So–which posts of the year resonated the most?

Which ones made people the angriest? Which ones resonated the most? Which ones just plain had a lot of opinions flying back and forth?

On Monday I ran a post with the posts that I wrote in 2020 that got the most traffic. But sometimes that traffic is from Google, and it’s not necessarily the top posts in this community.

So I thought I’d take a look at the number of comments and use that as a measure instead. You’ll notice some overlap with a few of these posts, but many are new. And if I think back to 2020, these are the posts the tend to stick out in my mind, too! So here we go:

Tied for Ninth (which is why there’s no #10!)

From March:

Have We Turned Sex into a Male Entitlement?

​”When we talk about sex as something that women must give men with no caveats, we treat men’s need for sex as a bigger need than anything else.” This heartbreaking comment about a woman whose husband wanted sex even though she had postpartum healing still to do generated a lot of comments.

“When we make sex into an entitlement, we change the very nature of it.” A lot of the thinking in this post made it into The Great Sex Rescue as well!

Tied for #9

From March:

Can You Divorce for Abuse?

This year, Wayne Grudem, a big-name theologian who has always said that you cannot divorce for abuse, changed his mind (although he says you still need the permission of the elders of your church–major problem). But why is it that we decided that adultery was worse than abuse anyway? Whenever I post anything that says that divorce may be permitted in some circumstances, people step in and say God wants you to stay no matter what. I find that very problematic. 

#8

From May:

Are Men Really from Mars and Women from Venus?

One of my husband’s posts made the most commented list! Keith will be happy. Maybe instead of focusing on being a “godly husband” or a “godly wife”, we should just aim to be godly! Plus what science actually tells us about gender differences.

Tied for #6

From July:

On Debi Pearl, Created to Be His Helpmeet, and an Unbiblical View of Submission

This one made our top 10 overall as well because Google likes it (which is awesome, because I want people to find this post if they’re thinking of reading this terrible book!).

Usually when I write about this book, though, its supporters come out in droves and defend it. Thankfully they didn’t as much this time around. I think the tide is turning!

Tied for #6

From April:

On Marital Rape, Consent, and the Obligation Sex Message

The only podcast to make our list (and it also makes tomorrow’s list on the top podcasts of the year!), this one was honestly one of the most important things we’ve said, in my opinion. The way the evangelical church talks about sex sets us up for marital rape, and ignores her needs. If she can’t truly say no, then she can’t truly say yes either.

#5

From June:

On Emotional Labor and Mental Load: Let’s Talk Fair Play!

This one made our top 10 overall posts as well, and I’m also glad it generated so many comments. Many people tell me that of all the things I write, this is the series that changed their marriage the most. If you don’t know the concept of “mental load“, you need to read it!

#4

From August:

Can We Please Stop Talking about Disciplining Babies?

Rebecca’s post made the list here! With lots of pictures of my adorable grandson Alex, Rebecca pleads with us to stop seeing Alex as someone whose spirit needs breaking. Far too many “Christian” books advocate spanking babies. It needs to stop.

This should no longer even be a subject for debate. It just needs to STOP. (And yet debate in the comments we did! Spanking babies should never be a thing).

#3

From November:

What Happens when Comments are Hijacked by People Who Want to Talk about Themselves?

So here’s a highly commented post–on comments. Seriously, the subject of this post was what should I do when the comments section gets hijacked by people with a different agenda? What if the post is about something women are really suffering from, but a man keeps trying to talk about his issues instead? I really appreciated the feedback from people in this post, and it finally did inspire me to ban someone that I’d been struggling with for a while. But I do love commenters as a whole!

#2

From May:

How Did Having to Be the Sexual Gatekeeper Affect You?

This one generated far more comments than we imagined–and we were grateful, because this is one of the big teachings that we measured in our book The Great Sex Rescue. We found that girls who believed that boys would push their sexual boundaries, and they had to be the gatekeepers, had worse sex lives when they got married because “gatekeeping” was really difficult to turn off. After this post we ended up talking about how arousal is the missing piece for many women when it comes to orgasm, and it really informed much of the curriculum for The Orgasm Course, too! We found the comments here so helpful to further along our thinking as we’ve been writing our books and courses.

#1

From January:

An Open Letter to Focus on the Family on Love & Respect and Emerson Eggerichs

Hardly surprising, but this open letter that launched our year also was our top commented post of the year! So many of you shared your stories of how Love & Respect negatively affected your marriage. Please know that Focus on the Family did see the comments-even if they never really replied to me directly. This post was read a TON in Colorado Springs, where Focus on the Family is located. I can see that from my Google analytics. They were watching, and they were warned, and still they do nothing, to their everlasting shame.

If you want to add your comments to the letter, please do. 

And then I’d like to throw in a few more honorable mentions, which also generated lots of comments, and which I think are important posts!

Honorable Mention #1

From March:

Is “Bouncing Your Eyes” So You Don’t Lust Respectful to Women?

Every Man’s Battle tells men that the way to stop lusting is to bounce your eyes from women. But this is not respectful. This still sees women the same way that porn does–as simply body parts. How about we teach men to respect women and truly SEE them instead? 

Honorable Mention #2

From November:

Are We Using God Language to Enable Emotional Immaturity?

My emotional maturity series didn’t make the top comments posts, but I thought this one should be added to our list here. I was talking about how people often excuse really bad decisions by saying “God told me…” And so many of you shared your own stories in the comments! I think they’re worth reading, as a warning that we need to not use the Lord’s name in vain (which is really what this is).

Those are the posts that generated the most comments this year!

Thank you so much for being part of the blogging community. I really appreciate all of your comments. They help me know that I’m not just writing out into the abyss, and people are actually reading.

And if you’ve never commented before, don’t be afraid to start, even if it’s just to say, “I agree!” Those comments are nice to read, too. And the more comments there are, the more that people know that others are listening, too.

If you’re reading this post via our daily emails, just click through on the title of the post, and you’ll end up on the blog and you can comment!

And if you’re NOT reading this by email, but you’d like to, you can sign up right here! Choose to get either the Friday roundup email or the daily emails!

And thanks again for being part of my community in 2020. In many ways, you guys have filled a lot of the void I’ve had from not seeing people in person at church this year, and you mean a lot to me.

Tomorrow I’m running my favourite podcasts of the year. Do you have any that stand out to you that you want me to include?