Seven summers ago I told the truth about lust for the first time.
I broke with the program.
Up until then, my main focus on the blog had been how to have a good marriage and how to have a good sex life. But in June of 2017, I wrote a week on the blog about the problems with the whole “every man’s battle” way of approaching lust.
I didn’t really talk about the book series at all, or even mention the authors’ names. I didn’t review them in any way. I just wrote about lust and how we could start talking about it in a healthy way.
It was a five part series, and it looked like this:
- Why “men are visual” doesn’t mean that men will lust
- Why Every Man’s Battle backfires
- 12 Ways to Help Men Overcome Lust
- A Better Way to Talk about Men’s Sexual Needs
- Why “Don’t Be a Stumbling Block” is a Really Bad Modesty Message
(Incidentally, post #5 is one I still share at least twice a week somewhere).
Overall, women loved it, and most men really agreed with it.
The big challenge was the behind-the-scenes critiques about my take on lust
In the summer of 2017 I was in a relatively good place, work wise. I was speaking a lot. I had good friends who were high up in the Christian marriage world. My blog was very popular, and getting millions of hits a month.
I was making a fair amount of money off of advertising and was able to start hiring people to work for me (Rebecca had come on board about two months prior.)
(also, advertising money has since dried up because I couldn’t ensure that “bad” ads didn’t make it on the site! So I appreciate my patrons who help us do what we do!)
But I also knew that some things needed to be said that weren’t being widely said. So I decided to tackle it.
Over the course of that week I had a lot of behind-the-scenes conversations from people concerned with what I was writing, specifically an author I was friends with, and someone who organized Christian speaking events. I had been friends with the latter for 12 years, and with the former for about three. Both were male.
And both were very worried that I was causing shame and giving the wrong message.
To say that I agonized over this would be an understatement.
I didn’t sleep much that week. I really, really didn’t want this author not to like me; I respected him so much. I felt like much of my future work depended on both of them. But I also really, really wanted to speak the truth.
They reached out with concern in both phone calls and emails, and I got in a long email conversation with the author. I ended up sending them the draft of the articles that were coming later that week to assure them that I was not trying to cause shame.
Here’s how the author replied (some content has been removed for identifying reasons):
You’re writing as a prophet and I thank God you’re raising an important issue…
We need prophets. But we also need healers. And I believe marriages need more empathy, not less (from both sides). I’m concerned that the way this prophetic word is launched and applied, it will result in less empathy and even antipathy (which you already see in the comments from yesterday).
The first part of this blog (for Friday–the one you sent me) shows that empathy, but then the way the guy behaves in bed in the second part reads to me like he’s an entirely different guy. His problem isn’t lust. It’s an appalling selfishness. Nobody could be anything but disgusted with a guy who treats his wife like that. So if this is the post to show empathy, I don’t think it works out that way.
Here’s what I’d suggest: before you post this on Friday, take 15 minutes and skim Shaunti Feldhahn’s “For Women Only.” She’s done tons of research, she gets guys, and I think she points out the problem as well as pointing the way to a grace-based solution.
And now I’d like to post my response.
Looking back, I’m proud of seven-years-ago me.
This is the first time I ever stood up for the things I write about now. It was the first time I ever pushed back on basically anyone high up in the Christian world. And it amazes me how much I knew about the themes I’d eventually uncover in our research, even then!
I know that you are really concerned right now for the men who are struggling hard with lust and don’t feel like they’re winning the battle. I know that you don’t want them to feel shame, and that it’s coming from a real place of empathy.
I want to explain more what’s on my heart and why I’m writing this series this week, because a lot of prayer and thought did go into it…
It started about a month ago when I made an off-hand comment on Facebook when I was angry about something someone had said to one of my daughters about dress codes. It wasn’t even a long or well-thought out post; but it went huge. Almost 100,000 reach huge…
Then I was asked to be on Moody’s Up for Debate, out of the blue, to talk about modesty. From that I had so many women writing in to me reiterating the shame that they have felt growing up in church simply at how their bodies appeared.
Then I posted something else on Facebook last week about modesty—and it blew up like nothing else has lately. Hundreds of shares and tons more emails, saying the same thing. “I’m tired of being told that my husband’s lust is just my burden in life to deal with.”
So I started praying about this. God opened this door. I wasn’t planning on writing it. But things kept happening pushing me in this direction.
I think this is what is happening.
Sex-starved marriages are a HUGE problem in Christian marriages.
