Sexvangelicals

A series called "How to Practice Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass" wouldn't be complete without an episode in which we talk about the scene of many crimes of jackassdom: social media. After all, the ways that we communicate in virtual platforms are quite different from in real life interactions. We can edit the things that we say. We lack the nonverbal context of understanding what happened before the interaction. We don't see how other people respond, which makes it easier to disconnect and dehumanize. In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah explore: Hiding Behind Avatars (11:00): Jeremiah discusses, "I had a client that explained, I talked with this other woman that I met on a dating app about what my fantasies are. I interrupted. Actually, you didn't talk with this person. You wrote out an idea of a sexual fantasy on your computer or your phone, and you sent it to this person … you're not present for the response that this other avatar has. You have no idea how they're receiving it." Bodily Responses (15:00): Jeremiah notes, "Your avatar has the emotional status that you as a human being have. When you read something upsetting that someone posts, your cardiovascular system responds in the same way it would if it were to see that interaction played out in real life. Your heart rate picks up, your breathing shallows, and you respond behaviorally and verbally in similar ways. Your fight or flight system is convinced that you're engaging with a real person, and more than that, A real threat." What Not to Do on the Internet (25:00): Jeremiah shares an experience he had trying to solve an internet dispute through conversation: "I re-read one of his comments and he threatened to, quote, blast us on his social media channel. Specifically with the intent to publicly shame us despite our conversation about shared values and similar work interests. Despite the fact that when I shared my full perspective including my own vulnerable stories of navigating racial challenges as a Hispanic person growing up in a white community he was vocally in agreement with me." Social Justice Warrior Olympics (27:00): Julia summarizes, "When you acknowledge perhaps a shortcoming or a blind spot within his own response to you or others, he wasn't willing to engage in self reflection on his end." Virtue Signaling (27:00): Jeremiah highlights: "While companies in actual law enforcement use suspension, fines, or contract termination as punishment for bad behavior, in the absence of that oversight from meta, discord, and fellow tech companies, shame becomes the primary consequence for bad behavior." Internet Shame & EMPish Systems (30:00): Julia draws the connection, "This reminds me of what [Jesus] said about praying in your closet versus making ostentatious shows of how righteous you are or how liberal or progressive you are. Sometimes the ex-evangelical world actually repackages the same shitty patterns of behavior that we learned within the EMPish systems." Shame & Virtue Signaling (32:00): Jeremiah notes, "As we've learned from our research on evangelicalism and from the broader shame experts like Brene Brown, shame has a lot of power and not the good kind of power. I think ex evangelicals can be especially susceptible to doling out shame to attempt to resolve their problems because as you said, that's primarily what we were taught in our religious communities of origin." How to Resolve Conflict on the Internet (36:00): After a similar anecdote, but with a happier ending, Julia reflects on how it impacted her, "I was frustrated and burnt out that the world of social media can be so reactive and frankly mean even from those who are potential collaborators, which is true for both Kevin from the internet and Jamie from social media. Sexual health work, especially in ex evangelical spaces, is challenging work, and if our own team can't learn to pass the ball respectfully, what the hell are we actually even doing?" Online Criticism & the Gottman's (39:00): Jeremiah says, "Criticism invites one of two things. Either for the person to shut down, or, defensiveness, which is another of the Gottman Four Horsemen. The Gottman Institute defines defensiveness as self protection in the form of righteous indignation, innocent victimhood, or any number of processes in an attempt to ward off a perceived attack." Gotcha! (41:00): Julia describes: "I'll define gotcha moments, [they] are when folks screenshot or repost some sort of exchange with another person or group showing how they one upped the other […] So those gotcha moments, although they are trying to solve an important problem, actually reinforce the problem that they're trying to solve." Short Form Content (46:00): Jeremiah urges, "For the love of God, I implore you do not diagnose yourself, your partner, your ex partner, or your relationship with anything that you see in short form content, especially when not posted by a licensed professional. You have ADHD if and only when you have been diagnosed by a licensed professional." Social Media To-Dos (50:00): Jeremiah says, "Part one, speak within your own scope of practice and experience. Part two, when you are speaking outside of your own scope of practice and experience, when you're giving opinions about things, for instance, please make sure to state that opinion and expertise are not the same thing. And three, be sure to follow people and engage with folks who are doing the same thing." Lead with Empathy (52:00): Julia notes, "If you would not make that insult in public, and I would like to believe, although perhaps this is naive, that most of us are kinder in person, then don't say it on social media. Check yourself, ask yourself, would I say this to a person if we were sitting across from each other at a coffee shop?" Building Community (54:00): Jeremiah ends on a bright note, "Get as personal as possible. Build relationships with other people. We encourage direct messages. We absolutely encourage whenever possible Zoom calls. Or, best case scenario, in person meetings. Take folks out to coffee. Have a nice lunch date with people. Get to know the folks on a personal level to the best of your ability that you're able to."

