband, can’t divorce if he abuses her.

Keith
But apparently a man can leave his wife if she gains an extra pound over that limit.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Like disgusting.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Like how is that biblical. Like how is that like, Christlike husband. Yeah. Like gosh like why don’t people realize this? Why do we stick around churches like this? I don’t get it.

Sheila
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Here I want to read another quote from the book. “His needs, Her needs” that we opened with. All right. Because he says he says that men have five basic needs and women have five basic needs. And what’s really interesting is that men’s basic needs have nothing to do with connection. Really. Right. It’s like it’s all superficial and women’s needs are actually quite the things that he calls. Women’s needs are things that will maintain intimacy and that are healthy for any relationship. So one of the needs that he says men have is the need for an attractive spouse, okay, that this is a God given need for a man is to have an attractive spouse.

And he says this. Do most women have the same need for attractiveness in their husbands? No. They may want their husbands to look decent, but most women do not rank an attractive spouse among their top five emotional needs. Women often fall in love with men who are overweight, homely, or sloppy dressers because these men know how to meet their most important emotional needs, such as the needs of affection, conversation and financial support. He goes on to talk about how one woman gained 100 pounds after having kids, and how, and he compared the husband’s life to that of a prison sentence. Right. And he says, you know, just because you know you’re married doesn’t give you the right to look like a bag lady or gain weight. So he really comes down on women for gaining weight. Yes.

Keith
That’s just horrific.

Sheila
Yeah. Now he did tone this down a little bit in future editions. But you know, his older editions sold a lot better. And they’re the ones that discipled a lot of our current pastors. And so think about that. In the evangelical world, it was considered okay to talk about being married to a wife who had gained weight as a prison sentence, and to say that men had a need for their wives to not gain weight.

Keith
See it like this. The thing is that, you know, the Bible says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Yeah. And they’re big on quoting that all the time.

Right. But how does Jesus look at us when we’re not at our best. Yeah. When we’re a little bit ugly. Yeah. Right. Like I like when we were still sinners. You know Christ died for us. Like I want to be the kind of husband looks my wife. No matter what phase of your life you’re in and what’s going on.

And I want to I want to look at you with love. And if I start, if your appearance, if I start feeling like I’m losing that, then it’s on me to rejuvenate that love. Because I’m seeking after you. And I want to. I want to love you like Christ. Yeah, right. Like so many people who preach this, this thing, they do it just so that women will submit to them if they want to receive the adoration that Christ is you by the church, but they don’t want to do the work of actually loving their wives like Christ.

It’s terrible. Yeah, sorry, I was a bit of an aside there-.

Sheila
No, that’s good, I like it, I like it.

Keith
So yeah. So I mean, like, this is like she has changing and so he stops loving her and it’s her fault.

Keith
How is that loving as Christ loved the church. He is neglecting his biblical mandate as a husband. Letting it get to that point. He needs to be stoking that relationship and connecting in other ways. And, and it shouldn’t be about a physical appearance anyway. It should be through the relationship and all the things you’ve been through and emotional connection and all that kind of stuff anyway. Yeah. But yeah. Just sad.

Sheila
Yeah. Okay. And I am going to move on to like the emotional aspect, aspects of sex in a minute. But but there’s a couple more physical things I need to talk about. And first of all is the emotional labor and mental load of contraception. Right. Yeah. So let’s just think about this for a minute. What is the most common emails I get, is from women who say, I don’t want to go on the pill, or I’ve been on the pill, and it really does a number on me, you know, I gained,I gained a lot of weight. I get really moody in a way that I wasn’t before. Like, the pill just isn’t a good match for me. And I understand that there’s when we say the pill, but there’s not that pill.

Keith
There’s yeah, it’s different ways of hormonal control.

Sheila
There’s, there’s more.

Keith
Patches, there’s rings, there’s injectables, there’s, you know, and there’s different kinds of pills.

Sheila
Yeah. But even in the pills it’s like, you know.

Keith
Yeah.

Sheila
So I mean.

Keith
You mean hormonal,.

Sheila
Hormonal Contraception, we say the pill, but we’re women, but their husbands don’t want to use condoms. Yeah, because then it doesn’t feel as good. Yeah.

Keith
And well, and there are like, risks to taking any medication. Yeah. Right. The hormonal contraception is for sure. But anything you take as a medication, there’s risk. Right. So what this is, what you’re saying, as a husband then, is my need to have the maximal amount of sensation is more important than the physical medical risks to you for that method. Yeah. Like and the, the thing you can say that and then say you love your wife as Christ, love the church. Yeah. You know I’m not saying that you can’t, you know.

Sheila
Um hmm

Keith
Do that. But you should decide it together like it should be that we both decide that, you know, and if you’re, if she’s the one taking more the risk than you that you should value that more, love your wife ias your own body right. Like.

Sheila
Yeah

Keith
It should be more important to you.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
And like put it.

Sheila
Together I think it’s interesting too because you know women can only get pregnant a certain number of days a month. Right. Like you ovulate in the middle of your cycle. And the egg is only viable for like, like basically because sperm can live for a certain amount of time and eggs can live for a certain amount of time.

There’s sort of like 5 to 6 days from like two days before ovulation to about 3 to 4, like, you know, where you could get pregnant. You really can’t get pregnant other than that.

Keith
But, but, the promise that window is not right.

Sheila
That window is not very easy to measure. Right. Because. Because the problem is, of course. Yeah. If you have sex before ovulation, those like that sperm can still impregnate you. So you may.

Keith
Think you’re not the window. Yeah, but you are.

Sheila
But you are, right. And so it is difficult to measure. But what we’re saying is, even though a woman is only, you know, can only get pregnant 5 or 6 days a month, she’s going to spend her entire life on this hormonal birth control because he doesn’t want to inconvenience himself. And, and the way that condoms have changed, like, over the decades, you really, like the sensation is good. Like you don’t miss much, really, if at all. We had good friends who are our age and he had cancer, and during his chemo treatment they had to use condoms and he couldn’t believe how much they had changed since way back when they were first married. Like, it’s very, very different. And so it’s like if he’s saying like, let’s say the difference is, you know, now it’s 95% instead of 100%. So I don’t want to give up pleasure or whatever. So I don’t want to give up that minuscule amount of pleasure. I would rather my wife, yeah, put all this medication in her body and have these negative reactions.

Keith
And I don’t think most guys are doing that. I think most guys are just not thinking about their wife. Yeah, right. Because despite what the people who preach the typical evangelical books preach that their husbands actually officially love their wives. But what happens basically is the husbands are, live a sense of entitlement. Yeah. And they just their wives just take care of things and they don’t even think about it.

