Sheila

Hi folks. The Mica Miller story in Death of the Pastor’s Wife has everyone talking. So many people are watching this documentary on Netflix and going, oh my gosh, this looks like my church. This is the stuff that we were taught about sex. I know I watched the documentary and I really wasn’t that surprised at all, because everything that I saw in the documentary was also in the bestselling evangelical sex and marriage books that we’ve been analyzing. My husband and I have been in Atlantic Canada. We are there to be part of a really good friend’s 42nd anniversary retirement from the military. He’s been a military chaplain for 42 years, and his big retirement party is there. We’re also doing our simulcast we’ve been talking about, and then we’re going to take a little bit of a vacation. And so for today’s podcast, I recorded an interview with Lauren at Called to Peace Ministries about the Mica Miller documentary. And I said some things in that interview that I don’t think I’ve actually said explicitly on a podcast here, or at least not on one single podcast. Often I’ve dealt with the same themes, but on multiple different ones. And so I asked Lauren, you know what, since I’m going on vacation and I have less time to record podcasts, can I just take the interview that I did with you and use it on the Bare Marriage podcast, too? And she graciously said yes. And so we’re going to play that in just a minute for you. I really do appreciate Called to Peace Ministries. I’ve done a lot of work with them. I’ve been on some webinars. I’ve done a lot of interviews, live streams with them, but they are dedicated to helping women in abusive relationships get out of them. They go into churches, even really conservative churches, and help train them on how to recognize abuse. And they’re just doing great work. So I highly recommend them to you. I’ll put a link to them in the podcast notes and to their social media channels. They have really active social media channels. And without further ado, here’s me talking to Lauren.

Lauren

Good morning. The story of Mica Miller has captured national attention following the release of the Netflix documentary Death of a Pastor’s Wife, and among many disturbing allegations in Mica’s story, raising important questions for the church about sex, marriage and what we teach women they owe their husbands. Friends of Mica recount that her husband expected sex as often as four times a day, and that Mica took testosterone in an effort to keep up with his sexual demands, something they say ultimately affected her singing voice that had been such an important part of her life. But underneath that story is a much bigger question: what happens when sexual demands are reinforced by Christian teachings? Mica wanted to be a godly wife, and her story raises the question the church cannot afford to ignore. What does healthy, biblical sexuality actually look like? Does marriage mean permanent consent? And when does meeting your spouse’s needs cross the line of sexual obligation or coercion?

Joining me today is Sheila Gregoire. I cannot think of a better person to interview on this subject. She is an author, speaker, researcher, and founder of Bare Marriage who works to challenge harmful messages Christians have received about sex and marriage. Sheila. I am so excited to get started with today’s conversation. Can you briefly introduce yourself? And we’re only going to be live on YouTube and later upload to Facebook. So join us over there, everybody.

Sheila

Yes. So, I have founded BareMarriage.com and I started off as a mommy blogger. The more I talked about sex, the more my traffic grew. And so I kind of became this Christian sex lady. But then in 2019, everything changed because I read Love and Respect, and up until then, I hadn’t read a lot of other evangelical marriage books because I didn’t want to plagiarize. But I read Love and Respect and it was just so bad, like it was so toxic because I always thought, I love Jesus, they love Jesus, we’re all saying the same thing, but we were not. And so over the last six years, our team has studied over 40,000 people. We’ve done five different studies. Now, we’ve got five books out of four peer reviewed papers, and we’ve just looked in depth at how the things that are taught in evangelicalism actually can hurt women’s marital and sexual satisfaction. And we’re hoping that we can show people that there’s a better way, that that’s not what Jesus ever intended.

Lauren

Yes. Well, we appreciate your work so much. I love following you and seeing that. And I’ve been seeing you’ve been dicing apart some of the teachings that influence Mica Miller. And so I want to dive into that. And so Mica Miller’s case captured the national attention and raised difficult questions about marriage, church leadership, power and abuse. As you’ve watched this story unfold, what has stood out to you about the conversation the church needs to be having?

Sheila

I mean, watching it was just kind of a surreal experience, because on the one hand, I wasn’t surprised because I have read all like nothing that JP Miller said in his sermons was different from what is in our books. In fact, nothing that he did is even necessarily different from what is in so many evangelical bestsellers. But it’s like seeing someone say it from a stage, from a pulpit is different from reading it on a page. You don’t realize how awful it is when you’re just reading it on a page. But when you see someone saying it, it’s like, wow, this is bad. But he didn’t just say it once, he said it multiple times. It seems like this was his favorite thing to talk about in sermons. And I think what threw me is that people didn’t leave. People didn’t leave Lauren. Just sat in those pews, even when it became clear that she was being abused, even when he leaked nude photos of her, even when it came out that they had had an affair, which we all know wasn’t an affair, it was clergy sex abuse. But even when that came out, these people just stayed. Because our teaching on sex has become so distorted that we don’t actually expect men to have any kind of sexual discipleship or sexual discipline in their lives. We expect women to be the sin management tools for men. And so when this is preached, it doesn’t raise red flags.