Healthy systems, be they families, organizations, or countries, require healthy leadership. In our work as therapists, coaches, and cultural critics, we pay attention to the following question: How does one communicate to the larger system that they are a healthy leader? This week, we talk with Matthew Remski (@matthew_remski), co-host of the Conspirituality podcast (@conspiritualitypod) about two strategies that folks use to develop influence. Charisma. Vibes. Of course, these are notoriously difficult entities to quantify. And as we talk about with Matthew, there are significant consequences to a system when it assesses success primarily through one's charisma and vibes. A system that places high value on charisma and the construction of vibes is one that is prone to practice jackassdom. The projection of an emotional experience at the expense of healthy discussion about policies, positions, and context encourages moralism, virtue signaling, and blaming. Matthew talks with us about: Experience v. Expertise (8:00): Jeremiah starts us off, "Too often a social media brand will post something based on their own individual experience, not connected to any sort of larger research, cultural or historical precedent, and identify it as truth … But expertise requires years, if not decades, of practice, study, asking questions, and wrestling with the complexity of one particular area." Experience Informing Expertise (10:00): Julia adds, "You and I have a theoretical model based in an understanding of the science of relationships and sexuality that informs the way that we operate and informs the way that we operate at any given time. Our experience shapes the way that we consider the scientific process. The scientific process includes expertise and our new practice of science creates new experiences." Charisma & Substituting Scope of Practice (21:00): Matthew says, "Because of that fragility, that underlying anxiety, this person in this leadership position always has to try to generate a kind of halo effect. They always have to reach beyond what they're actually doing to make it imply more than what it actually does. […] Charisma itself is anxious, and it must always come up with something else to justify what it's offering." Yoga & Charisma (24:00): Julia shares her experience of being a yoga teacher at one point, "Some classes are more popular than others, and they tend to be more popular based on who teaches it. And that teacher doesn't necessarily have any additional qualifications, and often they are speaking outside of the scope of practice when the person leading the ovarian health yoga probably is not an expert in women's health or anything related to the ovaries." Yoga & the Industry (26:00): Matthew discusses, "There is an outsized percentage of top yoga instructors over the last 20 years. who come from theater and film or from the professional dance world […] And I think a lot of people actually come up against a block. They're like, "Oh, I have this Aesthetic skill. I can move through space. I can sing and I can dance. But now I'm using those skills to communicate spirituality. Is that okay?" The wellness world brings that contradiction into a lot of sharpness." Manufactured Charisma (29:00): Jeremiah highlights, "The other way that you can develop charisma is through outside production processes. We see things like film editing on Tiktok, for instance […] I imagine we're going to see different ways of people developing this manicured image that I am the expert because I have this really well produced film or that I have figured out how to engineer my voice to sound in a particular way." Healing & Reparative Engagement (37:00): Matthew offers, "I think that many people who are disillusioned from church life because of institutional abuse, and rightfully so, will often find themselves, in positions in which it feels like it is impossible to trust that community can be safe, or that people can actually be earnestly helpful and dependable and not betray each other, right? And so, it becomes an existential threat to the health of a person's recovery after coming out of a high demand recovery group or an abusive church environment. And so what Eve Sedgwick recommends is what she calls reparative reading. Looking to the people around you to see what are the things that are actually enjoyable or pleasurable or generative that you can actually focus on and through your attention." The Loudest Voices (41:00): Matthew points out, "Sometimes the loudest voices are the most abstract voices. They're the stickiest voices. I think that's really the problem. The more you can simplify something, the stickier it will get." The -isms & Moral Superiority (43:00): Julia says, "Something that I've noticed in liberal groups, especially the exvangelical groups, is that there's a moral superiority that can come with the paranoid reading. Like, well, I know better now because I left this group. So I see all the isms, right? I see the sexism, I see the homophobia, I see this, and you don't see it. You don't see that power differential." Self-Flagellation (53:00): Matthew highlights, "It's very easy for the politics of material change to be subsumed by this sense that as a person, I have to become a perfect vessel of something in order to be the change that I want to see in the world or something like that, right? […] Self flagellation that comes along naturally with the feeling of demoralization in late capitalism, that it's very, very difficult to be successful." Being the Perfect SJW (56:00): Julia says, "We have to be the perfect social justice warrior because God forbid we'd be called out or even worse called in. And then at the same time, we're also obsessed with self flagellating and talking about the work that we're doing and all of the ways that we're confronting our internalized stigma, and we're trying to do both at the same time: Avoid being called out while also making sure that we self flagellate and tell everyone I know about my privilege and I'm gonna preface every single thing I say by recognizing these are my areas of privilege."