Oh, you’re just going to tell me she’s okay? And she goes on the pill and they don’t think about it. He doesn’t think I’m going to make her have a risk because I want to have pleasure. He doesn’t even think about her. Yeah. And we need to train ourselves to think about it. For instance, we’re talking about there a little bit about the timing, like the rhythm method.

Right, right. So that is the way that some people choose to use for contraception. So they track ovulation very carefully and they try and calculate where the window is. And they abstain from sexual relations during that window.

Sheila
Yeah. Or they use condoms during that.

Keith
Where they use condoms through that window or, or whatever. Right. So, so that’s a way that a lot of couples do that. But again, there’s a lot of emotional labor and mental load in that keeping track of all these things because there’s, there’s like tests of mucus. There’s like, you know, body temperature. There’s all these things you’re measuring. And in a lot of these families where they’re doing that, basically there’s the guy just asks every day and she says, today’s a no day. And his only thing is to go, okay, well, it’s no day, so I’m not allowed to.

Sheila
yeah

Keith
And then when it’s a yes day, great. But he’s not involved in all the, the.

Sheila
Charting.

Keith
Charting and the planning and the thinking. And he just assumes she’s going to take care of all that. Yeah. And it’s like if you want to be a Christ like loving husband and this is what you as a couple have decided is going to be your way. And it’s a lot of work.

Sheila
Uh hmm

Keith
Do some of the work. Do like you know I mean like that. That’s the way to show love to your wife. It’s like okay I’m not trying to nag you but like can I help with like did you, did you check today. Yeah. What’s the temperature. Can I write things down.

Sheila
Yeah. Are you being even together. You do it.

Keith
Together so that it’s. Yeah. It’s a bonding moment. Like we’re like, you know, whatever. Like you’re like, you understand each other and you’re being intimate in the sense that we’re talking about our bodily functions we don’t talk about with anybody else. Yeah. Right. But you know, so that’s very intimate in that sense. And you can share that. Why wouldn’t you share that?

Keith
Why wouldn’t that be a better way of doing things.

Sheila
Yeah. And I want to say too, I’m sorry, I should’ve said this earlier, but if you love the pill. Yeah, that’s like we’re this isn’t we’re not trying to criticize the pill. The issue is if she doesn’t want to use it. Yeah, that should matter.

Keith
But do you talk to your physician?

Sheila
Yeah. Right.

Keith
Because there are. You need to have these, you know, it’s it’s a, it’s a very safe form of contraceptive for most people. But you need to talk to your doctor about your personal case because you have risk factors for different things and such and such.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith
Disclaimer medical disclaimer.

Sheila
He’s a pediatrician.

Keith
Talk to your Doctor.

Sheila
Medical disclaimer.

Keith
Yes. I’m not saying it’s not safe. It’s very safe. But you have to talk to your doctor in that circumstance.

Sheila
Right. And then the other, the other time that we really see this showing up is in the permanent contraception. So, you know, after you’ve done having kids, you’re sure you’re not having any more. Vasectomy. Is is, quite an easy.

Keith
Yeah. Compared to having your what’s called a tubal ligation or your tubes tied so it’s like yeah that’s a, that’s an abdominal surgery. You know, with anesthesia or you know, like there’s a very involved procedure whereas snip snip is, is an office procedure. You walk in and then you limp out.

Sheila
Yeah. And the number and we hear from so many women who say, my husband refuses to get a vasectomy. So this woman has to get a tubal ligation or go on the pill or get an IUD, which is painful to insert too. And, you know, like all kinds of things because he’s not willing to do.
*
Keith
That, but he wants her to get her.

Sheila
But he desperately but he and often these men are saying, I don’t want any more kids. So he absolutely doesn’t want any more kids, but he’s putting it on her. Yeah. Again, you.

Keith
Again you know, and so this should be a no brainer right. Like.

Sheila
Yeah

Keith
If you don’t want the kids and you’ve decided as a couple you’re not gonna have any more kids. And the easier person to get changed is you. I mean first of all you have to decide as a family if you want this. Some people are this is not something they would ever do. Right. Like it? Maybe if your spouse has an objection to it right.

But then if they would reject to it for because they don’t think it’s the right thing to do, they should be telling their spouse to do it, right, right, right. Because that’s what we see. We see men saying, I’m not going to get a vasectomy but I want my wife to go get a tubal ligation. Yeah.

And I think that should be like a no-brainer that that is not a loving way to talk to your spouse. Yeah, in my mind, yeah. But unfortunately we see it all the time.
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Sheila
Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Last one okay. So it has like the physical aspects of sex. It’s just the physical location is who is responsible for that.

Keith
Right? I mean oh the atmosphere.

Sheila
The atmosphere. Yeah. Yes. So I asked about this in our Patroen group. Like have you ever heard anyone tell women that they need to make the bedroom nice? And this one woman said, oh my gosh, I was at a women’s conference. And the speaker literally said, ladies, does your bedroom look like a place where your husband would go to have an affair?

Keith
Oh my God.

Sheila
So you have to make your you have to make your, your bedroom hotter than your husbands

Keith
Oh my sisters in Christ, I am so sorry that someone said that to you. Yeah, that is horrific.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Oh my gosh. Church do better! Yeah.

Sheila
Like oh my gosh I know I know but think about this, to like look.

Keith
Sorry And can I actually say.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
And again this is in an environment where the assumption is men want sex women don’t..

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
So if that’s what you believe, why is the onus on making a nice environment, on her, to make it nice for him? He already wants to.

Sheila
Yeah, right.

Keith
If she doesn’t want to, why aren’t we telling husbands? Hey, are you being romantic? Are you making the bedroom a place? It’s like. Are you putting rose petals on the floor? Are you, like, playing nice music?

Sheila
Or are you even making sure the laundry is not on the bed? Are you? Are you folding the laundry.

Keith
The bare minimum? Yeah. Like,

Sheila
Are you folding the laundry?So it’s not on the bed, are you? Yeah.

Keith
But it’s like if this is something that he wants and she doesn’t. It should fall on him to make it something she wants to do.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
And it’s like time and time again in the evangelical spaces, it’s always on her to do. Because it’s not about loving like Christ. It’s about being entitled and getting what you want. Yeah, it’s just I, I don’t think they do that intentionally, but that is when you start with that assumption. Yeah. That’s always where it leads.

