Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome to Episode 99 of the Think Deeper podcast. Jack Wilkey here with Joe Wilkie. Will Harab once again, I said 99. That means next week is 100. We have put the call out on Facebook. We are Will. Will's idea for it, which we love. We're going to roll with is 100 questions in 100 minutes. So we're taking submissions. We're coming up with our own questions. We're going to try.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Got to happen.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Joe Rapid fired as much as possible.
I will say we've gotten a lot of lovely people giving us suggestions, great comments, great comments, and things that will honestly become future episodes because we do need to talk about that. Things that we cannot possibly answer in 1 minute. It's got to be pretty short answer kind of questions.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: We're talking short bite size questions.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: If you were putting together a test, short answer, no paragraph, no essay questions, none of that stuff. And so just simple.
What's one thing you'd change about what's your favorite Bible character? Things like that.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Our goal is to kind of have an even balance of like spiritual questions, fun questions, food questions, travel questions, all kinds of stuff.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah, sports, whatever. Yeah. My favorite one so far is from our guy Titus from the Dogma podcast.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Shout out to Titus.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: The three of us went into the octagon who would emerge victorious in a brawl. Very easy answer.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: As Jack said, very easy.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: We'll see. Joe reminded me of something the other day, that actually the answer is easier than I thought. So we'll get to that on the episode. So episode 100 next week, look out for that. We're going to do it up big before we get to the episode. A while back, we teased some preorders. My mark guide is in, so pre orders are being shipped out. If you ordered one, thank you very much. They are headed your way if you have not yet. They are on Focus Press. They're on Amazon. I know Amazon's a little more convenient. Focus Press. We get a little more, you know, we prefer that one. But Amazon is also available, I was.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Gonna say just to remind everybody in case you're like, I don't really remember what that was. If you're looking to do an in depth study on one of the Gospels, please consider the smart guy, Jack. Put a lot of time, a lot of work know, really kind of. I don't know if it's technically an exegetical guide, Jack, but just a very detailed verse by verse about the Book of Mark. And so if you've been wondering, man, I'd like some material to get a little bit deeper in my Bible study. This would be where I would highly recommend you pick up a copy of this Mark guide.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: I appreciate that. Yeah, it's a 13 chapter, so it was formatted for Bible classes. And so obviously 16 chapters in Mark. Some of it had to be skimmed over, but tried to capture the major themes and just help you understand the book as a whole better. So that's available. We had another preorder, Transform Faith, which was a collection of writing for myself and Dr. Brad Hareb. That's right on the heels of it. That'll be out soon. Again, pre orders will be shipping and then the Sunday school catch up. My third one, a lot of stuff coming. That'll be right after it. I'm getting questions about, hey, where are these?
It never goes as smoothly as you think. We put the pre order up, but they're coming. They're going to be here very soon. And so we're going to go one, two, three, Mark. Transform Faith and Sunday school. So just an update on that. Again, Mark Guide is available and in if you want to go order it.
[00:03:18] Speaker C: And let me say this, as you can tell, we're busy here at Folks Press, specifically, Jack, lots of writing. We're very busy and we run off of donations mainly. Holidays are coming up. If this is something that you're interested in, we would very much appreciate that. We put the call out for donations a couple of months ago. We're still here and we're still taking donations. So if you're interested, if you love the work that we're doing, if you appreciate it, maybe consider just sending us a couple of bucks just so we can. Because again, printing costs everything else. All these things it costs and it costs a lot of money. Unfortunately, these days, printing costs have gone up quite a bit. And so, yeah, I just want to throw that out there as well, that we're still taking donations if you are interested. But we always appreciate the work. We appreciate you listening. So thanks to all those, to our deep thinkers.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: All right. Yeah. Focuspress.org Slash donate. Good plug there, Joe. All right, so let's get back to part two of our sexuality episode.
At the end of last week, I said something along the lines of, we can get the rest of this content in, in the next five minutes. And no, I'm glad we saved a whole hour. There's a lot to get to here. And so let's get into it as always on the deep end. We were taking comments there for our second episode of the week and so be sure to check that out. If you're a focus plus subscriber, or if you're not, become a focus plus subscriber. But let's get to these here.
Who wants to jump us in, back into the discussion, I guess.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll start us out, Jack. So you were the one that added this to the original outline, this kind of topic of discussion, which is how your masculinity roles, how your femininity roles and how you fulfill those roles, or lack thereof. How it can add or detract from the sex, add to or detract from the sexual relationship. And so we wanted to spend a little bit of time to start the episode here. Because what we're going to get into a little bit later, kind of more practically speaking, is, okay, sexually speaking, what advice do we have for those who aren't married yet, those who are young married, married with kids, and then older married? Kind of those four categories. So I think that's where we're going to spend the bulk of the episode. But to start, we wanted to address this topic of masculinity roles and femininity roles within the home specifically because, as we've said before, those were some of our most popular episodes. And we kind of did a deep dive on how does the world paint masculinity? And how does the Bible paint masculinity? And what are the roles that come along with that? Obviously, tied in with that is the other side of the coin. How does the world paint the feminine roles, and how does the Bible paint it, and how are those being fulfilled? And kind of what we talked a lot about is that the average Christian home, not the average home. The average Christian home. These roles are not being fulfilled. They're not being fulfilled according to God's word. You've got men that are not really fulfilling their God given masculine roles. Maybe they go to work. Maybe they're not working really hard. Maybe they're not leading their home spiritually. And the wife kind of runs the show.
Maybe the wife also works. And so as far as the homemaking goes, which is a feminine role, maybe it's kind of a team effort and not really getting done. Maybe. And so, guys, let's start here in this discussion of how these things can really add to, or again, detract from a sexual relationship. Because obviously we, in case you can't tell, our firm stance is if you're not fulfilling your role as a husband and as a man, and you're not fulfilling your role as a wife and your femininity role outside of the sexual relationship, if you're not fulfilling those roles again in the home, in the workplace, with your family, that's going to significantly impact your sexual fulfillment, your sexual satisfaction. So, guys, what thoughts do you have on that? I guess maybe we'll start with the male side before switching over to the female side.
[00:06:57] Speaker C: Guys put so much on their ability to please a woman sexually that they make that a big part of their identity. And to your point, will we have to be men that are conquering, that are doing so many amazing things? And sex is a positive. Sex with your wife is kind of an outflowing of you doing the things you know you're supposed to do. It's a rewarding thing. It's a fulfilling thing. It's just something that you guys come together, I don't know, in a culmination of something, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, instead of, well, this is just what I do to feel like I'm a man. If that's what helps you feel like you're a man, you're doing it wrong. Going out and conquering. Going out and taking Dominion. Adam is given the Dominion mandate before he's ever given Eve meaning. Work hard, conquer things.
