The strangest thing about watching Netflix’s Death of a Pastor’s Wife is how familiar it all feels. Our family has been attending an Anglican Church since COVID ended. We haven’t been in a typical evangelical church for over 7 years. We left because of trauma and...
Evangelicalism has huge double standards of sexual expectations in marriage. One of the things we tried to drive home in The Marriage You Want is that the biggest killer of marriage is entitlement. When you think you're owed something from your spouse without you...
In Christian marriage advice, sex is supposed to be deeply intimate--until it's not. Here's what happens: Before marriage, Christians are told that sex is deeply intimate. That it bonds you together. That as you get closer and love each other more, you're going to...
It's moving day for me! We're leaving our house of 19 years and heading to our new place! So I wanted to share something different today. So many people send me their stories (and I'm so touched and honoured!), and this woman's really resonated with me because I know...
Social media comments often give a sobering insight into what men are thinking. And today I'd like to show you what a thematic analysis of social media comments would look like! As you may know, we're quite busy behind the scenes drafting academic papers, some in...
You shouldn't prioritize sex in your marriage. That's how we open chapter four of our new book The Marriage You Want. Instead, we argue, you should prioritize the ingredients of great sex. I'm going to talking about this further in a FREE webinar with Jay Stringer...
Why are so many evangelical authors trying to convince married women not to have sexual boundaries? In episode 260 of the Bare Marriage podcast, that dropped last week, Rebecca and I had one of my favourite convos so far, when we looked at how too many evangelical...
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...
Every Friday, around 42,000 people receive our weekly email, linking to all of this week’s posts and podcasts, with a summary, so people can make sure they don’t miss anything they’re interested in. The email is written by Rebecca–not me. And these are often just...
This new research about cheating is fascinating. It was published online just on Tuesday, and I've already incorporated it into the marriage book we're editing right now that's due at the publishers next week! But listen to this:The evidence from this study exposes...
Sex matters in marriage. When sex is mutual, intimate, and pleasurable for both, sex makes you feel connected. It minimizes minor tensions and makes you laugh. It helps you sleep and makes you feel more relaxed. And it contributes significantly to marital...
More sex does not fix a marriage. In our study of 20,000 women for The Great Sex Rescue, we found that more sex made good marriages great. Good sex, in a healthy marriage, definitely helps that marriage thrive. But sex can’t fix a bad marriage. And, indeed, having bad...
Should women get to have a say in when they have sex? I would think that the answer to this is pretty obvious. I don't have time for a long post today, but I want to talk about a social media trend that's been occurring, I think because of my obligation sex series. ...
Is there a way forward after obligation sex? If obligation sex has been the norm in your marriage, and if it's been affecting your libido and your marriage, what do you actually do about it? How do you recover from it? This month on the blog we've been looking at...
Obligation Sex is the idea that a wife is obligated to have sex when her husband wants to. It’s that simple. It was one of the beliefs that we studied in our survey of 20,000 women for our book The Great Sex Rescue, and we found that when women believed this message...