Sheila
Yeah. So the assumption that I read at the beginning of the podcast that, you know, that Willard Harley said in His and Her needs that she must supply all of his sexual needs. And well, here’s another example though. But the physical. So let’s say that she needs to be in bed by, be asleep. Let’s say be asleep by 1030. if she’s going to get eight hours of sleep. Right. Okay. That means if you’re going to have sex, you really want to be in bed snuggling by like ten at the latest, like at the latest rate if you’re going to have like, you know, which means you I should.

Keith
Be I think we can we can.

Sheila
Back it.

Keith
Up a little bit. I don’t think we guys, you could do it better than that. Okay. But I’m just.

Sheila
Saying like at the latest like, well, you can’t you can’t push it too much later than that. Right. So I’m talking minimum here. Yeah. And which means you really got to be getting changed. Maybe having your shower, getting your teeth brushed, whatever you do before bed, by like 940. Yeah. Right. So it’s now her responsibility to make sure he’s coming to bed, because what often happens is she’ll go get ready for bed, she’ll get in bed, and then he’ll come up at like.

Keith
1029.

Sheila
And say, okay, let’s. And it’s like he hasn’t thought about how much sleep does my wife need? Yeah. Right. And that’s a huge thing too. It’s like if you’re playing video games in the basement and then you’re complaining that your wife doesn’t give you sex, like, are you actually in the place where sex is likely to happen at the right time? Like who is bearing the mental look for that?

Keith
And again, if we teach as the books teach, that it’s the wife’s job to make the husband get this husband’s need. Yeah, he doesn’t think about it. He just thinks, man, I need it now. Yeah. So give it to me. Because actually that’s the deal. As opposed to sex is really automatic for me and I could start like and very quickly.

Keith
And I don’t need a lot of lead up. And I don’t need half an hour to get ready. Yeah. Right. You know. So but then maybe I should take that and use that time to help you kind of catch up. Yeah. Maybe like like, like that would be a loving way of looking at it. Yeah. Right. As opposed to the entitled mindset of what doesn’t take that long for me.

Keith
And I don’t need a lot of lead up. And I don’t need half an hour to get ready. Yeah. Right. You know. So but then maybe I should take that and use that time to help you kind of catch up. Yeah. Maybe like, like that would be a loving way of looking at it. Yeah. Right. As opposed to the entitled mindset of what doesn’t take that long for me. I’m responsible for getting myself ready. She’s responsible for getting herself ready, and it’s your duty to do it to me. I’m like, that’s a horrible mentality.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
You know, I wonder why books teach that. It’s ridiculous.

Sheila
Okay. In that vein, yeah. I also want to talk about the difference in libido. So we’ve talked about different ways of categorizing libido. Like we often talk about high libido and low libido, and I don’t find that particularly healthy or a helpful way to do it, you know, but responsive versus spontaneous, I think that can be more helpful where a spontaneous libido is, you just have a felt need for sex. Sort of. It just happens to you automatically, quite frequently, happens to you automatically, whereas responsive is you don’t necessarily feel the need. But when conditions are right, you know when you’re feeling emotionally connected, your desire for sex kicks in and you end up enjoying sex just as much as if you had a spontaneous libido. And we find that men are more likely to have spontaneous women, are more likely to have responsive.

But there’s a lot of crossovers. And what we find a lot is that men with the more spontaneous libido will often feel like, you know what? I don’t want to burden my wife with my sex drive. I want to be really good to my wife. And so I will just leave it up to her to initiate. Yeah, I am not going to initiate because I don’t want to pressure her, but I’ll just tell her, look, if you ever want sex, I’m here. And that sounds really good, right? That sounds really sweet and selfless, but what you end up doing is you tell the responsive partner you need to get yourself independently all ready for sex, and then come and approach me, you know, without giving her anything to respond to. Yeah. And so what the responsive partner really needs is for the spontaneous partner to engage in the kind of thinking that will help her or him get excited without expecting it.

Yeah. Like you need you need to be able to kiss your wife, to dance with your wife, to give her a massage, showing her that it doesn’t need to lead to sex. Yeah, because then you get rid of the obligation, which is what he was trying to do in the first place. Yeah, but you also give her something to respond to. And because I think that’s a huge mental load that’s put-on women is now, I am a more responsive libido. But okay. It’s getting to be 945. I’ve got to be asleep at 1030, okay. I’ve got to get myself in the mood. So yeah. You know and then I’ll go get him from the basement.

Keith
Yeah. And a lot of guys sort of don’t want to start down the pathway being romantic, kissing and all that kind of stuff because they’re afraid that they’re you’re going to start and then something’s gonna happen. It’s. And she’s not it’s not going to be a good night for her. And she says, no, I don’t want you. And then they’re going to feel frustrated.

Right. And they worry about that. So then it’s easier just to go, well when you’re ready you come to me. But just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Right. Like if, if you can’t get excited a little bit and then your wife says you know what, I’m not in the right space tonight. If you can’t handle that.

You need to take it as a personal challenge to learn how to handle that. Yeah. Like that’s part of being a mature person who’s in control of your body and your emotions and all that sort of stuff. Right. And I’m not saying it’s easy. And for some guys it’s even, it’s really hard because they’ve never even thought that that was the case because like there are people who say that your wife is your lawful sexual outlet.

Sheila
Yes.

Keith
Like that’s the way that people talk about it in church sometimes. And so they’re steeped in that mentality. It’s like my outlet just shut up. So what am I? What do I do now? I explode, right? Like it’s like, no, you need to like it to be harder for you because you were never taught this, but that’s part of being emotionally mature.

Like we thought. Things are going great. And then the baby cries, well, not tonight, I guess. Yeah. And that’s part of dealing with that is being a part of being a mature man is dealing with that. Not saying that that means your wife has all the power. Yeah. Which is what we’ve talked about other.

Sheila
Yeah. That’s coming up.

Keith
Well that’s coming up okay. So yeah. So, you should be putting out those romantic things and sometimes it helps in your if you for a time you could agree we are going to let ourselves do everything but intercourse. Right. Because then like you know, that’s not going to happen.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
But you still just kiss and hug and cuddle and do all kinds of stuff. Right. And it’s like as a man you can learn, you know what. There’s value and beauty and closeness and intimacy and all of that. And it’s such a richer experience. You know, you’re not thinking of it as a, you know, get to the get to the goal line. You’re thinking of it as an experience between the two of you. And it just makes everything better. So, you know, don’t think of it in terms of that. So it shouldn’t be a big onerous thing to say to higher drive spouses give your lower drive you’re a responsive libido spouse something to respond to but also respect it. Acknowledge if that lower that responsive spouse doesn’t actually want to do that. They they’re allowed to say no.