Lauren

No. And the problem I was talking to someone about this last night is why did these somebody say to me, well, why didn’t the women go help her as well, probably majority of these women were in sexually abusive marriages themselves. Any man that’s willing to stay in a church like that, they condone it. They’re willing to say this is what they believe as well.

Sheila

So let me just pick up on that. So one of the things that JP Miller, so JP Miller is Mica Miller’s husband, who is very, abusive towards her, it really seems, and is still doing questionable things, but some of the things he said in the sermons were things like, you know, God, God didn’t send an angel from heaven to meet a sexual needs. You know, God sent wives and wives were here to meet husbands sexual needs. And when you don’t do that, when you don’t have sex when he wants it, then you’re opening him up to temptation and to sin, etc., etc. and I think what really sobered me was Mica had a number of friends, who knew that she was being abused and who actually ended up leaving the church and trying to help her. But even they said, I mean, yes, what he was teaching was biblical. He just took it too far.

Lauren

Wow.

Sheila

And that made me really sad, because even these women who had gotten out of that church still thought that it was a biblical message that you need to give your husband sex when he wants it, when really what the Bible is showing us is that sex is something which is supposed to be mutual, intimate, and pleasurable for both.

When it came time to tell my daughters about sex and puberty, I did a really bad job.

Rebecca

Yeah, I mean, not your strongest suit. I’m going to be honest. And your job was to teach women about sex.

Sheila

I got a lot better as they got older. But you and your sister Katie and I were talking a couple of years ago, and you were joking with me about how bad a job I did, and I said, okay, well, then you do a better one. And you guys got together and you created a course called The Whole Story, a video course where you and Katie tell the girls about sex and puberty. And then there’s discussion questions and activities that parents can do with their kids to solidify the lesson and make sure that you are the one talking to your kids, too.

Rebecca

And after resounding positive feedback from the girls version, we decided to add a boys version too. So don’t worry, moms and dads of boys, we’ve got you covered. So if you have kids from ages about 10 to 16, you should check out the Whole Story. Don’t put off having these conversations because if you don’t have them now, someone else will have them with your kid. This is a conversation that we want to help you have. Feeling empowered, not awkward.

Sheila

And the link to the whole story is in the podcast.

Sheila

God is not pleased when a man gets to ejaculate. Yes, like his ejaculation does not make God happy. What God is pleased with is when you know two people, are able to experience real intimacy and joy and passion in their marriage together so that it grows their intimacy and passion and so that they are able, you know, to use that energy, that love, whatever that they get to go out and, and change the world. Right? Like that. It’s the foundation of your marriage which gives you energy and vitality that helps you do other things. God isn’t pleased when women are used, and the idea that so many people think that’s true is really sad.

Lauren

Yes, yes, no, I agree with you 100%. It is concerning and I’m curious to, you know, as for stories coming out here, sorry reading my question. I lost track, I had a really good question. When you look at some of these teachings and through the lens of that situation, what teachings are concerning you the most? I know you mentioned. Well, yes, it’s supposed to be mutual pleasure, but it seems like our church has changed completely into man’s pleasure.

Sheila

Yes.

Lauren

What is a whole concern? What is the root of these teachings?

Sheila

Yeah. So it’s the idea that that sex is a male entitlement and a female obligation and that that’s how God made it and he didn’t. I mean, look at the Song of Solomon. Okay? She says more words than he does, and she’s having a good time, right? Like there’s nothing in Scripture that insinuates that sex is only for men. There’s nothing in Scripture that insinuates that women are less sexual than men are. What is in Scripture is that lust is the person’s fault who is lusting, and that Paul tells us that we are to put lust to death. So Jesus said, whoever lust should gouge out their eyes. Paul said, you put lust to death. None of them said, you use your wife as a masturbatory aid. But that is what is being largely taught. You think about the Every Man’s Battle series, which said over and over again that men just don’t have that Christian view of sex or when it comes to lust, we got there naturally, simply by being male. And those are direct quotes, right? So they’re literally saying that God just made men to sin. And so you can’t blame men for it. The way that we get over men’s sin is by making sure that women are there. To be the lawful sexual outlets as Doug Wilson calls us, or the penis homes, as Mark Driscolll calls it, you know, and, and so this whole approach to sex, like you’ll notice in all of the sermons, clips that they did of J.P. Miller, never once did he say, you should make sure that sex is a good experience for her, or you should make sure sex is intimate. It was only ever about how much a man is lusting and how she has to be there to absorb his lust. And so it is teaching that sex is really just about the man when that is not the biblical presentation of sex at all.