November's presidential election represents a comparison between two forms of government. One, a democracy, driven by the principle that many people have voices, and ideally a government that works for a large sum of people. Two, an autocracy, driven by the principle that few people have voices. Autocracies, such as the 2024 Republican Party, often communicate via jackassdom, including blame, repression, and fear-mongering. In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah talk about common communication ploys from autocracy, and ways that progressives and other pro-democracy voters can avoid responding in ways that reinforce jackassdom. We talk about: Frustration & Empathy (6:00): Jeremiah starts us off, "We recognize that this podcast series is happening because so many people are some combination of confused, enraged, and exhausted by the horrendous behavior of the 21st century Republican Party. Behaviors that dehumanize and segregate need to be named as such. However, there are ways to do that that lead to productive conversation and change. And there are ways to do that that continue to reinforce the negative interaction cycle." Strategies of Autocracy (12:00): Jeremiah names, "We have a responsibility to understand, to talk about, the psychology and communication strategies of autocratic governments. Almost all of which includes three things. One, disinformation, or the active distortion of information. Two, propaganda, the presentation of information specifically for the activation of a particular emotion, typically anger or fear. And three, acts of violence, as we see through Proud Boys showing up and camping out in Springfield, Ohio." Populism (14:00): Julia says, "So there's two elements here, it seems. One, there is a singular leader who says that they, and they alone, have the solution to the world's problems. A real life savior complex. And two, an element of gaslighting is occurring. Sure. To promote that the majority wants one thing when the majority certainly does not want that thing involves a combination of disinformation, deception, and propaganda." Trump's Bad Behavior (22:00): Julia reflects on Trump's startling introduction to his election, "I heard from even Christians that I respected that this was just an example of quote unquote, "locker room talk." Which is one narrative. But actually what this is, is bragging about sexual assault. In 2016, I had been a practicing therapist for some years and I and many women had an awakening to experiences that we had had that were assaultive and abusive. This gave us some language. But it was also fueling massive disinformation on the side of Republicans." Populism & Anti-Intellectualism (24:00): Jeremiah discusses, "Moffitt in the book Populism describes three major communication strategies that populists use. First, he explains that populism goes hand in hand with anti intellectualism, or a resistance to expertise and the scientific process … So what does anti anti-intellectual populist look like in real life? Again, we have a lot of examples of this. Over the last year, we've been following the banned books process in Florida and other states, where Ron DeSantis and others have railed against critical race theory." Moralism v. Moral Critique (30:00): Jeremiah says, "[McKibben] distinguishes between moralism and moral criticism. McKibben defines moral criticism as a well reasoned and thoughtful critique of another person's actions. Most importantly, these reflections acknowledge a basic sense of respect for the other person. Moralism happens when that blame becomes, using her words, inappropriate or excessive. It presents a clear villain or scapegoat who can be blamed for the ills of society. It places blame and namecalls people who may confront or operate differently from the populist actor and suggests that others who join the populist in this blaming absolve themselves from their own issues." Social Media & Limiting Empathy (33:00): Julia notes, "Mediums of communication such as social media and texting formats exacerbate those forms of dialogue because you cannot see and physically engage with the non verbals and humanities of someone's avatar, which prohibit you from experiencing empathy and other inborn physiological systems of relational checks and balances." Why We Define Terms (37:00): Julia highlights, "The lack of defining terms could create confusion. Two different people could have different understandings of the word, which gets in the way of finding solid ground. It also opens the door to a populist individual or group, creating pressure to narrowly define the term in a particular way, at the expense of the historical complexity of the term.' Different Sides of the Same Coin (40:00): Jeremiah sharply says, "Evangelism works, populism and jackassdom are all common bedfellows." Relationship 101 (42:00): Julia discusses our first relationship 101, "All of us to be aware of the times that we have moved into moralistic jackassdom territory. I really want to spend a moment talking about the myth of the perfect social justice warrior. So in so