Sheila
Yeah, right. And ironically, when you do that, let me be. It’s not even ironic. But like when you do that, her sexuality tends to blossom and then her libido tends to blossom. So it’s like it’s like when you when you create a healthy relationship like that, that’s a healthy relationship dynamic. You’re going to also create healthy desire for sex, which is what we want in the first place. Right?

Okay. Another definition that I want us to focus on is what does intimacy actually involve. Right? Okay. Intimacy means I’m showing up with everything that I am, and you are showing up with everything that you are. And we’re able to accept that and enter into it and, and that’s what fuels the passion. Right? It’s like, I truly see you and I want to unite with you. So and the problem that I see in a lot of our sex advice, and this is what we’re going to get to now, is that our sex advice actually tells women especially not to show up with everything they are, because a lot of what they are is a problem. And so you’re not actually supposed to show like your issues or problems.

So put all of that aside and the only thing that actually matters is your vagina. Yeah. Or your mouth. As we’re about to hear. Yeah. So you’re, you know, you’re not actually supposed to show up with everything you are. the things that you have that are stopping us from having sex are problems. And they need to get put by the wayside.

Keith
The fact that you don’t feel close right now, the fact that you don’t, you know that you don’t feel safe. The fact that he doesn’t brush his teeth. Yeah. Those are your issues to deal with.

Sheila
With, right?

Keith
Because he needs access.

Sheila
Right. So let me give and I’ve read these quotes a lot on the podcast, but I think that I think that they, they really speak to this. So the first thing that a woman has to turn off is her own body’s needs. Okay, okay. And we’re not going to talk about the orgasm gap because we’ve talked about that so much. But obviously a big reason that women don’t want sex is because they’re not experiencing pleasure from it. Okay.

Keith
They’re getting Chef Boyardee. Not Nonna’s ravioli. Right.

Sheila
We have so many podcasts on that. I actually have a starter pack on a podcast of ten different podcasts on how to make sex feel good. I’ll put a link in the comments, because I don’t want to go there today, because we’ve gone there so much, so many times. But another way that we have to turn off our own bodies’ needs is things like our periods and illness.

So I want to read these two quotes from the book Sheet Music by Kevin Lehman. All right. So he says there are times, for whatever reason, that a wife may choose to make use of what younger men affectionately refer to as hand jobs, a woman with heavy periods that last 6 or 7 days, or who has just gone through a pregnancy.

In other words, she just delivered a human being out of her body. Yeah, right. Or perhaps is simply not feeling her best may genuinely feel like sex is more than she can handle, but with a minimum of effort, she can help her husband, who feels like he’s about ready to climb the walls because it’s been so long. Yeah, so she’s, he’s blatantly saying it here, right?

She’s supposed to put in the effort. Yeah. So mental labor is all on her even when she’s sick. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So this is a woman who is sick. Yeah. Or who is having super heavy periods, which means she’s likely cramping. She isn’t feeling well at all, or she’s just pushed out a baby, which means she’s exhausted. She might have postpartum depression. She’s got milk leaking all over the place, but the priority needs to be to make sure that her husband ejaculates. Yeah. It’s crazy.

Keith
Okay, here’s it’s just a sideline because you talked about in one of the podcasts recently about how the Denny Burke criticism of the Great Sex Rescue. Right. Because I think there’s a couple podcasts that we.

Sheila
Talked about that could take the.

Keith
Biggest take that the funniest take is so the greats especially was reviewed. And Denny Burke said to me you spent too much time talking about pleasure. Yeah. And not talking. Not enough time talking about conception and having babies, which is the real point of sex. Right. And here’s Kevin Leman talking about making sure that he gets to ejaculate.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
During times when you cannot have a baby.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Right. Like when conception is off the table, like it’s not about conception, it’s about men getting what they want and women just toeing the line. Yeah, it’s always about that. Yeah. And they couch it in Christ like language. But it’s not about being like Christ, because a Christ like husband would not say to his wife would just push the baby out. I’m climbing the walls. You better give me something. Yeah. Come on, come on, guys, we can do better than that.

Sheila
Yeah. Okay, here’s here’s another quote. And again we’ve done this one a lot. We talk about this one a lot in the Great Sex Rescue. But here we go. The most difficult time for this man was during his wife’s period. That is like the worst sentence that’s ever been written in the history of time! So like, I mean, I dare you to go up to a woman and say, it’s really difficult for me when you have a period like, oh my gosh.

Keith
You know, I say.

Sheila
That, okay. Because she was unavailable to him sexually. After about ten years, she finally realized that pleasing her husband with oral sex or a simple hand job did wonders to help her husband through that difficult time. She realized that faithfulness is a two-person job.

Keith
Yeah, that’s another horrific line.

Sheila
So who is now bearing the mental load and emotional labor of making sure her husband doesn’t watch porn? Yeah, yeah, right. So she now has to give him sexual favors so that he doesn’t watch porn. So the mental load and emotional labor of keeping him faithful is now on her.

Keith
Yeah It’s crazy.

Sheila
So again, she’s bearing the emotional labor and mental load of sex.

Keith
Yeah. And no call to the men for restraint. You know? Chastity. Yeah. You know, all the things that are all through the New Testament. I mean, in the Old Testament. Not that we live by the Old Testament. You know, there were purity laws where you weren’t allowed to touch your wife during the period or like, for certain, like it was like a month after she had a baby, right? Like this. You weren’t allowed to even touch her, right like that. And that was expected that they would just do that. That was what God’s command was, right? Yeah. And it’s like, I’m not saying that we should go back to the Old Testament at all, but I’m saying like, if that was what God expected in the Old Testament and we have the living Spirit of God in us as men, can we not, like give our wives a break for up here like a few days over her period? Like, yeah, dude, like, why are you listening to these people and not seeing this is the opposite of what Christ would be like. It doesn’t make any sense to me anyway.

Sheila
Okay, I want to read a bit of an awkward excerpt now

Keith
Okay. The other stuff is not,

Sheilla
This is this. Right. So we’re talking about women not being able to show up with everything they are. Right. Right. And bearing the mental load. And I want to talk about a passage from the book Married Sex by Gary Thomas and Deborah Filteta. And this is in a chapter that Gary wrote, and he’s answering the question from a woman on why is it that my husband really, really wants hand jobs? Like, why does he even like that? Why wouldn’t he just masturbate when I’m postpartum? Yeah, okay. So he’s talking specifically to women who are postpartum or having their periods, and that’s laid out at the beginning of this passage. All right.