Lauren

Why wouldn’t they take this a step further and talk more about this? And I know you’ve done a lot of work in this. I feel like as a whole, in working with women and things like that, they’re always being taught they don’t have sex enough. They’re shut down sexually. A lot of women are. They don’t desire why has it become this way where men are just so entitled and women are viewed as somebody that just doesn’t really want sex, and you’ve just got to do it because it’s part of your duty?

What do you think’s happening?

Sheila

I have so much to say about this. All right, so let’s back up for a minute. I’m going to give you some stats, and then I’m going to explain why I think women shut down sex sexually. So, when I’m going to list five things, everybody. Okay. So get ready when there’s high marital satisfaction, when women frequently reach orgasm, when they feel emotionally connected during sex, when there’s no porn use in the marriage and when there’s no sexual dysfunction, there aren’t problems with libido like frequency takes care of itself. So when we’re looking at a marriage where she doesn’t want sex, the correct approach to that should not be we’ll just have sex anyway. It should be. Oh, there must be something going on. Let’s uncover what’s going on. Because libido and frequency is a symptom of a problem. It is not the problem itself, and it is being taught that libido and frequency is the problem and it’s women’s problem. Which is crazy because by the way, in like 20% of marriages, she has a higher libido than he does. But we never hear about that, you know? But anyway, think about what happens in our bodies, right? Like our bodies are designed to keep us safe, right? Like God, God put the survival mechanism in us. It’s the most instinctual thing that we have. And our bodies are constantly scanning for threats, right? That’s what we’re made for. We’re always looking for the lion in the woods. We’re always looking for anything that could hurt us, and our bodies are trying to protect us. And when we feel like we’re not safe, different things will shut down. Like when we feel when you are feeling in a heightened state of threat. Okay, then people tend to go into fight or flight, freeze or fawn mode, because you’re feeling under threat. When you are feeling under threat, you know, what shuts down is anything sexual. Because when you’re getting chased by a bear, you’re not worried about having sex.  And when your cortisol levels, your stress levels are high, your body knows now is not a good time to get pregnant. And so our bodies sense when sex is all about us being used. Our bodies sense that sex is not safe for us. And so our bodies are going to do what they can to make sure that sex doesn’t happen. So we’re going to find arousal more difficult. We’re going to find libido dies off like when you’re not safe, libido doesn’t work. Now there is a caveat. And really this is an important caveat. When women are being sexually assaulted, we often do respond sexually, like when there’s an actual assault happening. And that, again, is also instinctual. It’s called arousal non concordance. Just because your body responds doesn’t mean that you wanted it. But our bodies often do because when we’re lubricated there’s less tissue damage. And so if you were being assaulted and you got aroused that doesn’t mean you consented okay. So I just want to make that very clear. But, in general and in the broader relationship scene, when you don’t feel safe in a relationship and feeling like you are being used means you’re not safe. Because sex is supposed to be deep knowledge. And if it becomes an owing, it’s more like an erasure of you as a person because of sex is supposed to be. We bring everything we are to the bedroom and we love and accept each other, and we experience each other together. That’s one thing. But if sex is, I get to use you whether you want it or not, then suddenly you don’t matter anymore. And so sex becomes an erasure. Well that, that’s, that’s me feeling unsafe. That’s me feeling under threat. And so my body’s going to be like well sex is dangerous for us because sex makes us feel used. And so our bodies are like, I’m going to make sure we don’t get aroused, I’m going to make sure we don’t have a libido. And what we did find in our surveys, especially for a book, The Great Sex Rescue, where we were looking at these things more specifically, evangelical women have libidos that are artificially lowered compared to the general population when certain things are believed. So when you believe, for instance, that all men struggle with lust, it’s every man’s battle. We see women’s libidos artificially lowered like they’re lower than they would be if they had never been taught that message.

Lauren

Wow. And I have one more thing to add to this, and I love to hear your opinion. So my Ob-Gyn, was also a survivor of abuse and very well aware of things as she told me that our bodies are very intelligent there, as women were created to reproduce. And so our bodies will shut down the libido, especially if there’s abuse, because our bodies are saying, yes, don’t reproduce, don’t make a baby because it knows that your environment that you’re in is not safe. I was told that by a medical doctor. And so I was like, well, that does make sense.

Sheila

Yes, exactly. Because cortisol levels, which spike when we’re not safe, you know, signal to us, okay, having a baby right now is a really bad idea, you know, because when your cortisol, when your stress levels are higher, your body’s saying, okay, this is not the time that we want to have a baby. Now, this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean you can’t get pregnant when you’re stressed. Because I know there’s a lot of people in abusive situations, and part of abuse is often reproductive abuse where, you know, women are just kept constantly pregnant. Right? So we’re not trying to say that it’s always like that. It can’t happen when you look at surveys like this, but you’re looking at more likely versus less likely. So, you know, if the average fertility rate, if your chance of getting pregnant in a year unprotected is like 80%, and when you’re stressed, it goes down to 60% or something.

