Welcome to our first episode in our For the Love of Sex series! We’re excited to break open this topic and find ways to cultivate what sexual health means for each of us and lay down toxic perspectives surrounding sex in our lives. Today we’re talking about sexual shame and how that can show inside and outside the bedroom. Matthias Roberts is a psychotherapist, author and podcaster. He wrote a book on sexual shame called “Beyond Shame: Creating a Healthy Sex Life on Your Own Terms” and is committed to helping people find freedom feeling shame around sex.

Jen and Matthias discuss:

• A working definition of what sexual shame is
• How Matthias’s perspective on sex shifted after coming out in a Christian fundamentalist home
• Questions to ask ourselves to develop our own sexual ethic
• How sexual shame can affect every area of our life
• Ways to stay curious and let go of shame about sex
• Matthias’s queer theological perspective on sex

The ways shame can seep into our lives is surprising. Join Jen and Matthias as they unpack, with a compassionate lens, how to stay curious and work toward kicking the shame-filled parts of our sex life to the curb.

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Thought-Provoking Quotes

“Sexuality is also a really core part of who we are. How we experience or do not experience sexuality is identity construing, and it should be. It is part of who we are.” - Matthias Roberts

“We have our shame, we have our sexuality, and then we have our divine, or our beliefs around the divine, and what the divine commands of us or doesn't command of us around our sexuality. And when those things play together, we can get a pretty nasty mix really quickly.” - Matthias Roberts

“So many of us try to push shame aside. That's our default, "Push it aside. We're not going to pay attention to this. This hurts." Or we get shut down by it, but we never quite take the time, or a lot of people don't take the time to really listen and figure out what the shame is actually telling us. And I think that's a really, really important place to start, because if we don't know what we're working with, the particularities of the shame, then how do we actually work with it?” - Matthias Roberts

“I think there's something around queerness and the ways that queer sexual ethic or queer ways of thinking around sexuality can actually free everyone up.” - Matthias Roberts

“What would it mean for our bodies to be good as they are right now? Can we get curious about that? If we feel I have a bad body or that sense of inferiority, what does it mean that my body as it is, right now, in this moment, might actually be good and can bring me pleasure?” - Matthias Roberts

“Shame disconnects us. It disconnects us from our bodies, from our communities, from our partners. Sex connects us. It is ultimately a connecting force. So we can actually use our sexuality as a way to reconnect to our bodies, reconnect to our partners.” - Matthias Roberts

Guest’s LinksMatthias Roberts Website

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Matthias’s Twitter

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Beyond Shame: Creating a Healthy Sex Life on Your Own Terms

For The Love Podcast Episode with Jay Stringer on Purity Culture

For The Love Podcast Episode with Brene Brown on Vulnerability

Sex, God, & the Conservative Church

Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I 

Normal Gossip Podcast

Holy Runaways: Rediscovering Faith After Being Burned by Religion

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