Absolutely. And the response by pastors and authors has been to think, “if women just understood what men go through, then we could solve a lot of these problems. After all, women love their husbands. So if they really knew their husbands’ hearts, then they would have more sex.”
So they explain that when women don’t have sex, it makes men’s struggles to remain pure so much harder. It makes it really difficult to withstand lust.
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Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. So perhaps the problem is to say it in a slightly different way? After all, women do love their husbands, so if they understood how bad the struggle was, wouldn’t they want to make it easier on them?
But still it doesn’t work.
The idea is that the solution to sex starved marriages is to explain men’s struggles with lust when they don’t get enough sex.
But I contend that that is not the solution to sex-starved marriages; that is actually a large cause of them.
Many of the problems with women not wanting sex stem from how they see sex. And much of the way they see sex is in negative terms, because that is how they have been raised in the church. They have been told again and again that men will lust; that their bodies are inherently evil; that their husbands will not be able to remain mentally faithful to them, even if they try.
They have been told that Christian men will objectify them. They have been told that their husbands can never truly cherish them the way they need to be cherished.
And so they check out of sex. They have a hard time seeing it as something exciting or intimate.
The problem is not that women don’t understand men; the problem is that too many of them actually do.
Here, for instance, is just one comment that was left this morning (though there were dozens along the same lines yesterday):
“I know I’m a blunt conversationalist and I’m really, really not trying to offend or shame anyone, but that whole book philosophy had a terrible effect on me when we were trying to glean some usefulness from it in our marriage. Being told by your beloved husband that you need to have sex with him because he was being tempted to use porn or do whatever else, is icky. Like, THE BIGGEST turnoff there could be for me. It’s like “I’m an alcoholic and I really want a bourbon, but c’mere and you can be my lame substitute glass of water.” Um, let me go poke myself with a stick instead.”
I know that this is not your message. But the underlying message in so much of the Christian church today is that lust is inevitable; that women cause it; and that men can’t really cherish a woman. We are told that we were created to serve our husbands sexually (I believe Mark Driscoll’s phrase was “penis homes”). We feel like God objectifies us, too.
I think you’re afraid that I don’t understand how much men really struggle….
But I think women do understand men’s struggle with lust.
We read it in books, hear it from pastors, and hear it on radio shows. It’s everywhere. What I don’t think is understood is how women experience this. I know that you are concerned for the men reading my blog, and for the husbands of the women reading the blog. I would just ask, though, that you take a step back and listen to the women leaving comments on the blog and in Facebook, and even on your own blog about this issue…
The truth is that when I speak on this, I strike a nerve. Keith says that it’s because the “Christian ivory tower” isn’t saying this stuff, but the rank and file know it and feel it instinctively. And they want someone to give voice to it.
We have two choices when it comes to how we talk about sex. We can give primarily a message that focuses on obligation, or we can give a message that focuses on God’s promises, on passion, and on intimacy. You see, the real tragedy in all of this is not just that women feel objectified or that men feel in an impossible situation; it’s that it’s all so very needless. There is a better way to talk about sex, and that’s what I try to do all the time on the blog, and that’s what I’m leading up to here: Let’s talk about passion. Let’s talk about intimacy. Let’s talk about how we were created for more.
…
That is the message that resonates, and it does so without causing shame to anyone. That is what I believe we need to start saying, much more loudly than we say anything else. We need to point back to the heart of God, which is about passion and intimacy, and not towards obligation, guilt, or shame.
My main concern this week is to write a series of posts that frees women from the shame that they’ve been led to feel. We won’t have marriages that thrive in and out of the bedroom until we can undo the damage that this message has done. And quite frankly, I am feeling “turn-the-money-changers’-tables-over”-angry at what these women (and men) have been led to believe. Perhaps my anger is coming out too much, but honestly, I think women’s anger needs a place to find rest. And women (and men) are rightly angry at the lies that they’ve been led to believe.
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There is so much anger and hurt out there.
The men’s anger, though, has places to go and get healed—or at least get acknowledged. Lots of books (including some by women), PromiseKeeper conferences, Celebrate Recovery, big name speakers and pastors. The women’s anger has no place to go, except maybe those obscure and extreme blogs that label you a misogynist. There is no healthy, mainstream Christian evangelical place where women are clearly being told, “your hurt and shame matter, and it was wrong for you to be told this.” Today, when women say that they’re hurt and angry, they’re told that they just need to understand men’s struggles, too. But until women’s anger and hurt are acknowledged and accepted, we aren’t going to be able to grow good marriages.