So it doesn’t go down to zero, but it is lower. I’m making up those numbers, so please don’t quote me on that. That is totally me making this up as an example, I haven’t actually looked at the numbers, but so when we’re saying less likely or when we’re saying more likely to shut down, it doesn’t mean that it goes to zero. It just means that, you know, on a population level basis it does go lower. So if you’ve been abused and under stress and you still have baby after baby, that doesn’t mean that your body wasn’t stressed. It just might mean you have really high fertility rates compared to the general population.

Lauren

Yeah. Yes. And something I’m thinking of too is Andre. We work with men who use coercive control abusers. One thing he says is that working with these men, it’s helping them understand a lot of times that what they want is not the pathway they need to go. It’s surrendering because what they really want is a healthy sex life. Okay? I mean, not really, but they have to surrender it to go a different way. Like to get that, they have to be able to build a relationship with her. And where I’m going with this. And the question is, this is so many of these teachings that are going on in our church, it really is a root problem. So it seems that they’re just not addressing issues of the heart with men, and then they’re frustrated because it’s shutting women down and they’re like, well, we don’t want this. And it’s like, well, naturally. Why do you think that is? Why is it so much I’m just not willing to address these issues with men and say, hey, if you’re willing to commit to Christ, you can have a beautiful sex life. If you do these things and are willing to serve and sacrifice and, you know, serve your wife and sacrifice and sex, do all of these things, what are your thoughts? I guess it’s not really a kind of a question, but I just want to hear you unload that a little bit.

Sheila

Yeah. Okay. This might take some time. So John Gottman, who is the world’s premier marriage researcher, has done a lot of work on the socialization of men and women. And basically men and boys have been socialized to ignore their feelings. Right? Like they are not socialized to understand what they’re feeling. Girls are socialized to play. Think about the way that we often play caregiving roles, right? Like we play house. We play while having a baby. My four year old granddaughter was playing with it yesterday. She was sitting on eggs and all of her eggs hatched into little puppies. And then they followed her around all day. Right. Like, this is just how girls tend to play. And we’re socialized in that way. And boy boys are not taught to identify their emotions in the same way the girls are. If boys show emotions like sadness or fear, they’re often that’s shut down and that much more than it is so in girls and so, boys often grow up with very little language for what they are feeling, and they just know something feels icky, but they can’t voice what it is, and so they can’t do anything about it. So you follow this little boy who hasn’t been told how to recognize his feelings or feel his feelings the way a sister has or the girls around him. And then he’s 13 years old and he starts getting into pornography. Right. And what does porn do to him? Well, when he masturbates, he feels better, right? So it gives him this. It gives him this high, right? This momentary high where he forgets about what he’s feeling. And so, you know, next week he goes to try it for the basketball team and he doesn’t make it. And he comes home and he feels he just feels icky. But he can’t really do anything with that feeling. It’s just like this black hole inside of him. So he goes and watches porn, and that black hole gets a little bit smaller. And so as he grows up in his teenage years, he learns that whenever I’m bored, lonely, rejected, angry, if I masturbate, I feel better. And so he learns to emotionally regulate through masturbation and pornography, which is pretty much how the majority of teenage boys right now are being raised.

Sheila

You know what, Becca? The internet can sometimes be a really, really terrible place.

Rebecca

Absolutely.

Sheila

I have a happy place.

Rebecca

We do.

Sheila

That is our patron group on Facebook. It’s the place where I go where you have some encouragement. Where I just need to bounce something off of people to see if I’m crazy or not. And also where I get the best ideas for our podcasts and our blog posts.

Rebecca

Absolutely. And we also have a lot of fun there too. We’ve created a fantastic community where we, you know, share funny memes that we’ve seen throughout the week, and we talk about the terrible takes that we saw on Instagram. And you can go somewhere and know that you don’t have to defend your belief that women should have rights.  So if you are looking for a way to support this podcast, if you love what we do and you want to give us a tangible step up, you can join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month and get access to our Facebook group, where you’ll get to join in the fun and know that you’re supporting a fantastic cause.

Sheila

To join our Patreon! It’s just Patreon.com/baremarriage, or take a look at the link in the podcast notes.

Sheila

Then those teenage boys grow up and they get married, and they’ve never learned how to emotionally regulate. They’ve never learned how to connect. They’ve only learned that ejaculating makes me feel better. And because they can’t name their emotions or connect emotionally or connect intimately, sex becomes a way for them to feel connected without having to do the genuine work of connection. And so they want sex because it reassures them that everything’s okay. It makes them feel better, you know, it makes them feel like, okay, there’s nothing really wrong in our relationship. Everything is fine. So they want sex to sort of check in to make sure that everything’s fine even when it’s not. But it makes them feel better. And then the church is teaching that men need sex. Men need this, whereas women need emotional connection. Men don’t need emotional connection. Women do. Men need sex. And so we need to meet each other’s needs. We both need emotional connection. The problem is that men have been cut off from emotional connection, and they’ve been putting all of the needs for emotional connection on to sex, which sex can’t meet on its own.

