59 Mystery, Covenant, Vocation, and Being "Submissive" in the Marriage Bed

Mar 15, 2021

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Intro: Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Interior Integration for Catholics brings to you in each episode the best psychological information essential for your human formation, knowledge that is fundamental in shoring up the natural foundation for your Catholic spiritual life.
2. This podcast helps you focus inward on your interior integration -- to help you bring together the different parts of yourself into unity and harmony with God in the natural realm.
3. In this podcast, we confront the tough internal questions we Catholics have in our day-to-day lives, we confront head-on our struggles in the natural realm, the psychological difficulties that keep us from fully loving our Lord and our Lady in a deep, personal, intimate way and living out our vocations, including our vocation to Catholic marriage which necessarily brings in both sexuality and religion.
4. And we're dealing with sexuality and religion in this episode for two primary reasons: first to free you to love God our Father, Jesus our Brother, the Holy Spirit and Our Mother Mary more and more over time and
5. Second, to love you neighbor as yourself -- And who is your neighbor? If you are married, your first neighbor, your closest neighbor, the neighbor toward whom you have the most responsibilities is your spouse. Because of your marriage vows.
6. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.
7. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor
8. This is episode 59, released on March 15, 2021
9. This is the 11th episode in our series on sexuality the second in our subseries on Catholic marriages
10. Now we are zeroing in on sexuality within Catholic marriages and we're going diagnose some extremely common relational problems between Catholic spouses that get expressed through how they relate sexually.
11. So this episode is titled Mystery, Covenant, Vocation, and Being "Submissive" in the Marriage Bed. So get ready, prepare yourself for light bulbs to switch on and shine brightly as we explore new and much clearer ways of thinking about sexual life in Catholic marriages, grounded in the perennial teachings of the Catholic Church and informed by the best of psychology.
12. I'm doing this subseries on sexuality within Catholic marriage because I want you to have ways out of the sexual traps that so many Catholic married couple find themselves in, the negative cycles, the problematic repeating patterns that are so frustrating, that cause so much conflict and that harm people, even Catholic spouses who want to do the right thing.
13. And even if you're not trapped, your marriage is sound, love is growing -- there is going to be so much in these episodes to deepen the understanding, the awareness, the empathy, the commitment, and the love.
The lay of the land
1. Podcast oriented toward Catholic serious about the faith
1. But we are imperfect. We forget who we are -- we forget that we are beloved children of God when we get blended with parts of us that are overcome with the intensity of emotions, passions
1. And Marriage is a huge challenge. Catholic Scripture Scholar Peter Williamson: Catholic Commentary on the Sacred Scriptures Ephesians Baker Academic p. 154 "Probably no element of human life arouses more longing and hope for happiness, yet yields as much pain and disappointment as marriage."
1. Conscious or unconscious assumptions:
  1. Sex is dirty. God doesn't want us to have sex.
2. 1. But sex is also necessary
    1. I'm married
  2. 1. Procreation: Be fruitful and multiply
1. Shame. Episode 49
  1. Shame is at the center -- hard to talk about this because it is so personal and so intimate, and often so bound up with shame.
    1. Sexuality not talked about, not discussed
    2. Sexuality part and parcel of our bodies, all about our bodies
    3. Catholics who are serious about their faith often have a propensity to start with self-judgement and self-condemnation, like at the end of a trial, without really understanding themselves well.
      1. Internal self-shaming
    5. And all of this makes sense, makes sense, because almost all of us Catholic adults have sinned sexually.
    6. So many unmet needs and coded messages being expressed through sexuality -- can seem like a minefield
    7. Often leads to avoiding God
    8. Model of suppression and condemnation. Out of conscious awareness, then it doesn't exist any more
    9. Lots of bad advice out there.
2. 1. So we try to go it alone and often that means without God
Anthropological basis
1. All practices of psychology are grounded in an anthropology
  1. Philosophy
2. 1. Theology
3. 1. Epistemology
4. 1. Metaphysics
5. 1. Logic
1. Feminist Psychology
1. This episode -- more spiritual foundation. I want you to understand where I am coming from.
1. Fundamental Need to Grip on to Romans 8:28
  1. High stakes table
2. 1. Pain and disappointment
    1. Wanting spouse to be God -- Unmet needs, episode 57
  2. 1. The Vision -- Considering Parts in Marriage
      1. The real reasons why Catholic Sacramental Marriages Fail
        
        Parts with unmet attachment needs. Deep relational needs, often unconscious
      2. Attachment needs -- held by parts
        
        Seen, Heard, Known, Understood
        
        Safety, Security
        
        Comforted, Soothed Reassured
        
        Cherished, Rejoiced in, Delighted in
        
        Willing the highest good
      3. Leads to self-absorption
        
        Definition of self-absorption -- preoccupied with oneself or one’s own affairs, sometimes to the point of excluding others or the outside world.”
        
        Needs for God not being met
        
        Makes sense that people look for these needs to be met in marriage
        
        Marriage as the "last great hope"
        
        Puts tremendous pressure on the marriage
        
        Leads to utterly unrealistic expectations for the marriage -- spouse can't do anything right
        
        Wanting the Spouse to be God.
      4. Parts taking over
        
        It's parts of us that are angry, disappointed, disillusioned that want to give up on marriages and give up on God.
        
        It's parts of us that