Interestingly, I didn’t grow up with this shame message. But my daughters did. Things are getting worse, not better.
Quite frankly, the church needs to repent on the shame message it has given women, and on how it has hurt women’s sexuality.
But I don’t see the church as a whole doing this. And that’s why there is so much desperation for that message from people online. I think if you were to ask the women who read your blog, for instance, how many of them have felt shame about their bodies from the messages given to them in Christian circles, you would be overwhelmed and heartbroken by the response.
I know you want me to have more empathy for men, and I think over the years on the blog I have had that, which is why I have such a large percentage of male readers. But I think in this area we really, really need to have empathy for women.
…
So I do appreciate the concern and the reminder not to sound like I’m angry at men. Until we tear down the shame-filled message, we can’t get to the positive one that women especially need to hear if they’re going to experience real freedom in marriage. And I hope I can get that done well this week!
That may sound par for the course for me now.
But it was not then.
I was sure that it was going to end my relationship with him (and in many ways, it was the beginning of the end. We never did agree on how to talk about lust or sex or about what the data says).
Yet, looking back, I am so happy to see how far we’ve come.
The original week of posts that I wrote is actually rather tame compared to what we’re able to say now.
I think much has changed in how we address lust:
- We did our research project, surveying 20,000 women for The Great Sex Rescue and definitively showed that the every man’s battle message hurts women
- We did our research project into men for our book The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex and found that this message hurts men too
- The #metoo and #churchtoo movements have given women a voice
- More and more women are speaking out about this, so that men aren’t the main voices being heard anymore
- The conversation has genuinely changed since the Great Sex Rescue came out.
And I’m grateful.
I’m also grateful that I’ve changed. We’re not chasing traffic and SEO on the blog like we were before; we’re genuinely trying to be deliberate about healthy, evidence-based, and biblical content rather than regurgitating what the majority just wants to hear.
And we’ve found courage.
That author called me a prophet but was worried I wasn’t a healer.
I hope, over the years, I’ve proven I can be both.
What do you think? Has the conversation changed in the last seven years? What would you have said to him? Let’s talk in the comments!
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Thanks. The way we grew up, when lust or sexual sin came up, women were responsible. When modesty came up, women were responsible. And yet all the sympathy and understanding were reserved for men. Only for men. Women must be understanding and sacrificial but when it comes to lust and modesty, there’s no requirement for men to be understanding or sacrificial. All the empathy was for men. Thanks for giving women a place and a voice to talk about the absurd double standards and how they affected us and our marriages.
Hey there Shiela. Boy is there a-lot to unpack in this one. I am going to have to re-read that one. What came up for me when I read this is something I said to you here in the comments probably about 7 years ago. It went something along the lines of this: watch this entire talk about sex end up being the fact that sex doesnt matter. Whoah Phil did you just say that? Look – the details of my sex life are none of anyones business. However what I have learned these past 9 years from hanging out here is that the problems with sex aren’t really about sex. The problems with sex are all about our problems. Meaning solve your problems and your sex life will repair itself and or you will then have the ability to repair your sex life. My sponsor in my 12 step program used to tell me sex doesn’t matter. My response was always – well that’s for you! The language he was using is truly what confused me. What he really meant to say was your relationship with your wife is what matters. Fix THIS! And you can fix the rest. Anyway I guess I have some more reading and consideration to do with this information. Also – I do love the more! Do you remember all the times we would uncover something here and I would say – THERE IS MORE!? There is LOL. Hang tight.
“The problems with sex are all about our problems. Meaning solve your problems and your sex life will repair itself and or you will then have the ability to repair your sex life.”
This is so true.
‘How you do sex is how you do life’, as Dr Corey Allan would say (possibly quoting Prof Schnarch though)
Did those people that blame women for men lusting after them just forget about what Jesus said about lust? That sin is the sinners’s fault and men can avoid being creeps.
The idea that Shaunti Feldhahn “gets guys” is tragic. Shaunti Feldhahn writes about men as if they are toddlers in adult bodies. What a demeaning view of men.
The message is clear in the Evangelical world, men should never be inconvenienced. And they especially shouldn’t be inconvenienced for the sake of a woman. So blame the woman for everything and problem solved.
As far as I am concerned, you are both a prophet and a healer. If you weren’t you would have kept your ad revenue and thrown women under the bus instead.
“Men should never be inconvenienced.” And unfortunately, if they have to allow themselves to be portrayed as big toddlers in order to get their way and not be inconvenienced, many are perfectly happy to be so. (But just don’t say the “toddler” part out loud!)