Yes, sex cannot provide emotional connection when you aren’t actually emotionally connecting in any other way. And when sex takes on that burden, which it can’t really fulfill, women feel used, women shut down, and then everything gets more desperate because the guy has never learned how to become vulnerable, authentic and open up. And you know, she doesn’t want to feel used.

And then they’re in this really impossible situation. And so much of it stems from the fact that the church is being run currently by men who largely have less problems. Yeah. You know, I often use pornography. And I think that’s pretty fair to say.

Rebecca

So it is very fair to say, yes, we serve many women who are pastors’ wives. This is not an uncommon thing for pastors. I’m not saying every pastor’s abusive. Please don’t hear that. But the top four, vocations of abusers are military, first responders, and number four is pastors. So it is not uncommon for pastors to abuse their wives.

Sheila

And so and then the church, instead of teaching that we need healthy intimacy, they teach that men need sex. And that for men sex is healthy intimacy. And that’s simply untrue. It is simply, categorically, astronomically untrue. Like, yes, when you were in a good marriage, having more sex makes that marriage even better. Yes, absolutely. But sex on its own cannot create a good marriage. And when you are emotionally distant, having sex actually makes the marriage worse for women. And lowers her libido and makes it more likely that marriage will eventually go sexless.

Rebecca

Yes. And while we’re here on this subject, I love to hear your thoughts on a lot of them. I’ve heard you talk about this for duty sex and you’ve talked about it. I’ve heard you mention women going into an actual trauma response and what it really does. And then can you talk more about that?

Sheila

Yeah. So one of the big things we found about the obligation sex message, which is the belief that a wife is obligated to give her husband sex when he wants it, which is very much what JP Miller taught and which, I think it was 39% of evangelical women believed when they got married. So, you know, upwards of 40% of evangelical women are getting married, believing I’m obligated to give him sex when he wants it. Okay. And when you get married, believing that your chance of experiencing a sexual pain disorder increases to almost the same statistical effect as if you had been abused. Because our bodies interpret obligation as trauma. And we’re working on a paper right now. Actually, it’s not out yet. It’s in the submission process back and forth. But, when women believe the obligation sex message or chance of experiencing sexual pain disorders with impossible penetration is actually higher than if you had been abused.

Rebecca

Wow. That gives me chills. Like it’s just wow.

Sheila

Yeah. Because it’s erasing you as a person. It’s saying that you don’t matter. And it means that like if you were abused, then that trauma is in the background. All the obligation sex puts the trauma constant. And that is true even if he, even if the husband is not the one putting pressure on the wife. Like we talked to so many women who said like my husband never knew I believed this. So my libido was shutting down. I was having sexual pain, all of these problems. And you know, when I finally talked to my husband like three years into our marriage and told him, but I mean, I need to give you sex when he wants it. And he’s like, what are you talking about? I have never told you that. Why do you think that? You know, and so many guys were just flabbergasted that their wives believed this, because that’s never something that they wanted. But all of our books tell women that. Right. Power of a Praying Wife, Every Man’s Battle, Love and Respect. You know, you need to minister to him sexually as unto Jesus Christ Love and Respect says, or he will come under satanic attack, right? Like, you know, the 72 hour rule that promoted Power of a Praying Wife, Every Man’s Battle, Act of Marriage like multiple books that if you don’t have sex every three days, you know he will have all of these problems. Yeah. It’s a big issue.

Rebecca

Yes. And it makes me so sad as a whole because women are experiencing this. But then too, at the same time, it’s just showing like a lot of what working with abusers is: what you want in the path to get what you want is not what you think it is. It’s not just demanding. Yes, you want a good relationship with your wife. I applaud you for that. You should want a good relationship with your wife. You should want a good sex life. But the path is different than you think. It is one of denial. So what would you believe as a whole do our churches need to hear based on this Mica Miller case? Where do we need to change things? We will get more into Mica Miller again too because I have more questions. But I guess I’m off on the trail here with you because my mind has just been blown. This is so good.

Sheila

I think the biggest thing we need to change is that sex is not a male entitlement and a female obligation. If we could just teach that her experience with sex matters too, like whenever I hear someone teach about how sex is so important in marriage, you have to have it. You have to do it so many times. Okay, like think about Maslow’s pyramid of needs. Okay. Where the most basic needs are at the bottom of the pyramid, and those need to be met first before you can meet some of these higher needs. So we all need food, shelter, water, you know, air, clothes, etc.. We need safety. We need those things before you get to meet the needs of having fun, finding good friendships.