Keith
So husbands are asking for sexual favors, right?

Sheila
Okay. And here and he’s trying to explain to this woman why husbands like Hand jobs better than masturbating themselves. Yes. Okay. And here’s what he says. Here’s the difference between a husband masturbating to take away sexual tension, something we don’t recommend, and his wife taking the initiative. So again, the wife is the one who is bearing the mental load. We’re already setting it up this way. The wife is the one who’s bearing the responsibility here. It may seem to be the same thing, but it’s not even close. Wives, this is what your husband is experiencing. And he lists like, I don’t know how many that is. Is that like 12? There’s a bunch of different buttons. Things that women that men just love about their wives giving them. Hand jobs. All right. Three of these things, though, actually relate to her excitement. Yeah. So he talks about the sound of your moans, the wetness between your legs, your breathing, your excitement as his excitement builds. That’s actually four things. So these things all paint the picture of a woman who is aroused. Yeah. Again. Well, you’re talking about a woman not wanting to do it when she’s postpartum, and he’s saying, what does the husband like about it? The fact that you’re moaning that you have wetness proves that if she has wetness between the thighs and it’s postpartum,

Keith
that’s kind of creepy. It’s not. It’s not like that.

Sheila
Anyway, that’s not what you think it is. But so it seems to me what we’re talking about here is a man who it feels like whenever, I have a sexual feeling I’m lusting.

Sheila
Right? Which isn’t true, but whatever. And so I have to get rid of that sexual feeling. The only way to get rid of it is to ejaculate. I’m not allowed to masturbate and so I have to use my wife, but she is in a position where she doesn’t actually want to do this. Yeah, but I need her. Like I desperately need her to.

Keith
Because. Because, like you, you just skipped over it. But in these places, masturbating is like, That’s a sin. You can’t do that. Right. So I’m going to make my wife masturbate me.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
And that’s okay. But at some point, in your psyche you’ve got to go. That’s got to be worse. Right. But that’s got to be worse right, doesn’t it?

Sheila
And so and so this is you.

Keith
Way of justifying you know she wants to.

Sheila
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the way that you get around that is. Oh no she’s aroused by doing this and okay look some women actually are aroused by doing this. And when I, when I’ve asked on social media, not a scientific study, we didn’t do this on our scientific ones. But the polls have taken on social media show that about 40% of women do get aroused postpartum during their period doing that kind of thing. The other 60% absolutely hate doing it. Like hate it, you know, like it’s pretty stark, right? And so here he is. And I think what he’s trying to do is he’s trying to get over this guilt that he’s feeling by convincing himself, oh no, she wants to. And that’s what so many books say, is that she has to make sure that he feels good about this whatever you’re doing. So Shanti Feldham says, you know, make sure your words are heart words that you’re affirming him, adoring him even when you’re not feeling good during sex. His needs. Her needs teach very explicitly how women are supposed to have orgasms. But the reason is not for her own pleasure. The reasons that he won’t feel good unless she orgasms. All right, if you want to learn to orgasm, we have a much better way.

We have an orgasm course, so check, I’ll put a link in the podcast notes. All right. But over and over this is what we’re told is like it’s her responsibility to make sure that he feels like he’s doing a good job. Yes. And so she has to manage his emotions during sex.

Keith
Yeah. As opposed to him like learning to do a better job. Yeah.

Sheila
Yeah. Okay. And again, there’s so little talk of how men need to make sure their wives are feeling pleasure. And there’s so much talk about making sure that she’s having enough sex. So I want to give you some examples of that, because another way that women are supposed to bare mental load is that they’re supposed to get freaky.

Keith
Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. It’s not just enough that she gives you dirty sex when you want it. Like she gives you obligation sex like you feel guilty. So she has to want it to. Yeah. Assuage your guilt. Yeah. But then it’s also like, if you have something that’s a fantasy, that’s a little bit weird. She has to make sure you don’t feel guilty about that too, by doing whatever you want her to do. Right. And there’s a lot of people who teach specifically she should be trying to outdo your husband, right? You should be trying to outdo your husband?

Sheila
So let’s listen to that. The first clip is from a sermon at Paula White’s church. Paula White is the spiritual advisor to Donald Trump. Right before Easter this year, she prophesied over Donald Trump that he was just like Jesus and that he had been falsely accused but was still going to do anyway. It’s quite the thing. So this is at Paula White’s church, and this is her husband, Jonathan King, giving this advice in a sermon. Okay. Let’s listen.

Jonathan King
I think too. women have to, who, don’t have to, but women should look into men and find out what turns them on me. And you can talk about this is something that’s, you know, how freaky do you want to get? You know what I mean? And if you don’t have that conversation with your man, if you don’t have that conversation, then you know you’re not fulfilling everything that he really, truly wants. And the other part of it is, ladies, if you don’t know what he likes, you know, figure it out, get a book, but go get the portn. Do something he likes to watch for. What’s wrong with him, you know, I mean, it’s like you gotta get where you gotta go. Figure it out.

Sheila
What do you think of that?

Keith
So watch porn with him. Yeah. Like that’s the recommendation right there. And studying doesn’t matter.

Sheila
Yeah. Figure out what he wants because he’s not going to be fulfilled unless you do something freaky, right? Like unless you get really into this. So the emphasis again, when it comes to sex advice, the emphasis is not make sure sex is good for her. You know, remember we have a 47-point orgasm gap. Remember that 18% of women say they feel used after sex. Remember all the remember that 23% of women suffer from sexual pain disorders, and 35% if you include postpartum like, it’s not about that. It’s just, hey, unless you’re a porn star, he’s not going to be fulfilled. Yeah, right. Let’s listen to another guy. This is Scott Anderson. He is one of the lead pastors at Living Word Church in Mesa, Arizona.

Sheila
Okay.

Scott Anderson
Why? He’s out there. Rock his World, Rock it. I’m telling you, rock his world. This is at least once a week. Something crazy in the bedroom. Something crazy, right? I don’t know why you’re still watching this. You should be planning it out today. You should be dressed up. Get some saran wrap on. I don’t know what you’re going to do. Something that. If his mom ever found out, like it would destroy her. Do something crazy. Because I’m gonna tell you what is very important to a man. And that passion in the bedroom is so important. I’m not saying every time I say once a week, once a week make it a goal that, you know what? I’m going to surprise him. I’m going to do it. So I’m going to fulfill I’m going to make it incredible. And when you are making that important to you, you’ll find that he begins to make the things that are important to you important to him. That when you say, hey, I get it, this is a very important need of a man. And I’m not just going to be average. I’m not going to. Okay, right? I’m not going to wait for you to is to want, but instead I’m going to be the one that’s been Crock-Pot and have been thinking about it and put it. And I’m going to be the one that surprises him. And you see, a change happens in him when he knows that you’ve made this important. You can change really so much in your home, in your family, by rocking his work. Yeah.