Make sure that you're hitting your goals. Set goals, hit them. Build your self confidence. Build your self respect in other ways other than sex in men, who are very much sex craze. And we didn't really get to this, but I guess it's probably a good time to get into it because we wanted to get into it on our deep end. But I thought it's probably good to say the discussion here. You have a lot of guys that are sex addicts without knowing it, in my opinion. And that is they want sex two times a day, every day of their lives. And their wives are like, I just can't keep up. And this is most guys. First off, that's a stereotype. There's a lot of guys that aren't that way. Second off, you're looking to have sex, fulfill everything, to have sex, be the pinnacle of everything. When you want it twice a day, you have some serious emotional wounds, and you have a seriously messed up relationship with sex. Or if you want it once a day. There is a healthy level of sexuality, and it's when you and your wife come together and you guys decide what works best for you. But the man who wants it every single day, in my opinion, has emotional wounds and things that he's looking to sex to fulfill him in days that other things should be fulfilling him in. And so the reason why I know this, we were talking off air about it. I work with sex addicts for a living.
I see a guy who is masturbating multiple times a day. I just have such a high sex drive. What am I supposed to do? And when we work through trauma and we work through the attachment wounds and we work through all the emotional issues, all of a sudden he doesn't need it five times a day. All of a sudden he's Able to get it into an appropriate view, appropriate understanding of like sex is a beautiful thing. I don't need it all the time. Well, what happened? Did his libido drop?
What happened there?
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: Libido is tied to emotion. So a lot of people don't see that. They don't realize that. And this hasn't scientifically been proven, I don't think, which is something I'm hoping to do in the future, is to scientifically prove the connection between emotion and libido. So for the guys that want it all the time, stop looking to sex as the number one thing in your life. Stop making sex the pinnacle of everything. Sex is intended to be an outflowing. It's tend to be the culmination of something. Get busy doing other things, find your self respect, find your self worth, your self esteem in things other than sex.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: Well, and that's what we're talking about when we say it can detract from the sexual relationship is because if you're not doing those things, if you're not conquering, you're not hitting your goals, you're not working hard, maybe just kind of lazily showing up to work and kind of punching the clock, what does that lead to? It leads to kind of, you don't respect yourself, it kind of leads to a lack of confidence, it maybe leads to shame. All these things, duh, that's going to impact your sexual ability with your spouse. And Joe, I've always loved that point. That is kind of unique to you as far as the connection between emotion and libido and sex. Driver, whatever. But to me it's so obvious that these things, if we have all of our, again, masculine feminine roles majorly messed up in one area, and then we wonder, well, why isn't our sex life fulfilling? Well, gee, let me take a guess here. And so I guess kind of our whole point to start this episode, Jack, I'll hand it off to you here. You've got to start there. You've got to start by examining your, again, role as a husband, your role as a man. Are you fulfilling that role? Because if you're not, that's where it's going to lead to problems.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Well, yeah. So to briefly kind of summarize what you guys are saying is it is an accomplishment for a man, even with his wife, mentally, it's an accomplishment when you achieve sex, when you have sex. And so if that's the only accomplishment a man has going in his life, of course he's going to want to just go back to that one over and over, like, go get other accomplishments. And so when we say conquer, people get real weird about that. For the accountant, that means being the best accountant in your firm. It's doing your job well, it's running your household well. It's making sure your wife is provided for, cared for, but also equipped to do her stuff well and take care of her business and that you're involved with the kids and things like that. And if you're hitting accomplishments there and getting the satisfaction of those things, you just don't need one track accomplishments. But the other thing is, when we talk about masculinity, femininity, we do live in this paradigm of nice guys and girl bosses. And so the nice guy and the girl boss dynamic is she gives it to him. If he does all the right things, if he's nice enough, as we use the term, not even a nice guy, a good boy. If he's a good boy, then he gets sex. That destroys her. That destroys him. It's something that she dispenses. It's kind of mom and dad giving out an allowance to their kids or the kids. Hey, can I have candy?
[00:12:05] Speaker C: Okay, well, you were good today, so.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: You can have a piece of candy or whatever. That dynamic is awful. It should be. He is the head of the household, and it's very much he has her respect, and it's no question of who's who. But this good boy, nice guy, girl boss thing where you're almost asking permission because this is the advice you get from people. And I know we spoke about this last year on the episode. We need to hit it again. You know what? Nothing sexier to a woman than a man doing dishes.
It's a lie. It is not true. It's not true. And it's feeding into this. If you do nice, she'll pat you on the head and, okay, you get sex because you did my dishes for me or you helped out around the house.
It's ridiculous. You should help out around the house. But it's not as a matter of.
[00:12:52] Speaker C: I do this, you do that, that's.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: The COVID contracts and all these things we talk about that screw up marriages come into sex, and so don't be the good boy. That's not how this works.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: I am no biologist by any means, and I'm obviously not a woman, but there seems to be an innate biological nature about women that they desire a strong man. They desire a man, again, that is conquering a man that is strong. Whether or not, no matter how much feminine the feminist movement tells you otherwise, that's what they desire. Why is the bad boy so appealing for so many women? And why is it's stereotypical, but the muscular guy, something that, because they desire strong men. And when you have the dynamic of, again, she gives it and he just kind of has to not beg for it, but kind of do the right things. Yeah, kind of grovel. Where's the desire going to be? It's not going to be there because obviously, again, that lack of self respect, that lack of confidence can come from the wife as well. Why are you going to respect that? Why would you desire that? Because there's no sign of strength there. That's what we have to get back to. Again, the feminist movement has done a very good job of, as Jack said, aligning everybody under the girl boss and good boy mentality. The wife is not going to desire the husband under those circumstances. And again, I'm not trying to speak for women here, but biologically speaking, I think that's why there's so many sexual struggles with this when that is the dynamic that is set up in the home.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: The strong man provides safety and security. That's really what they're going for.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Protection as well, right?
[00:14:30] Speaker C: Protection. They want to know that my guy's going to step up for me. The bad boy. Nobody messes with the bad boy because he'll beat you to death. They go after that because there is inherent protection underneath that. Even if he hits her, even if that gets into some horrible dynamics where women get into very abusive situations. We're not talking about that at all. The bad boy, that's not good. Don't go after that. But there's a reason why they're drawn to it, and I think it's because they see that there's this level of safety and security underneath a man who's going to stand up for them.
We have to stand up for them in more than just the bedroom. But I will say it, it flows into the bedroom. When you have a husband who wants to take advantage of his wife and do all these crazy sexual things, that's not safe. That's not secure for her, for the woman, though, we also have to see that the man wants to be adventurous. He wants to conquer, right? In a way, he wants to feel this is an accomplishment. And so this is where we can get into the fun of sex, where you're actually enjoying it and you're spurring one another on to be creative and to try new positions, things like that. But it's coming from a place of creating safety for her and creating this adventure for him in those ways. And this is stereotypical, sometimes it can go either way.
But I do think that as we're talking a masculine role, men, the biggest thing we can say before we move to, and we're already getting into some of the feminine side, biggest thing we can say is, don't make sex everything.