You know, before you meet the needs of self-actualization, feel a purpose in your life, etc. right? Like you need safety first. Well, sex has such a pyramid and I would say that on the bottom it needs to be pleasurable for both. It certainly needs to not be painful. It needs to feel intimate. So no one’s being used like we need these things first, right. So it’s pleasurable for both, it’s not painful, we’re not feeling used, we both want it, when those things are met then you can talk about how often we have sex or how we spice it up or, you know, whatever. But what’s happening is pastors are giving sermons about how you need to have sex more often, and you need to get more kinky. And Scott Anderson out of Arizona is constantly saying that, like, you know, without ever addressing these basic things about it needs to be pleasurable for her. She needs to feel not used. It needs to be no porn use like you don’t get to talk about frequency and spicing things up until you talk about these basic things. You know, and I think if churches could just understand, that would be a lot further ahead.

Rebecca

Yes. And that’s hard. And I think like the people who do this do it because it gets them what they want. They want the easy road. They don’t have to do the hard work. And so it takes humility to say, hey, that means I’ve got to do the hard work. And as a pastor, that means I’ve got to promote doing this hard work. And I got to do the hard work myself. And I think that’s a hard, hard thing to be willing to do. But when you think about it from the perspective of women and what they’re going through and what you ultimately want in being Christ’s likeness, the path there is different than what you think it is.

Sheila

That’s very much so.

Lauren

Well, I appreciate you going off there and sharing all those things that were not on our planned schedule. It was like, this is just so good. But I have many more questions. Oh, well, a couple more questions, especially when it pertains to Mica Miller and that type of thing. But I have a good question here. I like to ask about this. A lot of women ask for this. What is the line between healthy marital intimacy and sexual coercion? What does genuine consent look like in a marriage?

Sheila

Yeah. So if you have to have sex to prevent something bad from happening, then you’re being coerced. So if you have to have sex or else he’s not going to talk to you for the next four days, or he’s going to be super grumpy with the kids. And so I need to have sex to regulate his mood, so that he’s not mean to the kids or, I get this one a lot in my DMs. Like, I have to have sex or he’s going to embarrass me in public like I have. We have sex before small groups so don’t say anything bad about me in small groups. Anything like that is coercion. So we think of coercion, as you know, someone holding you down and forcing you. But it really isn’t that. It’s the feeling like unless I have sex, something bad is going to happen to me or my kids. And because unless you can freely say no, you can’t freely say yes. And many people just in their marriage cannot freely say no because they’re punished for it.

Rebecca

Yes. I love the way you said that, and I think that was well said. If you can’t say if there is no room to say no, there’s no room to freely say yes. Yeah. And if you’re able to say, I don’t feel well and you’re able to do that without him sulking and complaining or making you feel bad, because sulking and complaining and making you feel bad is a form manipulation as well. What do you think of that? Do you hear that a lot as well? Because I hear a lot of women say that. Like if they don’t, he just kind of acts moody and he acts disappointed and he acts mistreated. And then there’s men that teach that that’s normal. Men do get frustrated. What do you have to say about that?

Sheila

Yeah. I mean, you know what? It’s normal to have sexual frustration. Absolutely. What’s not okay is to take that out on someone else, because that is your problem not hers. And if you can’t be an involved husband, unless you get sex on demand, then that’s a big problem. And we should not be using sex to regulate our emotions. And a lot of men are doing that. They’re using sex to regulate their emotions, you know, so they’ll be emotionally distant from their wife, they’ll know there’s something wrong, there’s some distance, and then they’ll want sex as a way to check in, like if they have sex this proves that our marriage is fine and I don’t have to do any work.nRight. And so then if they don’t have sex, then there’s this distance that they now can’t bridge because they don’t want to bridge that emotional gap.

Lauren

Wow. So what type of work do you encourage men to do?

Sheila

I think so much of this is realizing that her experience matters just as much as yours does. And when we see that sex is not something which is divorced from a relationship, sex is something which should flow from a relationship because a lot of people want sex to look exactly the same no matter what is happening in our marriage. And that’s actually preached right. Like, think about how much pressure is put on parents of young kids to have the kind of sex they had in the honeymoon years. Like, you don’t want to lose that passion. Right. You don’t want to lose that passion. You need to prioritize your sex life. It’s like I need to prioritize my sleep. And there are times in your life where, yeah you need to prioritize your sleep. And the guilt that is put on people, you know, they feel like, well, we’ve lost the passion now because we have, six month old and, two year old and a four year old, and now we have no passion. It’s like, no, you’re just simply in the throes of parenting.And if you were both in the throes of parenting together, you would both be too exhausted for sex. You know, too often, right? Yes. And so I think just understanding that our relationship is the basis for everything, sex is not the basis for everything. And sex is not the way that I am, that I should be emotionally regulating myself. Sex is not something that I am owed. Sex should be something that flows naturally out of how we treat each other. And, just getting that idea back is really big.