many liberal circles, especially with cancel culture being so high, we've set up this standard of what it means to be a good liberal, a good progressive, a good social justice warrior. And frankly, it reminds me a lot of growing up in a highly fundamentalist Christian community." My Way or the Highway (46:00): Jeremiah shares, " I've mentioned on this podcast before that I got kicked out of the church, which is 92% very much what happened. The other 8% of that though, I think in my own version of that was as I was learning more about sexuality, learning more about sex therapy, I think rather than kind of saying to church leadership, like this is the direction that I want to go with this and saying, 'can we have some conversations about this?' I wish that I had facilitated more of a dialogue between different people in the leadership. And, and who knows what the outcome of that would have been. But I think in general, any time that I move into a space where it looks like I think I have the answers, sometimes it's just like, we need to make a decision and like, I'm just going full steam ahead." Moral Superiority (50:00): Julia points out, "Liberals in particular tend to use academic words and either one they use it not knowing actually what it means I am sure that many people use language around heteronormativity or decolonization without understanding it Or, they do understand it, choose not to define it, and use that as a moral superiority context."

We are less than two months away from the 2024 Election. This Election season is a bit different, because rather than voting for separate political parties, we're voting for two systems: democracy and autocracy (specifically, a Christian Nationalist theocracy). Autocratic governments tend to rely on disinformation, propaganda, repression of voter rights, and fear-mongering in order to develop their power. The 2024 Republican Party is no different. A lot has been written about how the public can ethically respond, and quite frankly, there aren't a lot of great answers for the next 6 months, other than voting en masse. We know responses that make it worse. Name-calling and blaming, while potentially cathartic, only entrench the polarization. Communicating around social identity ("White people do ____." Women think ____.") reinforces the stereotypes that progressivism attempts to reject. From now until Election Day, we will be releasing a series called "How to Do Social Justice Without Being a Jackass." We'll talk with our guests about how to hold our anger and fear without responding in dehumanizing ways. In our introduction episode, we talk about: EMPish Spaces & Being a Jackass (13:00): Julia notes, "To put it bluntly, folks from Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal communities, or EMPish folks, can be jackasses when it comes to communicating and upholding the values of purity culture. There's obviously overt, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic messages often expressed directly from the pulpit or from Christian publishing houses. That can translate into some abhorrent behavior on social media. I think a lot of people are sick of it." Deconstruction as a Political Process (15:00): Jeremiah highlights, "Deconstruction, especially from EMPish communities is inherently a political process. My guess is that in two months, most of you will likely be voting for Kamala Harris in the election. Not necessarily because you agree with her strategies or policies, maybe you do, maybe you don't. But because you've walked away from communities that enact the same policies of Project 2025." Persuasion & Pointlessness (17:00): Jeremiah notes, "Trying to convince someone that they're wrong only entrenches their position, especially when that someone is fully convinced that they are right, as EMPish Republicans often do, as they've convinced themselves that Trump is sent from God to deliver a troubled American nation out of exile." Responding to Hate (20:00): Julia says, "We can talk about misogyny, but responding to misogyny with, I'm now unfriending all my friends who are misogynists that I didn't know were misogynists, is not a great way to actually respond to misogyny. Because even if they are harmful, dangerous people, dehumanizing is actually maybe only going to fuel their dangerous fire." Accessibility (25:00): Jeremiah discusses, "Our country has a pretty sordid history of removing accessibility and affordability to these basic things, be that through the reduction of taxes, which reduces government services to provide quality education and safe infrastructure, gerrymandering and other strategies to reduce voting power, or straight up discrimination that bars groups of people from receiving services and entryways to success." Relational Health (27:00): Jeremiah defines, "Relational health is a process of developing sustainable, healthy forms of collaboration with other important people that allows small groups of people to meet common shared goals, such as sexual flourishing, emotional connection, or financial support. Relational health focuses specifically