You will survive if you don't have sex, don't make sex everything. We're going to get into this a little bit later, too, but understand what sex represents to you. And if sex represents more than anything, more than this is between a husband and a wife, to really enjoy one another and the culmination of me working hard, her working hard, we're coming together and we're enjoying this intimacy together. If it's other things to you, and sex just represents you getting your fulfillment, and that's all it needs.
It's very transactional, which is what Jack talked about. It's very transactional. And anytime you have that in a sex life, it will be horrible. Just telling you, it will be horrible. So the wives who withhold sex from their husbands use it as a bargaining chip. Use it as Jack said, if you're a good boy, you'll get it. It's transactional. You've taken sex and you have made it something that it was never intended to be. And the guy doesn't get the conquering aspect. He doesn't feel good about himself. He feels like, well, he gets a fulfillment, but no wonder why he wants it tomorrow. It wasn't fulfilling. Fulfilling. Sex is supposed to go a long time. This is how you can masturbate three times a day. It's not fulfilling. It never actually created or it never filled the intended need that you had, which is what we always talk about with people that struggle. Masturbation is understand the underlying need, and the underlying need is not to masturbate. The underlying need is for something more. Same thing in marriage. What's the underlying need? To be close to one another, to connect with one another, to love one another, to be intimate together. And when that's not happening. And it's transactional. This is why you want it every day, is because it didn't actually fulfill. And you're just coming back to get the physical need met because the emotional and everything else is not being met. So, fellas, anything we add on the man side, I think we've already gotten into the feminine of that feeling of protection, the desire for a strong man.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: But I think the main thing to take out of this is it's not that you don't have to work on this as such, communicating about sex or whatever, but it's like 95% of this battle happens in every other aspect of your relationship. Like, if the other stuff is in place, if the man's being the man, the woman's being the woman, he's the head of the household and providing and protecting and equipping so that she can do her job as she needs to in the home. And everyone knows who they are.
This is just so much easier because all of the tools that, those are the hard conversations to have, those are the difficult things to get in place. And once you've done that, you've already got all the tools to communicate well in the bedroom to translate this into that sex life. And so when people. Some of the comments we got that we answered on last week's deep end were people struggles in their sex life. And it's like, look, we can address the sexual part of it, but that's not really the issue. This goes so much further back. This starts on a Tuesday afternoon when you're texting about who's going to do what and pick up the kids and how you're handling that stuff, we can't really help address the bedroom stuff if the other stuff's not in place because that just spills over. If she doesn't feel protected, if she doesn't feel cared about, if she doesn't feel nurtured, if he doesn't feel respected, if he doesn't feel listened to, all of the things that a man and a woman need out of the relationship. If that's not happening, this is just a result almost.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: And that goes back to step on Joe's turf.
Know, I think he brought it up on the last episode. If you're not connected in every other area, physically or, I'm sorry, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, it's no wonder you're not know. We want to separate those out so often.
They're all inherently connected. And so I don't have much to add there. I think we pretty well spelled out. Joe, do you have anything else to add there?
[00:19:21] Speaker C: I do, and then I'm going to have you get into the advice part. You can intro that quick word about sexual abuse, sexual trauma, because we got this comment after we didn't get into it in the deep end. But I think that's a very worthwhile discussion to have. There's a lot of women that have been through and men that have been through sexual trauma, molestation, rape, things like that. Even witnessing certain things that they didn't want to witness porn use at a very young age, or witnessing something from parents or parents infidelity.
This gives us a warped view of sexuality. And I would strongly encourage you to seek therapy if that's the case. If you struggle with your sex life and you realize every time we go to have sex, it's a triggering thing for me that it tells me something else is going on for sure. And I would get yourself some therapy, because, man, life can be good. Sex can be an amazing thing. But if you are experiencing past sexual trauma that you can't get past, sex will never be fulfilling. It will never be good because you'll only be seeing it through the lens of trauma. Work through that to the best of your ability. Your spouse deserves it. You deserve that right, to be able to work through that and to find a healthy level of sexuality in your life. So I just wanted to say that I could get into all the sexual trauma. There's bazillion different things that come into play there. But, yeah, I would just say therapy is the fastest way to help yourself in that respect, because trying to work through it or trying to forget about it or trying to develop it on your own when you really are struggling with something that happened, trauma warps the brain. There is body keeps a score. Bessel Vaynerkult. There's a lot more stuff we're doing on trauma to realize this doesn't just affect the brain, this doesn't just affect the emotions, it affects the body. And you will shut down bodily speaking in certain areas where you can't perform the same sexually based on things that have happened to you. These are all scientific things you can look up. So brief word on that. But strongly consider getting yourself some therapy if that is the case and if you've experienced that before.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: All right, so let's get into our advice here. We've got 1234 different areas here that we want to give very practical advice, kind of practical step solutions and things. And so we're going to start with those who are not married yet. Advice for premarriage.
Got a word on here about why fornication is wrong. And I think this is something we talked about on the godly young men podcast before Joe, you and I did know young people in the church are, of course, they have drilled into their heads, don't fornicate, don't fornicate, don't fornicate. Don't have sex outside of marriage. Don't have sex outside of marriage. And so that kind of turns into they equate sex with bad, with evil. And it's not, it's the fornication that's wrong. But I think what we brought up in the episode was ask a class full of high schoolers, why is fornication wrong? Why is sex outside of marriage wrong? Well, because God says it is. Okay, granted, but why is that the way that it was set up? Why does God basically prescribe things that way? It'd be interesting to find out what kind of answers you would get if you'd get any answers at all. Because we don't really know. In a lot of instances, or at least when somebody asks us that on the spot, it's like, well, I don't really know. God says it's wrong. We got into this a little bit on our deep end episode. Think about if fornication takes place before marriage and you're married to your spouse now, and either you fornicated previously with somebody else or she did, God doesn't want all that sexual baggage entering the marriage relationship because think about the mental toll that it takes on. And I'm sure we've got listeners where maybe that has been a mental burden you've had to bear before of either you as the person that had somebody else before, you've got that person in your mind.
Yeah, you've got comparisons. And even if this is why we're fairly anti dating, even if you didn't quote unquote, cross the line with that person before you married your current spouse, if you've got songs, if you've got movies, if you've got inside jokes, if you've got favorite restaurants or whatever, that you're carrying that baggage into your new marriage with your new spouse as well, how often is your mind going back to that person? Obviously, then you transition that into if you did cross the line and fornicate, that stuff is in your mind, and that's something you're going to have to deal with for the rest of your life and for the rest of your marriage. And so the reason why, again, as we're talking advice for premarriage here. The reason why God says, and we are begging, pleading with you, do not fornicate is so that you don't have to deal with all that sexual baggage inside your marriage, so that your future spouse doesn't have to wonder, is he or is she thinking about XYz person the way God intended? It was one man, one woman, obviously, for life, but without any previous sexual partners. And this is why. What other thoughts do you guys have on this?