Keith
This is exactly the time I’ve heard this kind of stuff, like, yeah, like challenging women. And I don’t think it’s because they want sex to be good for the women. It’s they just want the men to not feel guilty. Yeah. And they want men to get things without even have to ask this. Men feel guilty asking. Yeah. So they’re trying to challenge women to go over the top. Yeah. Not for their benefit, but.

Sheila
For their health. I have a question. Weird. I have a question. And I don’t mean to make this personal, okay?

Keith
This is a theoretical question.

Sheila
Theoretical question. But what could we possibly do in bed that would destroy your mother? You know, I know that I like that it’s weird. Like your mom’s a really fun person. Like she’s not hung up on anything at all. Like, all I can think of is some weird illegal fetish. Like.

Keith
Like, is that, like, it’s. Yeah.

Sheila
Is he trying to, like, basically by saying that, like they’ve destroyed your mom, he is implying weird fetishes. Like, I can’t think of anything else that he would be saying there.

Keith
Yeah. I mean, again, I think he’s joking. I don’t think he’s saying you should do things that are sinful. Yep. But like, why joke like that? Like what? Why do you have to go that way? Yeah. You know, it’s just it’s taking sex. And instead of making, leaning into the intimacy and the unity and the beauty and the mutuality, it’s leaning into all the worldly aspects of sex and saying, that’s the best way to do sex as a Christian. Yeah, it’s horrific. Like, why would you do that?

Sheila
Yeah. And again, okay, so he tells women, you need to plan this. You need to Crock-Pot it. You need to. He uses a lot of words about how she needs to spend a lot of her mental energy figuring out how to make sex super-hot for him once a week. And there is no advice on how he can make sure that she actually reaches orgasm or even like, like she is supposed to plan so that it is over the top for him. When most women and we talked about this in The Marriage You Want, aren’t even getting the bare minimum. Yeah. Of enjoyment out of sex. Yeah. Right. So she has to make sure that he gets he gets this when she’s not even getting this.

Keith
Meanwhile, the reality is that sex is very automatic for men. And it takes more work for women. So in the relationship where you want both people to be good, who should be the one doing the studying and the working to become better at this. Yeah right. It’s the man and the only sex advice I have ever heard.

Sheila
Right.

Keith
For men in the church is vacuum once in a while and unload the dishwasher. Yeah, like that is it. That is the extent.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
It’s just it’s abominable. Yeah, I don’t understand. It doesn’t make any sense. Yeah.

Sheila
And we have a husband’s part of the orgasm course. So if you have been and you want to do some of the mental load to figure out how to make sex great for your wives, we do have husbands. It’s part of the orgasm course too. So I will put a link to that. The podcast notes. Okay. Moving on.

Keith
Okay.

Sheila
What is part of the emotional labor of sex for women is getting rid of their emotions entirely? And I want to I want to give you a scenario and see how this could unfold in three different ways to show you what I think is happening. Okay, so let’s imagine that you haven’t had sex in four days, all right? And your wife has just had a really, really, really emotionally stressful day. Maybe she’s had it out with the kids. You know, maybe she’s had a tiff with her mom, maybe at work. She had conflict with a coworker, but she just feels lousy, right? Okay. So scenario one is that, and this is what most evangelical sex advice would tell you to do, right?

Is it? She knows she feels lousy, but she also knows he hasn’t had sex in four days. And so she has to get she has to work really, really, really hard to put her emotions to the side. Yeah. So she can get in a mental frame of mind where she can at least go through the motions. Yeah. Okay. The best-case scenario of that is that maybe she has an orgasm anyway and she sleeps better. Perhaps. But do they feel connected? Yeah. Right. No, because she was not in the emotional space to just jump into bed and have sex, right. Like she was really struggling, but she knew that no matter what I am going through, our sex life has to look a certain way.

So our sex life is not about connecting? No. Right? Because if it were about connecting, what I am feeling would actually be part of our sex life. Yeah, but what I am feeling is a hindrance to our sex life, because our sex life is not connecting. It’s only about making sure. Yeah, that he has an orgasm. Yeah. And so all of these emotions, she has to get put to that, get put on the back burner. Yeah. So that’s scenario one.

00;53;24;24 – 00;53;26;07
Keith
Yeah, not a very nice scenario.

Sheila
Here’s scenario two. He recognizes that she’s upset okay. He recognizes she’s had a bad day. And he’s like you know it would really help you and orgasm. Let’s jump into bed and have sex right okay. So he’s acknowledging her emotions right. And he’s saying sex is the answer. So let’s jump in bed and you know, to a certain extent that could be true to a certain extent.

Keith
I think it’d be better to ask it as a question.

Sheila
Yes, yes.

Keith
Hey, I know you had a rough day let’s make you feel good. That kind of thing. Right? That’s the kind of mentality you’re talking about, right? Right. Okay. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Because not another guy is going to bulldoze through, you know.

Sheila
Just say, hey, you’ve had a rough day. Come on, let’s go. This will make you feel better.

Keith
Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, I gotcha.

Sheil
Here’s scenario three. He recognizes she’s had a bad day and he’s like, you know what? What do you need for me? Yeah. Like, can I give you a massage? Can I, just lay it all out. I mean, let me listen. Let me hold you. Yeah. Whatever. Whatever it is. So she feels heard and seen. Yeah. And when she feels heard and seen. Yeah. Often sex can flow from that. And then that sex does let you feel connected. Because the reason that her libido got going, the reason that she had a desire for sex, was because I feel like he saw me. I feel like he saw what was really happening. And so now sex is an expression of who we are. Yeah. Sex is really about bringing everything to the table. Yeah. Right. But what we’re told instead is your emotions, whatever you’re going through, you have to put all of that aside to make sure that no matter what you’re going through, the sex life looks exactly the same. Whether you’re postpartum, on your period, sick, having trouble with your sister or the kids, or you’re exhausted or you’re hitting menopause like sex has to always be at the same schedule, and it has to be super-hot for him. Yeah, and that has nothing to do with connection.

Keith
No.