Yep. And to think that this author would agree with her take is so frightening.
I love how he thought there was such a huge difference between a guy having a lust problem and being selfish in bed. As though lust weren’t basically just selfishness expressed sexually. As though it was so shocking that someone who was taught his wife’s sexuality basically exists to be his sin management “methadone” might not treat his wife well sexually.
And it’s really, um, interesting how he couches the idea that women are lust management tools for men in terms of empathy, of all things. As though the only way men will get “enough” is if women are systemically emotionally manipulated into having pity sex with them. As the commenter you quoted said, what a massive turnoff.
It really did surprise me that he just couldn’t (or wouldn’t) get it!
If the only way that women can be convinced to have sex with men is to make them pity … that’s a pitiful commentary on the desirability of those men.
Empathy is the currency, the substance of choice, of a malignant narcissist. It’s the fertile field where they nurture their food. You. You’re their food.
Isn’t it insane how this “Christian teaching” arrives in an utterly unchristlike place?
The kicker is that real empathy would mean recognizing when men are trapped in rigid scripts of masculinity that leave them lonely and emotionally impoverished. It would mean acknowledging how teachings painting male sexuality as inherently dangerous and objectifying harm boys and men too. And then, you know, STOPPING THE CYCLE of entitlement and obligation that destroys the very intimacy men (and women) want!
Exactly!
Sheila, I cannot begin to express my gratitude for the HEALING that you have brought to me and my wife.
Our marriage was falling apart when we sought counsel from one of our leaders in the mission organization that we were in. When I told him that we hadn’t had sex for over six months he told me that my duty was to go and tell my wife that we were in sin for abstaining from each other and that we should immediately have sex. I turned off the phone in a daze. Inside I knew that something was profoundly wrong, but the mentality that sex was owed to me was all that I had been taught. My wife heard the advice and since it was all she knew too she just assumed that it was true that God didn’t care a bit about her and had doomed her to a miserable existence.
In despair I got on google (probably not the wisest!) and found your blog posts. It immediately resonated with me, and when I read the article on modesty to my wife it resonated so much with her; she confirmed everything about purity culture, modesty and the trauma she had experienced from it.
As a man I had been taught so many terrible, degrading and awful things about my own sexuality. I now know that I’m not a sex-craving insatiable monster who is doomed to struggle intensely with “every man’s battle” for the rest of my life. I now know that objectifying women was always the problem, even in the “solution” offered by these books; and today I am free to be able to SEE my fellow co-bearers of the image of God as WORTHY OF BEING SEEN. Your insistence in telling the truth has transformed our lives. Thank you.
Oh, wow! Thank you so much for that. That is so encouraging!
Thank you for sharing, Daniel. I am so sorry for the way that this garbage affected you as well, and so glad you have found some freedom! Carry on!
Thank you Lisa! It has been quite a journey, I felt the need to share! Thank you for the encouragement
To be honest, the thing that strikes me in the conversation is not the messaging about lust (as atrocious as that is), but the response to women’s anger. This is an awful and frustrating issue for us.
You will have noticed that when a woman becomes angry over an issue that is unjust and has hurt/harmed her, the manosphere suddenly comes down with all its weight: “You know I can’t talk to you when you’re angry, you’re too loud, you’re too scary, you’re too overreactive, you’re too judgmental, you’re scaring the kids/the dog/the birds outside the window, you’re being unreasonable, you’re troubling your household, blah blah blah, and on and on and on…” You are so right, women’s anger has no place to go! Even other women jump on you if you become angry, because you “need to show grace,” or some such drivel. (These women might credibly be accused of carrying water for the patriarchy.)
I think that the concept of lust needs to be addressed and defined properly, and treated like the deviation that it is.
But I also am more than over the way women are treated when they speak up and voice their anger and frustration over how they are treated in their own homes and in society at large, and I will say loud and clear, women’s strong emotions need to be normalized. If we are treated unjustly, it should be normal to be angry. If our spouses treat us as “penis homes,” (extremely gross, Mark Driscoll!), then it should be normal to be hurt, angry, and scared. If our children’s needs are overwhelming us and their dads aren’t doing anything to lighten the load, it should be normal to be frustrated, heart-broken, and angry. If we express our frustration with the way we are treated, we should not be yelled at by our pastors to stop “casting judgment all around.” If we are frustrated with the fact that we are having the same circular conversations we’ve been having for 28 years, the guys need to listen and change the script, not tell us we are too angry and we need to calm down. And if we want to start a ladies’ group in which we women can vent about the things that bother us, and seek wisdom and support as we navigate these issues, we should not be told to “be careful lest it just become an anger session.”