[00:24:12] Speaker A: I think at some point we discussed the I kissed, dating goodbye thing, where he had that parable in his book about at your wedding, all of the past partners coming in and standing behind your spouse there and how traumatic that.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: How long would your line be, right?
[00:24:27] Speaker A: And that you're bringing all of that into your marriage. And, man, people, that book gets a lot of hate. And we could get into that. That's a whole other discussion. That's exactly right. I mean, it's true. And then there was this other illustration that maybe some people have seen at purity talks where they pass a flower around and have everybody touch it, a rose or whatever. And by the end it's just wilted and tattered and falling apart. And all this is. This is what happens when you give your sexuality away. And there was a famous sermon by this guy, Matt Chandler, a big evangelical guy in Dallas, where he said, I watched this. And they said, well, who would want that rose? And he said, jesus wants the rose. And that woman that's been out there and slept with 50 people, Jesus would forgive her. She still brings all of that with her. That doesn't go away when she gets married. Those issues come into her marriage. And we've kind of made it where it's like it doesn't matter because you can be forgiven. You can, but you're going to face real world consequences. I mean, if she picked up an STD and all that, or if a guy did, he's going to bring that in there. But even just the memories and all of these other things, Grace doesn't just destroy that. It doesn't make that go away. And so you have to be cognizant of, this is going to catch up to me. This is going to end every faithful Christian, you know that whether before they were Christians or even as Christian young people, they sinned and got in the wrong lane there for a while sexually, and is now happily married or whatever, there's not a single one of them is like, yeah, well, those were good old days, and I don't regret that.
[00:25:55] Speaker C: One bit.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: No, it's a problem.
[00:25:58] Speaker C: They do.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: They'll tell you it's a problem. They'll tell you, I wish I had never done it. It's just not worth it.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: And fornication will never be. It's inherently selfish, and it'll never feel as good as it does in marriage because this person might leave me tomorrow.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: There's no commitment there.
[00:26:12] Speaker C: Exactly how intimate are you going to be with somebody who's not committed to you, who could leave you, who could dump you? So you give them one of the most important things in your life, which is your virginity or whatever it may be. It is your sexuality. You're opening yourself up to be naked with them, but you can't fully be naked with them because you realize in the eyes of God, you're not. You can't be naked in the eyes of God, you're naked and ashamed. You're living Genesis three. Fornication is Genesis three. Marriage is Genesis two, is what I would say, live in Genesis two, naked and unashamed. That only happens one time in life, and that's when you are in a committed relationship. So don't do that. Don't do that.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: Good line that's going on. The quote. Images. That's a good one.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Advice. Premarriage. Second, we would say is in preparing sex is not everything. I've already touched on this, and you guys could talk about this as well, but sex is not everything.
It is important. It's great. It feels great. We're not going to tell you that it doesn't feel great. We're not going to act like all the old people do that. It's like it doesn't exist. It absolutely exists. It absolutely is amazing. It is not everything. You will not be having. There's so many expectations of, like, you're going to be having sex all the time and the guy's going to want it. And then I got into marriage and I started working like 70 hours, weeks, and I barely wanted it at all. And you start realizing, man, I don't feel like a man. I just don't think that I can even please my wife. And your self esteem goes right off the cliff because you weren't meeting these expectations that everybody else had for you before marriage. Just realize sex is not everything and there is an expectations ruin this, I would say.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: It's not just what everybody else is.
[00:27:38] Speaker C: Going to look like. Exactly.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: It's not just what everybody else says, but it's also the way society paints it, the way every show ever paints it. The movies, the music, that man, everybody does it all the time.
[00:27:49] Speaker C: And you're going to be a porn star in the bedroom like, no.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: I think a lot of young people have a very warped view on that based on, again, pop culture and social media. I'm going to go ahead and skip to one that I put on there. And Jack, I'll let you come back to the third one we got on our list because I think the one I put on here ties into what you're saying. Joe. I would say advice for premarriage. I guess I'm mainly talking to the guys here. Don't get your sex advice from your bachelor buddies. And obviously this applies to females as well. Don't get your sex advice from your unmarried female friends.
I think this is the classic Ria bone situation where sure, you can go talk to your buddies about something that they know absolutely nothing about and you can get your feel good advice from them.
You need to get your advice because obviously young people are going to have questions, especially if you're engaged and you know that that's about to be a part of your life here soon than it previously has not been. Of course you're going to be curious and have questions about XYZ.
The advice that I would have, that we would have, don't go to your unmarried bachelor buddies for that advice. Go to awkward as it might be. Hopefully you have the relationship here. Go to your parents. Go to some older, wiser, married people that obviously that you respect and that you would look at and see that they have a good marriage. Start there. I think a lot of young people, again, can get into the bad habit, kNow, going to unmarried young people for their advice when that's not who you should be going for, your sex advice, you might say, Jack.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: No, I think that's very useful. So we got this question before we go into the next one. How much should you talk with your fiance about it beforehand? If you're getting married, you're engaged, you're on your way to the altar.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: Were you going to go back to the third one on there, Jack?
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Sort of already touched on it.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: But it's important to revisit it. Premarriage. This is not a male thing. It's not just the guy. This is not just. Okay, well, she'll give this to him. And it's interesting that you see young couples that are very affectionate and there's very clearly that desire there. And somehow over the years when they get married, it morphs into oh, this is just for the men. It's very clearly something that bonds people together. There's a physical desire there and things we've already discussed that there's a lot of emotion, there's a lot of other stuff that goes into why they both desire it and later on, maybe why only one of them does. But in preparation, both need to realize young Christian ladies need to be taught. And whatever purity classes, youth rally days, whatever ladies days, whatever they have that hey, be taught, this is a good thing. This is something that you're going to enjoy. This is going to be part of a fulfilling thing for you, not. Well, yeah, it's something you got to do for them because that is something that I've heard people talk about is what sometimes young ladies are taught. Just like I'll get used to having to do that. That can't be the advice either.
[00:30:50] Speaker C: I'll say this before.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: I was going to get into the next question, so you go ahead.
[00:30:56] Speaker C: I was going to say you sparked something in me. I'm going to show two books just for anybody who's interested before marriage, a celebration of Sex by Douglas, Dr. Douglas Rosnau. Rosnow, whatever it is, is a very good book. It does have illustrations, know drawings of different sex positions, things like that. But I do think that that can very much be helpful. And then another one, and I don't think I've actually read all the way through this. Sexy Christians by Dr. Ted Roberts and his wife, Diane Roberts. He is very big into porn addiction, helping men through their porn addiction.