Sheila
You know, like I, I had this this question. I was speaking in Manitoba last month, and one of the questions in Q&A was sometimes, even if I’m enjoying myself, it’s just not possible for me to climax. Is that okay to not climax every time? And the more I thought about this answer, the more I think what’s going on is like this. Scenario one where she’s having sex and there could be many, many, many things going on. Okay. But I think in scenario one that shows up a lot. Yeah. So it’s like I’m having sex because I have to have sex, but I have all of this stuff in my head because why is it that she can’t reach climax every time when she can reach it quite easily? Sometimes. And it could be hormonal, right? Like, you know, it’s a lot easier to reach climax it in that all relationship.

Keith
So many different scenarios. It could be going on some healthy, some neutral or some really, really unhealthy. And you don’t know the background, right?

Sheila
Yeah. But I think that what’s happened is that a lot of times women especially don’t let ourselves deal with the emotions that we have. Because we feel like we have to have sex anyway. And so we’re not actually fully showing up in the bedroom. You know, we’re hiding a large part of ourselves, but that part of ourselves is still there. And you can’t get rid of it. And so it’s actually quite difficult to respond sexually, you know. So even if it feels good, you just can’t get over that hump. You can’t get there because you’re still thinking about that fight you had with your sister or, you know, whatever it was. Right. And I just wonder how much these kinds of questions would go away if instead of seeing my emotions and all and not just your emotions, but just the exhausted, the exhaustion you feel, the huge list of things you have to get done instead of seeing those as impediments to sex. We invited our spouse into them with us so that we could connect. And then sex grew out of that, and then they’re not weighing as heavily on you. Yeah.

Keith
I find it so ironic that in church, often we use the word intimacy to mean sexual intercourse. Yes. Like people are afraid to say sex. So they say intimacy. Yeah. But then they preach a version of sex which is completely devoid of intimacy. Yeah. Like intimacy interferes with sex because it is really just release. Yeah. That’s all it is. And that’s so sad because it’s like if I’m interested and I’m like kind of think feeling that way. And I get home from work feeling that way. And you’ve had a horrible day, and you’ve had all kinds of stress with your sister and whatever. Like it’s like.

Sheila
I don’t have a sister, by the way. But anyway, yeah.

Keith
You are right. Yeah. So but if I get home and I’m in that kind of headspace, I’m thinking like, oh great, I’m going to really romance her tonight. And then this is what happens if we’re one.
Like that should have an impact on me. Like I shouldn’t just be. Well how am I gonna deal with this now? Like you can’t have that feeling because I have this feeling like right. Like it should be like oh what? And then, you know, because, like, I want to be intimate with you. I don’t just want to use you for release.

Yeah, right. So it’s like, well, I want to know these things, right? Like what’s going on and then tell me about. And then as we learn, like if you, if you have a, if you have a sexual view of sexuality, that’s integrated like it’s your whole person, like being closer to a person emotionally and psychologically makes sex better. Yeah. Right. All this talk about how to be freaky. You know, it’s because it’s like it’s just like we preach that the world doesn’t understand the beauty of sex, and it’s just an act for them. But like the, these people are doing the exact same thing. It’s about the physical act. Yeah. It’s not about intimacy.

Sheila
No.

Keith
Right. Because if, if we’re truly intimate then it’s like I’m not going to say to you, you know, you need you need to have sex. I’m going to say, oh, tell me about it, and we’re going to talk and we’re going to be intimate, sharing, discussing, getting into things. And then like, it’s going to happen, you’re going to go, you know what I need? And you’re just like, yeah, and it’s going to happen because we just know we’re safe with each other and things go where they go.

Sheila
Yeah, you probably get a little too personal here, but yes.

Keith
No, I’m not talking. What? You me? I’m talking about theoretical people. We said to be the beginning. Yes, but you know. You know what I mean. Like that kind of thing as opposed to the whole sex is I need. I have not had need met in six days. Must have need met. You know that kind of mentality of sex. Like, like, why don’t we see that for the really anemic view that it is.

Sheila
Yeah. And again, we’re not saying that sex doesn’t matter in a marriage or anything like that. But what we are saying is that when sex is integrated, when it is part of that, sex actually happens more often and the women tend to be happier, like, like when women say, I can share all my problems with my spouse, and my spouse hears me when they say I can mourn with my spouse, like when they rate all of those things really high. Their sexual desire also tends to be a lot higher. Like when we’re when we don’t try to get rid of our emotions so that we can show up in the bedroom. But when we instead bring our emotions with us and our spouse enters into them, that makes our sex life come alive and yet that’s not what we’re taught to do. And it really bothers me.

Keith
Well in a sense. Women are taught that, like I ask the question, why don’t we do this? And it’s like, I know the reason men don’t do that, because no man, that’s not taught. Yeah, men are taught. You are animals who need sex. And like, that’s and women are these integrated psychological creatures. Yes. And you don’t have those needs, right? You just have physical needs. That’s abominable. I don’t know why in the church we are not really against that. Yeah, like men are fully human, right? We are fully emotional. We’re fully, you know, and the issue is that, you know, embracing that emotional and psychological side is good for us as men. Yeah. The only thing it prevents us is the idea that those things are feminine and as if that’s bad thing.

Sheila
And the masculine are to be not female. Yeah. And so and.

Keith
It’s like crazy. And I said this before, we will never be healthy until we stop defining being a man as, not as a woman, but as not a boy. Yeah. Like a man is mature. A man is a man is in control of himself. A man is in control of his. He knows what’s going on. He’s integrated.

Keith
He’s not just reacting like a. You’re having a period. And it’s really hard for me.

Sheila
Yeah, well, speaking of that, okay, I have one last quote that I want to read. This is from Gary Thomas’s book A Lifelong Love. And again, we’ve talked about this before, but sometimes all these things circle back because they have different meanings too. And he’s writing about dynamics and marriage and how they change based on who was most invested in marriage.
And he talks about how often in the dating period, you know, the husbands are more invested. But then when a baby comes suddenly the wife isn’t as invested in the marriage because now, she’s got this baby, right? And here’s what he said.

Keith
Okay. Yeah, except that marriage includes the baby. Now, whatever.

