This spring, Julia and Jeremiah are answering ten of the most common questions they hear from clients, exvangelicals, and the larger cultural zeitgeist.

One of the most common questions is "What happens if sex hurts?"

In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah are joined by Dr. Camden Morgante (@drcamden on Instagram), author of the new book Recovering from Purity Culture. They reflect on how to address and reduce the physical and emotional pain that a repressive situation or larger culture, such as Purity Culture, might bring to a sexual experience.

Join them for a practical, empathetic conversation about:

Why Psychology (6:45): Camden kicks us off, " I went to Christian college, grew up at the height of purity culture. I saw the effects on my clients, realized some of the effects in myself that I didn't know were caused by purity culture. But being able to put those pieces together, I really wanted to just offer what I had learned as a psychologist to others because I felt like I brought a different perspective than some of the other professionals."
Catching up to Purity Culture (9:00): Julia notes, " Also in the field of psychology, especially sex therapy, in which we operate, We haven't quite caught up to what purity culture actually has meant for the sexual and relational lives of a generation of folks, both who grew up in conservative Christian spaces, or who might not have grown up in conservative Christian spaces."
Purity Culture & Trauma (11:00): Camden says, " I conceptualize purity culture as a form of trauma for many people. It causes a trauma response in our bodies for many people."
Manifestations of Trauma (15:00): Camden notes, " I think vaginismus and sexual pain disorders are a very overt manifestation of that trauma response because the vaginal walls are clenching involuntarily, literally clenching and pulling away and avoiding."
Normalization of Pain (19:00): Jeremiah discusses, " There's also this really interesting relationship with pain. There's an expectation of pain, right? A normalization of pain that also exists in the divorce of the mind body split"
"Dealing With it" (21:00): Camden highlights, "Gendered expectations, like "the woman needs to just grin and bear it and give her husband sex. Your experience doesn't really matter. Your pleasure doesn't really matter. It's all about him getting a release."
Divorcing the notion of work (23:00): Jeremiah notes, " Coming back to something isn't something that has to be painful. Coming back to something is investing, putting effort into something. Work, so to speak. How can we also divorce that from the physical pain that often gets attributed to work, especially in like capitalistic kind of post-industrial types of ways of thinking about production"
Contained Trauma (25:00): Julia discusses, "It exists in a container, so to speak, and we can do some very targeted therapy around that. However, when we're thinking about the cumulative or complex trauma of purity culture, we don't have a container around it."
Sitting with Grief (31:00): Camden says, " A lot of it is allowing yourself to hold space for those emotions to give a voice to them and to validate them for yourself instead of judging them or pushing them away. There's so much theology of spiritually bypassing difficult and painful emotions and just pray about it and be happy and things like that. And instead like being able to really sit with the disappointment and the grief."
Overwhelming Emotions (35:00): Julia shares, "All of our emotions could just like all be in the room right now. But let's hold onto this emotion, talk with it, spend some time with it. And I found that to be helpful too in the like onslaught that can happen when grief is present related or unrelated to purity culture or sexuality."
Doing the Work (40:00): Camden talks about, " It often feels like with any trauma work: Three steps forward, two steps back kind of thing. And I also tell people like a deep tissue massage, you are not always gonna feel good when you leave therapy. You know, it may be a little bit painful to extract the shrapnel."
Freedom & Fear (46:00): Camden ends us off, " Moving away from that, it is so much more spacious and expansive and so much more freedom. But that can also feel really scary."

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