He's a big name in that world of therapy. So both of those sexy Christians and a celebration of sex, I think I would consider reading those before marriage. I can't endorse everything. And again, I haven't even read all the way through sexy Christians, so I can't endorse everything in there. But those are two books that I would recommend for people that are interested in it. But the whole point is to your question, Will, how much should you talk to your fiance about this? That's a very difficult subject because, sorry to just cut right in on your question, but this is a great one that you put down. How much should we talk about it? Because you don't want to arouse things ahead of time. You don't want to have this discussions that get your mind going in places that it doesn't need to go at the same time. Yes, you need to be having this discussion of expectations going into it, of what you think that's going to be. And trying to either remove some unnecessary expectations or figure out what that is. And so I have some thoughts. Fellas, I'm going to let you kind of go off on this if you'd like, because I have some thoughts that I bring into premarital counseling, but I'd like to get your thoughts first. Yeah.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: The reason I got to thinking about this question, how much should you talk with your fiance about sex beforehand? Is because we've pretty clearly come out on the table, shown our cards that we are anti dating, we are pro, call it courtship, intentional, to call it whatever, just kind of a different form, which is chaperones, and you're never alone together.
This is a tough topic to talk about with your little brother in the backseat of the car. And so I was thinking about how we've spent the last, now two episodes really hammering home the commitment or not commitment, communication point about, hey, when you're married, y'all need to be talking about this and talking about it a lot. And so if your position is. Cause I'm sure there are people who are like, no, know, don't talk about it with your fiance beforehand, because like you said, Joe, it's going to open up doors. You're going to be aroused, you're going to be thinking about lusting and things that you shouldn't be thinking about. I get that. However, do we really expect it to go from zero communication about sex at all before marriage with the person that you're planning on marrying to? Okay, 100% open the doors of communication on it based on one day. I think that's very difficult to do. Personally, again, I know that there's going to be a lot of people that think you should keep that door completely shut all the way. As far as talking about it, communicating about, hey, expectations, things like that, until marriage. I get that. I think the door needs to be open at least some portion. What percentage that is, I don't know. But again, if we're going to expect people to communicate about it within marriage, there needs to be some. It's the same thing. Why we expect young people, two people who are engaged, to talk about how many kids you want. You don't need to fly into that blind. You need to be able to talk about what are your expectations about kids and how many kids and how you're going to discipline all these things. If sex is going to be as big of a part of your relationship and of your marriage as obviously it should be, you've got to have some level of conversations there. Joe, I am curious about what you've got specifically because obviously, I don't think that door needs to be 100% open where you're graphically talking about every single thing imaginable. But, Jack, any thoughts before Joe kind of gets into what he does for premarital?
[00:34:42] Speaker A: I mean, I think the counseling is a big part of it, and I think good counselors would walk you through what needs to be discussed. Porn issue that needs to be discussed. All the cards are on the table and just hindrances that might come up and then kind of just an explanation of, here's how you communicate to work something out together.
[00:35:04] Speaker B: I'm curious because, and I'm not trying to throw my premarital counselor under the bus here. This didn't come up. We didn't talk about this in our premarital counseling. And I would be willing to wager a lot of church of Christ premarital counseling probably doesn't talk about this. So, yeah, I'm curious, Joe, what you've got and what you've seen as far as experience wise, from what other Christian counselors do.
[00:35:25] Speaker C: Jack, can you give me the ability to share? This will go up for those on our Patreon. You can screenshot this if you'd like. If you're interested in the questions, I will briefly read off a few of these because I have a full slide that goes with it.
But, yeah, Jack gives me the ability to share. But in the meantime, just let me know what's up. In the meantime, why did God create sex?
That's the first one. And you'd be surprised. Here you go. I'll share this. You'd be surprised how many people get this wrong. Why did God create sex? We talked about this last time. What is it for?
[00:35:56] Speaker B: Right?
[00:35:57] Speaker C: Well, it's for procreation.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:35:57] Speaker C: And then I say, well, what about Song of Solomon? Or if it's just for fun, okay, what about, you know, I tried to get into this. This was me teaching a class on two guys on how to have this to preachers and such and Nashville school preaching. So some of these questions are for them to ask. But have you discussed your sexual past? Past relationships, porn, sexual acting out, et cetera. The worst thing you can do is get into marriage and go, I'm sorry, you had how many? Or you didn't tell me about that person, or. Wow. Now, I walked in two years in a marriage, he's got a porn addiction he didn't tell me about. You need to discuss the sexual past. What books have you read on the matter of sex and marriage. Any major insights that stood out? You'll get his needs, her needs. I do not recommend that book, in my opinion, because that very much is the guy's going to want all the time the woman needs to oblige. That's what I get out of that. So they may say that and I'd go, that's wrong. So we need to work through that. So we want to know, what ideas have you gotten from marriage or from sex books? Do you think your knowledge of sexual and physical relations is excellent, good, fair or poor? Do you think sex is important in marriage? If so, why? Or if not, why not? What is your opinion of premarital sex? If it's wrong, why do you think your mate is sexually adjusted and ready for marriage? If so, why? And what are your thoughts on pornography? Obviously, you want to majorly stress the importance of honesty and why lying about this starts the marriage on the wrong foot. So that's the sex slide that I go over with them.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: So, to be clear, Joe, to clarify here, you think all those questions are well within bounds to discuss with people before they're married?
[00:37:22] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Because a lot of these are about your ideas of sex. It's not like, well, what sex position do you want to try first? No, I don't want you thinking about the act. I want you thinking about the ideas around sex. Is it important? Right. What is your opinion on these things? What ideas, what insights have stood out to you? Have you discussed sexual past? I mean, those are things that I absolutely think are important because if you have an appropriate sexual theology, you're going to be fine in sex, in your sex life. But if you come into the relationship not having disclosed certain things, you're lying about your porn addiction, you know nothing about sex. You've never read a book on it, or you have. That's going to be a problem. So those are some things that I would certainly look to discuss. Thank you, Jack, for let me share, fellows, are we good to get into.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Advice for young married, considering we have 19 minutes? Yes, I think so. Yeah.
[00:38:09] Speaker C: Let's go ahead and get it in.
Okay, so advice for young married. First off, take it slow. Take it slow. You're not going to know everything at once. It's just not going to happen when you get into it. Like I said, everybody thinks they're going to be like some porn star or whatever, where they're going to be amazing at sex or whatever that looks like. Take it slow. You need to learn how to explore the other person's body, to explore their erogenous zones to explore the things that are going to help them feel more open, them feel more intimate. And especially if you saved yourself for marriage, this is going to be, we act like, and this is where the ice kids dating goodbye comes in of. Okay, well, I saved myself for marriage. Therefore my sex life is going to be amazing. Not necessarily because you did save yourself from marriage, but you may know nothing about it, in which case just take it slow and realize it's going to take a little while before you learn the ways around the other person and to understand their erogenous zones and to understand orgasms and things like that. It takes a long time to understand these things. So that would be the first piece of advice I'd give to young married people is take it slow and just realize, like set the expectations appropriate.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: The goal is to grow together, to.