Sheila
Meanwhile, the husband the husband eventually realizes he has lost his wife. She speaks tenderly to the baby in a way that she hasn’t spoken to him in months. If not years. The baby cries and the husband cease to exist. They could be in the middle of making love, but that doesn’t matter. The baby comes first. The power has shifted back to the wife, and the wife can do a lot of harm to her marriage if ruled by these strong maternal feelings. She succumbs to the trap of becoming a mom first and a wife second. I just that line about if the baby cries when they’re making love. Then yeah. Everything like, yeah, your baby’s crying dude, why would you want to keep making love if your baby is crying? Like this is the ultimate in completely divorcing emotion and a huge part of your life from your sex life. Like as soon as you become a parent, that child is your life like. And not because they’ve made your life smaller, because they’ve made your life so much bigger. And the love that you both feel for that child should be like the fact that he’s just painting this is just unreal. Yeah. But yet, I mean, I have a new grandchild and she’s adorable and seeing, you know, her dad carries her around and her mom carries like its lovely right there in new family unit. They’re now four people. They started off as two. Now they’re four like that’s lovely. And our oldest is now how old is she? 31. 31. I still think of her. She’s still one of the last things I think about when I go to bed at night. You know, she’s my youngest, is still one of the last people I pray for when I fall asleep at night. And I often fall asleep praying for my grandchildren and my children and like, because they’re a part of me. And that didn’t make my relationship with you worse. It made my relationship with you stronger. Yeah.

Keith
Yeah. And it’s like, this is jealousy of you of your own child.

Sheila
Yeah. I mean.

Keith
Again, boy behavior, not man behavior.

Sheila
And so women and so women are taught like women are taught, that you need to take the maternal feelings that you have even when the baby is crying, and put that on the back burner so that your husband doesn’t feel bad.

Keith
As opposed to telling men to be mature. And grow up and realize it’s not about you. Right, right. Which is what they say they believe.

Sheila
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Keith
So and it’s, it’s this we could do better I think, I know men could do better.

Sheila
Yeah. Yeah. Because I think for women a lot of the emotional labor of sex is actually getting rid of your emotions. It’s taking all the things that you care about, all the things that are weighing you down and making them not matter so that your husband’s orgasm matters most. And that’s crazy. That is not connection. That is not intimacy.

Keith
And so some guys that here, I think are learning this for the first time. Right. And so my challenge to you is don’t get defensive but to lean into it. Oh my gosh have I done that.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Well I believe in you. You can do better. Like I’ve learned I shudder when I think back at the beginning of our marriage. We are getting personal here now, but I shudder I think back to beginning of our marriage. How selfish I was. That’s why I was trying to be, by the teachings in these books. And I shudder that thought. And that’s why we do this. We want to teach men how to be better, to be the kind of man you want to be. I meant most Christian men out there want to be amazing husbands and fathers. Yes. And I think that the problem is that very they’re being fed is stuff to make them feel good at the expense of other people, as opposed to calling them to rise up and be strong.

Sheila
Yeah. And if you know couples who are just starting out, a great gift to give them is our books, The Good Girls Guide, The Great Sex Rescue and the Good Guys Guide to Great Sex, because we really wrote them for Little Sheila and Little Keith. This is what we should have heard instead of all the crappy books that we were given. So it’s a great way to begin. Okay, I want to actually end on a clip, which is the most Christian thing that we will hear this entire podcast spoken by a man whose platform is not primarily Christian. I don’t actually know what his faith belief is. Do you know what it is?

Keith
He’s talked about Jesus before.

Sheila
Has he.

Keith
But I don’t know. I don’t know where he’s from. It sounds like his mother was very religious, though.

01;06;41;18 – 01;06;46;26
Sheila
Okay. Yeah. I don’t I don’t know, but this is Trevor Noah. I want you to listen to what he’s saying about sex.

Trevor Noah
Including how the framing always talks about men and sex alone. No, but it never talks about two things. One, very seldom in society do we talk about how the expectation of sex was often set by a society controlled by men, and women were just subject to it, you know? And as that has changed, you would hope that now the dynamics would change.

But it also it also makes it seem so one dimensional, like women, you know, men aren’t having the sex that they want to have or wish to have when I go, like, how much sex do they think they supposed to have? Let’s stop there. Secondly, like, do they think they’re entitled to the sex and third, and most importantly for me and I really feel like we don’t speak about this enough is, people don’t realize how often men are experiencing a lack of intimacy, and the only place that they can experience that intimacy is through sex. We’ve created a society where men are so afraid to be vulnerable with each other, to be, you know, sensitive with each other, to care for each other, to love each other. You know, even saying that as a guy, you always have to change and be like, you can’t just say, I love you. I love you, God. You know what I mean? You just gotta throw it like you can’t just say it. And it’s interesting because that is where I do feel women have done a much better job of being there intimately for each other, not sexually, but intimately. And I think we take for granted how much in society men who say sex is the thing they’re not getting are actually struggling with a lack of companionship, of intimacy, of being in a space with a person, with it, with a sharing, you know, everything from serotonin to endorphins to what to what humans need to feel.

Sheila
Wouldn’t it be just so lovely? Yeah. If pastors could talk more like that.Like that’s what we want, right? Is, is, is we’ve taken sex and we used sex in place of intimacy because we can’t talk about what it is that we really need. Yeah. You know.

Keith
And, and a lot of guys don’t even realize. Because you’ve been taught to suppress your emotions so much you don’t even realize you have them. Yeah. Right. You’re snapping at everybody because you haven’t processed. Your feelings of inadequacy at work.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
There are you in process your feelings of inadequacy whereas you don’t realize you have them.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah. You just know you feel bad. And what will make you feel better in orgasm? Yeah.

Keith
Exactly. Yeah. So, like, that is the coward’s way. Yeah. Like, unpack that stuff. Like do some introspection, you know, get in touch with your emotions. You know, your intellect, your psyche, psyche, like all those things. And let your wife be who she is, and then, you know, be together. And then it’s truly intimate. It’s not just an act. It’s truly intimate.

Sheila
And so, yeah, that’s what sex should be. We both get to show up with everything that we are, and then sex flows out of that connection and sex enhances that connection. That’s what it should be. But when we put all of the mental load and emotional labor on one person for sex and we make the emotional labor basically being getting rid of her emotions so that he can have an orgasm, we’re not creating healthy marriages.

Keith
Yeah. So don’t do that anymore.

Sheila
That’s why I do that. Share mental load, share the emotional labor and the emotional labor is not getting rid of your emotions. It’s learning how to show up with them and help each other to feel heard and seen. Yeah. So yeah. So there you go. I’m going to put a link to everything we mentioned in the podcast notes.

Check out our starter pack on how to make sex feel good. Because we didn’t talk about that, that much, because we talked about it so much before. And take a look at The Great Sex Rescue. If you want to get a new way of seeing how sex should really work, because that can help a lot. As well. So I’ll put a link to all of our books, we mentioned a bunch of them today, but once again, thank you for joining us on the Bare Marriage podcast. We’re always glad your here.

Bye