Lauren

Yes. Well I have two questions remaining I’m going to ask. And this one I think it’s going to really get to and that is for women watching today. And that’s what you would say to her when teaching such as submission authority, forgiveness , and keeping yourself sexually satisfied have made it harder for her to recognize what is not healthy for her. What would you say to her?

Sheila

Yeah, I mean, it just has, like, you’re not crazy. Like you are not crazy when you read the evangelical bestselling books on marriage and sex. And I have, what they are teaching are rape myths. They are teaching that men matter more than women. And they are systematically teaching you not to recognize abuse because they’ll have a disclaimer that abuse is bad, but then they’ll have multiple anecdotes throughout the book, which are obviously abusive and they won’t name them as such.

And so you read this thing and you recognize yourself in it, but you say, well, obviously I’m not being abused because they’re not saying that’s abuse. And so stop reading. Stop reading a lot of evangelical bestsellers. Honestly, take a look. Take it here. Take a look at our book The Great Sex Rescue because it does show what sex is supposed to be like. And our more recent book, The Marriage You Want, helps people recognize when they’re being abused and what abuse can look like in a marriage.  I think that among Christian women, we have been taught that when we have a problem in our marriage or in any relationship, the answer comes by praying more, submitting to God more, letting go of my expectations and reading more books. Okay. And maybe the answer doesn’t come from any of those things. Maybe the answer comes from talking to people who understand what abuse is, reading books outside of the normal realm. Getting yourself some licensed counseling or some help that understands what abuse is or that can help you even if you’re not being abused like some people are not in abusive relationships necessarily, but they’re just married to a really emotionally immature guy. You know, and just understanding how boundaries work, how, you know, what a normal relationship is supposed to look like. And how, how we’re allowed to trust our gut when something isn’t right.

Lauren

Yes, yes. I say that’s the biggest thing I heard you say is trust your gut. Like women that come to us are often one. Things are warning signs. I would say, if you’re watching this and you’re like, well, maybe I’m an abuser. I’m not sure what I think is they feel a persistent confusion. They feel like inside they want to die because their body is telling the truth of what’s really happening. And they don’t know how to make sense of what their body is saying. The anxiety, the fear of their husband, the fear of upsetting him because the church is reinforcing these teachings in so many ways. But you’re so confused and you know something’s not right. So that is so right is listening. Something feels wrong. It probably is wrong.

Sheila

And you know what? Even if the problem is with you, like let’s say let’s say that you’re not being abused, let’s say that you are just simply crazy. Okay, well, that’s still something to look into. So listen to your gut. It’s like if your gut is telling you something like, like the answer isn’t just to turn off my emotions. The answer is, well, let’s explore them and see what they’re actually telling us.

Yes, there’s no harm in that. It’s like seek out the truth, you know, seek out the truth of what you’re what you’re feeling.

Lauren

Yes. And I love your books. I’m glad you mentioned them. The Great Sex Rescue. I recommend that a lot. It’s really helpful for a lot of women to read that and to be like, wow, what I experienced was not God’s heart for me. And it just, you know, I know brings a lot of healing to a lot of women.

And so and then I want to close out with this question too. And that is, what should the churches actually be teaching young people and married couples about sex, consent, mutuality and Christlike love? I know we covered that in a lot of ways, but is there anything else you would add to that?

Sheila

Other than all of the things that we talked about, obligation and consent, if I can take a step backwards, I think part of the problem with the church’s approach to sex is that it starts off from a very male lens, like, you know, we tell people don’t have sex and see a marriage, right? And so that gives the impression that it is intercourse that is the most important thing. Right? Because that’s the one thing that is forbidden. And then you argue, well, is this forbidden? Is that forbidden? And we get into all these conversations about like, where’s the line? But basically the whole idea is intercourse is the thing that’s forbidden. So then once we’re married, we’re supposed to have intercourse. And so what often happens is couples rush to intercourse on their wedding night. Where they are absolutely exhausted. It’s been the longest day of their life. They haven’t slept for a week. And when we asked women about their wedding night, the most common word that we heard was bewildering. That’s not a good word. Right. Like that’s not what we want. But that was the most common word that kept coming up was it was just, it was bewildering. I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t aroused at all. But we’ve been told our whole lives that sex is this amazing thing, right. So then when it doesn’t work for her, the assumption often is, well, she must just be broken. And we asked both men and women – Does he do enough foreplay? Okay. And, when she frequently reaches orgasm, like 94% of men say yes, I do so to 88% of women. But when she doesn’t reach orgasm, 72% of men still say that they do enough foreplay, and so do 52% of women. So we’re still giving men full marks even when she isn’t reaching orgasm. And the answer is because we think he is sexual and she isn’t. She’s just broken and sex isn’t meant for her. So I think one of the bigger things, if we could just take a step back and say that her pleasure matters to and her experience matters just as much, and his experience is easier to attain. And when you start marriage, prioritizing him, his experience, which is what we tend to do, it’s very easy for her to get lost in the shuffle and for her to start feeling like I am. There’s something wrong with my body. So if we could start from the get go by saying that she matters and we shouldn’t be doing anything that is not giving her as much pleasure as him. Like from the get go, I think that we would have a lot healthier marriages.