[00:39:18] Speaker C: Learn together, to grow together.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: It's going to be really easy at first because that desire, because of honeymoon phase, because of all of that stuff, pay attention to when it starts to become more difficult and the other factors that are involved. The first time you have an argument, the first time you're just kind of cold towards each other or whatever else.
Because we've said this a few times of like everything else in the marriage is what sets up whether the sexual part of the marriage is going well. And so realizing that and seeing how it's affected early on, I think is a really big deal. I think that's one of those things that I wasn't given that lesson. And so you're trying to fix this problem. It's like, well, that's not really the problem. Fix this other problem and this problem will figure itself out. Because again, iT's not going to be difficult for a while. And then all of a sudden it's going to be like, one day it's going to be like, now what? We've kind of got a bit of an iciness towards each other. We're just not clicking right now. We're at ODS about something else. And then you just kind of like, again, the drive, whatever the connection on that level might suffer a little bit. And so pay attention to that and that will keep you working on the other stuff and not just letting things slip. Because the other thing is the honeymoon phase sets false expectations. It's not always going to be like that. But I think another thing that can happen is out of that, you come out of that and go, okay, well, it was never, always going to be like that. So then it gets bad.
And I think a lot of couples operate on, well, this is just how it's got to be.
There's a normalcy bias of like, well, I guess this is just how it is. People always say the honeymoon phase would end.
Yeah, you're not going to be on honeymoon phase the whole time, but it gets better. Actually, if you keep working at it, it's actually better than the honeymoon period.
[00:41:04] Speaker B: I hate that phrase. And I'm going to go and get us into the next thing. Don't buy the stereotypes. We talked about that a ton. And it's not just a male thing, all that, but as far as this stereotype about the. I don't like that phrase, the honeymoon phrase, because it does give the kind of false idea that you're going to start your marriage at the top of the hill and it's all going to go downhill from there. And so, man, make sure and really enjoy the first three months or six months or however long, because it's only going to get worse. That's kind of, again, the impression that is given whenever we say honeymoon phase. And to Jack's point, obviously, one of the things that's amazing about the honeymoon phase is that you don't necessarily have all the obligations and the duties that you're going to have later on with kids and maybe work stresses and whatnot. And so that plays a part. So it's obviously not going to be the exact same. But to Jack's point, theoretically it should get better. It's not that it goes downhill, it should get better. And so when we say don't buy the stereotypes, that would be probably the biggest thing that, you know, I have been married for five years, going on five years in March. I am not the expert here by any means, but if I was going to give any advice to somebody who is married young years, so that would be the biggest thing is please don't buy into the negative stereotypes of man, just enjoy it now because you're going to get to where it's a duty or you're not going to be able to stay in your spouse and you're just not really going to like each other. Please don't go into marriage with that mindset and just, man, I really hope I enjoy it now because it's not going to be good in ten years. No, it should be better in ten years. You should be growing closer and more intimate in ten years. Keep that perspective is what I would say. Joe, go ahead.
[00:42:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I think to marry the two because I say take it slow.
[00:42:41] Speaker B: And you guys are saying to marry the two. See what you did there? Nice.
[00:42:44] Speaker C: Yeah, there you go.
You're not going to know everything at once. Yes, the sex is going to be more frequent, probably at the beginning. There's going to be a lot of those things. But to my point, it's exactly what you guys are saying. If you take it slow and if you really are intentional about learning to love and to please the other, which sex is best when you're trying to please the other person, not yourself, right? Theoretically. And it's not theoretically. I mean, it is concrete. This does happen. But theoretically, in your marriage, your sex in 30 years should be better than the sex you're having at the beginning, even though at the beginning it's a lot more frequent. Maybe it's a lot hotter or whatever because you guys are younger. But imagine if you spend your entire 30 years really working on learning one another on what pleases the other person, on what gets you and what gets you going, basically rIght. If you understand those things, man, sex is just unbelievable. You know, the exact right spots to kiss or whatever it may be. It can be so amazing and so fulfilling in that moment that only comes with time. That comes with you really being intentional on trying to understand the other person. And so for you guys, don't buy the stereotypes. You're right. The honeymoon phase is where you get to have it a lot. The best sex, in my opinion, is when the honeymoon phase is done. But you've actually started putting into practice everything you learned in the honeymoon phase. So use that and realize that sex should still be good 15, 2030 years into marriage. And the stereotype of, and we'll get to the older folks later, but we have the stereotype of they no longer want it. That is not true at all.
We'll get to that point. But what makes for. We have this on line. I think it's just a question that you put down, Will. And I appreciate the question because I want to get your guys'thoughts on it. What makes for good sex? And if you had one line, maybe something that, as we're getting a little short on time, what makes for good sex? If you were to give one piece of advice to the young married about. Because we talked about what makes for bad sex, right. What makes for good sex?
[00:44:32] Speaker B: Not to completely disagree. This was your question, I think. I didn't put this one on here.
[00:44:37] Speaker C: Was it okay?
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you're all good.
You just said a second ago, selflessness, really trying to please the other person. And really, that, to me, is what builds really solid intimacy is if the wife goes into it thinking, well, the husband's just wanting to get his and he's doing it for.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that's.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: That's not going to make for good sex at all. Versus if she thinks, and of course, vice know, this is going to be a mutual thing, that we're pleasing each other. To me, that's what I would say. So that was not one sentence, but selflessness is what I would say, Jack.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, selflessness, it's hard to get a better description than that.
I've hit this drum a few times already. But just the get your roles right elsewhere.
That, to me, I feel like just sets it up to where, as I said, it provides the tools that you just carried in. It's like, well, we already know what to do because we problem solve everything else this way. So now we're here as well.
[00:45:37] Speaker C: I'd piggyback on that. Sex is 10% physical, 90% everything else. Spiritual, emotional, intellectual.
So to your point, Jack, it is the roles. If you learn to communicate and you're genuinely in love with one another in other ways, the sex will be perfect, it will be fine. And that will not be the problem. The sex is the problem. It just speaks to other parts of the marriage. So don't put everything on the physical aspects. By the time you reach the bedroom, you guys should be so in love with one another and so already that the sex is the outflowing of it, and not like you've been cold toward one another, haven't talked at all, and then boom, we need to get into sex because it's a physical need. That's not the way to do it. That's going to happen some times in the marriage. But if that's what happens every time, probably not.
Last piece of advice that you had, Will, before we move on.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: Yeah, this one I did put on.
[00:46:22] Speaker C: I should have done this one first.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: No, you're all good.
[00:46:24] Speaker C: Yes, this one you absolutely did. And I love this. Go ahead and get into this one.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So I got on here again, just very practical. Again, Joe's right. We should have ended with the last one that we just had. But as far as this one, very quickly, and then we'll move on. I would say keep your phone out of your bedroom. And this is something that I really need to work on as well. I'm preaching to myself here, but there is something about, man, make that bedroom heard. You know, keep the TV out of the bedroom, which I think is a pretty good.
