We’re starting a new series that is going to be fire–it’s For the Love of Dating, Sex and Relationships. We’re going to cover a lot of territory over the life of this series–and with this episode we’re going to start with a question; what was it that you learned about sex during the most formative years of your life? Because whether you realize it or not, this can greatly shape how you approach sex as an adult. Maybe you’ve been unraveling what it is you think about sex, how you think about your body, what sex means to you–and you’re tracing it back to what you learned as teenager or young adult–and maybe that education wasn’t positive. To help guide us through making those connections to our early sexual education and how we view sex today is therapist Jay Stringer–returning for his second appearance on the show. Jay pulls back the curtain on the teachings many of us got about sex when we were young. Even if you never were a part of movements like “True Love Waits,” or received lessons on purity culture by your church, or other religious organizations–perhaps there was a rigid sexual space in the childhood home you grew up in. We’re speaking to all the ways sex might have been presented to us with messages of shame.  Jay encourages us to look at our sexual stories, seeking ways to find healing and wholeness toward a healthy view of sex. And bonus–for you parents who find talking about sex with your kids akin to a slow, painful death, Jay and Jen talk through ways can engage our kids around sex without the shame approach that a lot of us experienced, and to have those conversations in a loving, age-appropriate way by being open and responsive.  

Content Warning: This episode talks extensively about sex, sexuality, and unwanted sexual behaviors, so it may not be suitable for young listeners. 

 

Series Description

Y’all. It’s time to talk about it. The good, the bad, the ugly, the dramatic, the hilarious. That’s right–we’re talking about relationships. As Jen dips her toes back in the dating world post-divorce, what better time to call in the experts? For many of us grown adults who haven’t dated in a thousand years, the methods have changed, the rules have changed (swipe left anyone?) and we’re clueless where to start. And for those of you have been in the mix of it for awhile, you’ll still find something new to learn in these conversations that run the gamut  from sex, to matchmaking, to finding love in this new world order. We’ll also talk about what to do when your kids start dating, how to navigate the apps (RIP to our sanity), and what to do if you don’t want to be single, and if you do, how to find the maximum satisfaction out of going it solo.  We’ll chat with experts, friends, mentors, leaders–basically the people who have the receipts to give us the goods on what healthy relationships look like and how to nurture and build them to what they need to be. Because at the end of the day, good relationships with ourselves and others are what makes life sweeter.  

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Thought-Provoking Quotes

“If you hate your sexual desire, and you are militantly trying to stop it, you are going to develop a very severe and harmful theology, and that's exactly what happened in purity culture.” – Jay Stringer 

 

“I've seen the purity culture really affect women in three particular ways. I would say that it deprioritizes women's sexual pleasure. It set women up for sexual violation. Then, the third, is that it contributed to sexual pain.”  – Jay Stringer 

 

“I think one of the greatest myths out there is that you can't change your past. In some ways, the past is far easier to change than the future, in that you can go back to that scared, adolescent girl, and you can begin to mother her. You can ask her, ‘what are the things that you wish that you would have known back in the day?’”  – Jay Stringer 

 

“When we don't have language for what we're experiencing or what we're coming out of, we aren't going to have language to be able to create a new sexual world, so we've got to educate ourselves. We've got to get into community and start talking through this stuff in order to rewrite our sexual script.”  – Jay Stringer 

 

“For a seed to grow, it has to transgress the seed casing, and the root has to go down in order for the shoot to go up, and so that sense of our children need to transgress the boundaries, in some ways, that we have created, in order for them to individuate, to be able to grow. We don't want to create soil that does not allow them to transgress the boundaries of childhood. We want to allow some of that transgression to grow. I think that begins by inviting them to consider like, what do you want your own sexual story to look like?”  – Jay Stringer 

 

“View sexual difficulties as a stage to be able to rewrite your story.”  – Jay Stringer

 

Jay’s Linksstringer.com">Website

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Books & Resources Mentioned in This EpisodeUnwanted: How Sexual Brokeness Reveals Our Way to Healing - Jay Stringer

Addressing Broken Sexual Behavior with Jay Stringer - For the Love Podcast Episode 

The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended - Sheila Gregoire 

Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life - Emily Nagoski 

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less - Greg McKeown

Dr. Dan Allender 

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