Lauren

Yes, I appreciate you saying that. And if people are watching, do you want to get in touch with you? What’s the best way they can find you?

Sheila

Yeah. So just go to baremarriage.com. All our social media is there. I’m pretty active on Facebook and Instagram. I have a big YouTube channel. My YouTube channel is Sheila Gregoire. So I’m either Bare Marriage or Sheila Gregoire, but yeah, all over and yeah, their marriage podcast every Thursday.

Lauren

So awesome. And if you’re watching this today too and you’re like, oh, I’m not sure if I’m in an abusive marriage or not. We offer free resources at Called to Peace Ministries. I’m going to leave a link to that. You can check on our website and you can do a free consultation with an advocate that will help you understand what’s happening in your marriage. And so, yeah, I’m sorry, I have one more question. I just thought of something. What do you hope that the world walks away with after watching, Mica Miller story? What do you wish they would open their eyes and see?

Sheila

I really hope that a lot of pastors and authors and influencers and heads of organizations and evangelicalism finally see that the stuff that we’ve been yelling about for years really is in the water. It is out there everywhere. This really is being taught because people have been accusing us of blowing things out of proportion and taking things out of context and oh, it’s not really that bad.

But no, this is the natural outgrowth of what is happening. Like, let me give you one quote from the Every Man’s Battle series. They wrote, we know of husbands who have been coercing their wives into sex 3 or 4 times a day. That is usually a sign of sexual addiction. If your husband is demanding sex more than once a day, that’s bad. So basically, they’re admitting that 3 or 4 times a day is wrong, which I guess we should be grateful for, but it’s okay if they demand it once a day. So there’s a quota for how often you coerce your wife into sex. I guess as long as you’re only doing it once a day, that’s okay is basically what they were saying. And that’s just so emblematic in our resources. Like even look at our marriage books. Look at the advice that’s given for the postpartum period. Is it about taking care of your wife? No, no, it’s about making sure that he gets to ejaculate in some other way. You know, and maybe this documentary will help pastors and authors and important people in evangelicalism see that something has gone seriously wrong, because JP Miller didn’t get this out of nowhere. And the fact that so many people in the congregation just took it hook, line and sinker. Yeah, yeah, it’s very problematic.

Lauren

Wow. Thank you for saying that. I appreciate you and I appreciate all that you’re doing. So keep up the good work, celebrate you and connect with her. I highly recommend her books. I found them very helpful and healing in my own life and so check her out on her website. So thank you so much Sheila for joining us today. We appreciate your time. Thanks. All right. I’ll see you soon. Bye.

Sheila

I hope you enjoyed that interview. Keith and I actually did an interview on a Friday roundup about the Mica Miller thing as well. And so I will link to that in the podcast notes. If you don’t follow us on YouTube, please check us out on YouTube and subscribe because we’ve got some extra material that goes up on YouTube, especially on Fridays, that you really don’t see anywhere else.

So that’s us speaking with no editing, just at the top of our heads about whatever subject seems to be super relevant that Friday. Often it’s something that’s happened during that week on social media or reactions to an article I wrote, or just something like this Mica Miller documentary, which came kind of out of nowhere and took everyone by surprise at how, culture form that was for the evangelical church. So I’ll put a link to that, Friday roundup in the podcast notes, but subscribe to YouTube so that you don’t miss anything. And thank you so much for listening to our podcast. Remember that our new book, Fawn is ready for preorder. It’s not coming out till March. And don’t worry, we will have a launch team and we will have preorder bonuses available in January.

But the book is called Fawn – How a Trauma Response Became Biblical Womanhood and How Women Can Reclaim their Agency. And it’s awesome. I think it’s going to connect the dots for so many people. And I feel like so many of us in this space right now are all tackling the same thing, but from different angles. And together we’re showing the complete picture of what’s going on. And yeah, I think things are going to change in this generation. So preorder that book. It helps us immensely. It helps, it helps bookstores understand how much demand there is so they order more. It helps the first print run be larger. Like all, all kinds of great things happen. The media tends to do interviews or reviews, books that are higher up on the list on the rankings. So the more that you order, the more you get, the buzz out about the book, the more likely that other people are to carry it too, so it helps us immensely. Links in the podcast notes and thank you. We’ll see you again next week on the Bare Marriage Podcast. Bye Bye

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