And because my thoughts on that are with as addicted as we are to these things, again, roping myself into it here with man, I got to check this and man, I want to see what so and so saying about this. And man, JacK posted something really spicy on Facebook. I got to go read all the comments real quick.
If you're bringing that into your nightly routine, it every single night and that's what you do, is you all get in bed together and you get on your phones. Yeah, your sex life is probably going to struggle and your communication obviously is going to struggle because you both got your nose buried in your phones. And so just a good rule of thumb, I would say as much as possible, try to keep your phone out. Obviously the TV, I would say keep it out of there, but as much as possible, keep your phone out of there. I just think it builds intimacy. And being on your phone all the time when you're together in bed, I think it detracts from intimacy, I guess, is what I would say. So I don't know if you guys had any thoughts on that. Those were my thoughts on that. If not, we can go ahead and move into the next one.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: Okay, so let's move on. Advice for Married with kids, which is coincidentally the category that all three of us are in. And so maybe we've got the most advice here to share. And we've got like twelve minutes left, so before Joe's got to get on with a client. So guys, let's talk about this one. Advice for Married with kids. I think the first thing we've got on here is it must be prioritized. Why? Let's talk about that because we don't have that for any of the other ones. We've got it under this category. Know married with kids. Why must it be prioritized? Joe, I'll start with you here. What are your thoughts on this one?
[00:48:17] Speaker C: Because when you've changed diapers, the guy's all day and he comes home and know putting food on the table, and then it's time with the. And they're playing and then you're giving them a bath. And then you're brushing your teeth and you're doing your bedtime routine, you're singing some songs, reading whatever it is. And by the time you get done with all, you are exhausted. And let's be honest, what's the easiest thing to let go by the wayside in your marriage? Tech. That is the easy thing when you are this, when life is crazy. That's why it has to be prioritized.
It's too easy to let go. But it needs to be prioritized because again, it's the culmination of the intimacy. And we want to make sure that that continues throughout. We want to make sure you guys are staying intimate right within the framework of child rearing and such. It's a connection thing, but it's the strength of the relationship. You guys need to come together. Sex is very important from a physical bonding, but also an emotional bonding and spiritual bonding point of view.
[00:49:17] Speaker B: I was just going to say it's as simple as your time just goes way down. Like I knew having kids, my time would go way down. I still was under prepared for how little time. Like your time just evaporates because you're trying to give all the time to your kids that they need. And of course, when they're young, they demand a lot of it. And both you and your spouse, like you said, Joe, you're exhausted at the end of the day. And it's one of those things that there is a mental component, a mental, I don't want to say work, but a mental component to sex with your spouse that a lot of people just, the end of the day, I just don't feel like it. Just don't feel like putting the mental energy in that it takes. And so I think this is something, and I did put this on there as well to kind of tie this in. Your communication about this needs to ramp way up when you're at this stage in your life, in my opinion. Again, I think communication needs to be taking place in all four of these categories. But especially, correct me if I'm wrong, Joe, with what you've seen, I guess in your therapy work, I feel like this is where resentment can build the most in marriages when it comes to sex specifically is in the marriage with young kids face. Because again, you are just spent. You are exhausted taking care of kids. It becomes very logistical, it becomes very got to work, however many hours, got to make sure this and that gets done. And again, you're just spent at the end of the day. You're spent at the end of the week. And so I think this is where if your communication falls off or you're not talking about as much, man, it can create some real problems in a real short amount of time within your marriage if you don't talk about it a ton.
[00:50:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:46] Speaker A: The other thing is everything, happiness and fulfillment and all that is always a result of expectations. If it's unmet expectations, you're unhappy. I mean, that's across the board in life.
The hard part is figuring out what is fair to expect because that's going to be a really big challenge in the communication is. Again, it might be a time where she's just more directly responsible for the kids in certain ways, especially if she's nursing or whatever, things like that with real little ones. And so you've got to have that conversation of how much time do you have to give? And I think it can be easy for the wife to become mom mode and like, look, I'm so one track minded with this that I can't give you that. And on the other hand, and you.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: Can'T be one track minded with that.
[00:51:39] Speaker A: You can't. And so he's going to have to tone down his expectations of man. It's not going to be what it was before for a little while, and you're going to have to get a little more creative in your timing.
We talked a little bit about scheduling or things like that. And yeah, he's going to have to give on that. But if he has to give everything, that's not going to be healthy. If she feels like, man, I'm just running ragged keeping up with the kids and the new duties that adds to her and she's got to meet high expectations from him. She's going to burn out. And so it's really having that conversation of like, all right, what is your ideal? What's my ideal? What can you expect? What should we expect of each other and how do we meet that? Rather than just I'm going to be unhappy because I'm not getting enough or I'm going to be unhappy because you're asking for too much.
[00:52:24] Speaker B: This is where the selflessness and the compromise comes in. And what I would say, Jack, you brought in something on our deep end episode for last episode about the forbidden fruit and why our minds can go back to what it was like with our ex or previous relationships. But you think about why that is. It's because a lot of guys, I feel like, and maybe women as well, can get to the point where they're associating their spouse with duties and obligations and they're associating their spouse with spouse and kids, maybe even as burden. And so their mind is going to naturally drift back to man. It was sure nice when I didn't have all those when I was with so and so. Well, yeah, it does, because you didn't have the responsibilities and the obligations. It's like, yeah, it would really be nice to be on vacation all the time, but that's not how life works. And I think that's the perspective that a lot of, especially young married with kids, needs to have is you can look back very easily and go, man, I enjoyed my life more when I was with such and such when I was 18 or 19. It's like, yeah, because you didn't have all these other obligations and duties and responsibilities. And so I think the perspective that you need to have, again, as a young married couple with kids, keep that understanding in perspective of, yeah, you've got all these other duties now. You've got a lot of other responsibilities. And don't, I don't want to say take it out on your spouse, but understand you guys are to work through this together. And that's kind of the grass is green thing that we talked about in the deep end of like, yeah, the grass probably was greener again when you had nothing else going on, when you didn't have all these responsibilities. Again, it'd be nice to be on vacation all the time. That's not how life works. You got to work for a living. You got to make sure these things are taken care of.
[00:53:59] Speaker C: I got a few very practical pieces of advice. I'd say, first off, as you talked about, well, man, it's easy to see your wife as mom, right? A mother like my wife is pregnant right now. Yeah. It takes more effort, I guess, to see her as something other than a mom. And the mom kind of. It can be difficult sometimes to work through. Same thing, I think, from the woman to the guy of, yeah, he's the provider, whatever. He's the dad, but maybe not. And so you start to see each other from that point. So what I would say is, get date nights, if you can, make sure that you guys are spending some alone time. Even if you can't get date nights. Put the kids down early one night and just spend time being romantic with one another, even if it's not sexually based. Get that candle at dinner. Maybe the kids had mac and cheese for dinner. And then you save it one night where you guys can have a nice dinner, something like that. Where you can really romanticize each other and make sure that you're not just seeing her as a mom, she's not just seeing you as a dad. That's the first thing I'd say.