In short, much of what we deal with in our daily lives would be so much less of a problem if our anger were validated and listened to instead of automatically shut out. Women’s anger counts. It is real, it is valid, and the world needs to pay attention to it.
This is beautiful! You have written what’s been on my heart for decades, from childhood to growing up to marriage and parenting. I just want to be heard and validated, but when I am constantly being shut down and told that I’m overreacting and I just need to calm down, it just adds fuel to the fire because they aren’t even trying to hear what’s being said. Men raise their voices all the time and it’s no big deal I raise my voice because I have already said it in a calm voice multiple times and finally they hear me and then rebuke me for being disrespectful without even acknowledging their own disrespect for not listening earlier when I was trying to talk.
The double standard is SO. FREAKING. INFURIATING!!!
Thank you for this post, Sheila. Very brave of you to speak up and stand for truth, despite the backlash from those you really admired. You are an inspiration for those of us trying to change the conversation!
I wish I had read the 2017 posts before. While a bit unrelated, I sometimes wonder how the church got to this point. It looks like the church has stumbled quite far down a muddy, warped path. In the US, particularly now we talk so much about things in terms of existential threats. Growing up in the 1990s I heard that society is crumbing, secular culture was hypersexual, teenage pregnancy and STDs were growing, and it seemed like I was either with what the bible (church) told me or yield to self destruction. There was no in-between. Politics particularly take on this view these days when even the smallest issues seem to lead to a potential nuclear war! This way of thinking is incredibly destructive. I remember becoming friends with non-Christians after college and realizing they were not all evil or out to harm me, in fact most were kind to me. Eventually due to being friends with them, I saw my own legalistic church roots that sadly portrayed a poor version of who Christ is; roots that also made me miserable and a prisoner to a lot of junk theology. Maybe it’s time for the church to admit they lost the culture wars. Were they ever really about Christ?
Hello, I have been listening, following, and reading all things marriage for a little over a year now. I resonate so much with the shame and pain these messages cause. These messages have been very traumatic in my life, my physical body, and my marriage. I don’t use the word trauma lightly either, or because it’s popular. I am working through this with my husband and therapist, but I wonder if there are any resources on letting go of this? Do the effects of these teachings ever go away? I was forced into deconstruction after I had to resign from a position under spiritually abusive leaders. It’s been about a year and a half, and the more I realize and uncover, the worse I feel. It was actually easier to do what I was told, than to try and sort through all this while being condemned for not feeling safe in church right now. Like you often say, deconstruction is not sexy! It’s incredibly hard! I understand cognitively that the messages are wrong, but I still feel so much shame and guilt. I listen to so many stories, often through your podcast and other’s, of how people saw the problems, got out, and got better. I’m out and I see, but it feels like these teachings are stuck in me.
It does take a lot of time sometimes! Have you read through The Great Sex Rescue yet?
And I think getting in a healthy community can be so helpful–even with people who have had very little to do with the evangelical church .Going to a church that hasn’t taught this stuff and finds it all crazy (and people can’t believe it when I give some examples) has been freeing. Just knowing that this is only in a corner of the world, and it’s actually possible to live without really running into this stuff.
Bridget Campbell- If it helps, I am years into deconstructing stuff, and while it’s still hard, I would say the pain has been worth it in my case at least. I have a long way to go but I am beginning to see God and Jesus more clearly now.
TGSR lands on a great idea- reframing. Have you talked about that with your counselor yet?
Finding a safe place helped me, too- not just getting out of the bad. I finally found a decently healthy place and I have actually asked questions of the pastors and gotten answers that surprised me- in a good way. A male pastor actually apologized to me for the terrible teachings I received, and he’s been very affirming that it is not of Christ and I was right to feel “off” from them, and that was the Spirit trying to lead me away from the falseness. Honestly having a male pastor apologize to me and get riled up that I and other women were treated this way has helped me greatly.
I am not where I want to be re: heart-beliefs, but I now have hope that I may get there. And I have more hope than I had a year ago, and 2 years ago, and 4 years ago… Praying you find a way through this that brings you joy and hope, where your heart can match your head. The healing process has definitely been non-linear and I experience set-backs, but it has been worth it for me. Hope that encourages.