[00:54:52] Speaker A: Make use of them.
[00:54:53] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry, can I add something on there? One thing I would add, continue to dress to impress your spouse. I don't know if you had that on here anywhere, but you can get that mode, especially as moms. I'm not trying to throw them under the bus. But even husbands as well come home. Maybe husbands come home from work and man, it's straight into the sweatpants and straight into the whatever. And maybe for the wives, I'm going to dress in what's comfortable.
Certainly not saying you got to be in a dress and heels and the guy's got to be in a suit all the time. But there still needs dress impression. Yeah, there needs to be some element of, no, I want my husband to think I look really good or I want my wife to really think I look good when I come home from work and whatnot. And again, we would continue to hit the gym and all these things. I think there needs to be some element of that rather than just, well, I'm in Mom mode right now or I'm just in work mode right now for the husbands. And so I just don't have time for that. No, you need to continue to, again, dress to impress. Try to catch your wife's eye, try to catch your husband's eye.
I think that's very important. A lot of People can miss that.
[00:55:52] Speaker C: And I would say that's a great point. I would also say make use of quickies. You're not always going to have to have the marathon session type thing. You're not always going to have time for that.
I'm not a big fan of scheduling it, but you can look ahead and go, hey, I don't have to go into work on Friday. I get to have a little bit of later start or this night we're going to be there. Let's be talking about it. Ramp up the communication big time and the sexy communication.
Send some spicy text forth as you're prepping throughout that day to just keep one another engaged and to let them know, I'm thinking about you sexually. I'm thinking about you in this way. Even if you don't end up having sex that night, it's still nice to know. It's an ego boost. It's an esteem boost to know that your spouse still desires you in that way. So I would absolutely increase the communication on that point.
Again, scheduling, we talk about it, not the end of the world to schedule, but make sure if you schedule, it's not like, okay, at 09:00 p.m. On Thursday, we got to do it. And then it's more of a chore duty based thing. You can schedule it, but let it flow. I think we're going to have a little more time on this night. Let's build up to it. Let's make it special. Maybe she wears some lingerie, whatever it is, right?
Make it important. Make it special. Don't lose that. We wanted to get into it. The advice for older married couples. Now you can look at us three. We are not old.
So therefore, yes, this is coming from theoretical advice, not experience. And so you may have people that go, well, what do you guys know?
[00:57:15] Speaker A: Jackson? I knew it was happening.
[00:57:17] Speaker C: He's a couple of years away. But as far as goes with advice for older, I would say I'll start this off in the past to you guys. Again, this is more on theoretical, but having worked with this as well, stereotype, same thing. You can't go off of, like, well, they just don't want as much. It can become more of a struggle because erectile dysfunction does happen at 50%, 60% for men above the age of 55. That is a natural thing. She's going through menopause. There are bodily changes, there are chemical changes taking place which can make it more difficult.
Once again, lean into the sexual communication, lean into the intimacy in other areas of your life, and talk a lot about what your body's doing as a guy, it can drop your self esteem quite a bit because it's like, man, I just can't get the erection that I used to get. Okay, go to the doctor. See a doctor for it, but talk to your wife about that. Talk to how it makes you feel, and that sounds weird. As a guy, we want to be tough and everything. Recognize that that is a.
It's going to be a struggle, but that's okay. And don't say, well, 70 year olds just don't want sex anymore. I've worked with multiple sex addicts in their 70s that still are regularly engaging in things they shouldn't be, but also are very much aroused at that age. So don't make the mistake of thinking you just won't desire it at that point. Work on communicating about it a lot more. The bodily changes do make it more difficult, but it doesn't have to be the end of your sexual relationship because so and so had a surgery or know you're having to take pills for XYZ, incorporate that. But just talk a lot about that, and don't let that be a shameful part of it, but let that be, we are growing together, and this is just part of old age, and that's okay. That would be my advice. What else would you say?
[00:58:56] Speaker B: I went to put stuff down. I was like, I don't have much here as far as the advice for the older, because, yeah, I don't know. I would say again, the communication has been the centerpiece of this episode. But I think looking around again at people that you respect, other marriages that you respect and older is obviously very relative. Maybe you're 65 year old couple and you look and you see a 50 year old couple that you highly respect their marriage. And we always say younger should be asking the older. And I think generally speaking that's a good thing. But once you get past a certain age, maybe it is a matter of let me look around at the marriages that I respect and the couples in my congregation that I respect and again, talk to them about it. I don't have much to add there as far as advice for older marriage. Jack, you got anything before we wrap.
[00:59:43] Speaker A: Up, I would just say if you hear some of this, it's never too late to fix a problem.
If you hear like, man, we've had issues with this for years. Well, again, don't take that normalcy bias of, well, I guess it's just not ever going to be that good.
[00:59:57] Speaker C: Figure it out.
[00:59:58] Speaker A: Like talk, communicate. Maybe you learned something here. Hopefully if you're in that situation that you can start working on together, man, I don't care if you're in your sixty s, seventy s, whatever else.
If there's a problem, you can still fix it and so do that.
[01:00:13] Speaker C: Yeah. As we wrap up, I will say, I think we mentioned this on the deep end, but for those that are listening that maybe want to submit comments as one of the perks of Patreon, of course we've talked about it being part of the deep end and getting that extra one. But we also are posting and we're going to do this for every episode from here on out. The ability to post anonymously. We're going to have a Google Doc set up. And so if you do have questions, feel free to join Patreon. Consider a donation, whatever you want to say. Lots of great content on there, but that allows you to comment anonymously on this. If you do have questions you'd like.
[01:00:46] Speaker B: Us to, we basically answer to get into the episode and answer additional questions, different topics and such.
[01:00:51] Speaker C: Exactly. So we will get to your question if that's something that you do. So we'd appreciate it. But either way, continue to send in your comments. Guys, we do want to know there's struggle around this particular issue. So we realize a lot of stories, a lot of hurt things like that.
[01:01:05] Speaker B: Sorry, will go last thing I would say next week is going to be awesome. So episode 100 dropped.
[01:01:10] Speaker C: Yes, it is.
[01:01:11] Speaker B: Incredibly excited about that. So please, I'm not going to say mark your calendars or anything like that.
[01:01:17] Speaker A: But yeah, it's going to be no, mark your calendar. Tell them be there.
[01:01:20] Speaker C: Okay. There you go. Yeah, that's right. Be there.
[01:01:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And keep submitting the questions again, we're going to come up with some of our own but 1 minute answer type of questions. Short and sweet stuff about whatever you can think of. Already gotten a bunch of good ones, so looking forward to that. Guys, if there's nothing else, let's go ahead and wrap up our episode 99, and next time we see most of it, we'll see some folks for the deep end. But other than that, we will talk to you guys for episode 100 next week of Think Deeper. Thanks for joining.