on how two or more people interact with each other to solve problems and meet their goals." Jackass Distinctions (29:00): Julia says, "I'm considering how individuation is often an act of protest, which is vital. However, protest is an act of separation rather than collaboration. You and I are experts in communication and as experts in communication, we always prefer collaboration over separation. However, in the face of oppression, protest and separation, is often the only option. We'd like to distinguish Jackass-dom, which is communicating in dehumanizing ways from the important work of political protest and separation, which is necessary to preserve human rights." "Jackass-dom" Continued (31:00): Julia adds: "As relationship experts, we would love differentiation to be the dominant practice within political advocacy. That's not always the case. What we're facing in our country is not just an unwillingness of one party to acknowledge the role that the history of discrimination plays in our country, but their active recreation of discriminatory practices. Which sometimes means individuation is the only option rather than a differentiated approach." Power & Shame (34:00): Jeremiah details, "I think that's actually one of the primary ways that liberals end up being social justice jackasses.Connected to that, there's a vocabulary that liberals have developed that has linked power with shame. The more privilege you have, the more untrustworthy of an individual you are. Change takes an AA approach. The first step is admitting that you have a problem or that your privilege is a problem." Behavior v. Values (36:00): Julia draws the connection, "Behavior focuses on what a person or relationship decides to do. Value focuses on what a person or relationship chooses to do. I think liberals can do the same thing, except rather than talking about behaviors, they talk about identities. And a huge caveat, Identities are really, really important. We're not suggesting that we don't talk about it. The work of social justice in many ways requires it, but we can't end the conversation there." Reposting & Unfollowing Without Context (40:00): Julia discusses, "For starters, it pits two people or groups against each other, the Christian and the non Christian, the racist and the anti racist. Or, to go back to the example that I gave earlier in the episode, the misogynist and the anti misogynist. Look at me, I am unfriending all those people who are misogynist. How does that help anyone or anything and I actually mean that like with curiosity, I don't know how that helps anyone or anything except further reinforcing that you are virtue signaling to your echo chamber that you are a good social justice warrior that you are on the right side of history." "I'm Better Than You!" (44:00): Jeremiah notes, "Jackass-dom also includes virtue signaling and the creation of a moral hierarchy. I am a better human, or you are less evolved than me because you have these specific beliefs." Relationship 101 (46:00): Jeremiah discusses one of today's relationship 101's: "The third thing that we want to name is to take a relationship approach. As you mentioned earlier, Julia, identity is really important. However, when we start with identity, such as our gender, orientation, or race, we're talking about a large group of people and ourselves as one member of a large group of people. And as such, we become more prone to stereotypes, essentialism, or black and white thinking, and moral superiority. Instead, consider the dyadic relationships that are the most important to you. Your siblings, your partnerships, your family relationships, your best friends, and speak from the perspective of what might help those two and three person relationships thrive rather than a large group of people who may have different understandings of what it means to be a member of that orientation."

It's the first week of school for many students and families. The excitement of a new school year comes with new relationships, new beginnings, and setting goals. For many folks, especially those who grew up in conservative religious environments, setting goals can carry an enormous amount of anxiety with it. This week, Julia and Jeremiah explore what it might look like to engage with the back-to-school season without the pressure of setting goals. We discuss: Goals (2:00): Jeremiah kicks us off, "The pressure to constantly be achieving goals is not unique to Evangelical, Mormon, or Pentecostal communities, or those coming out of highly controlled communities. However, if you are in the exvangelical or deconstructing types of communities, you may struggle with concepts of productivity or purposes for some pretty unique reasons." Pressure to Be Excited (5:00): Julia notes, "Those back to school ads seem to suggest that we should all be getting back to something, even if it's not school. There's a pressure to be excited about it." Heaven: The Ultimate Goal (10:00): Jeremiah highlights, "The biggest goal in these communities is getting to heaven, which you can do through a variety of methods. There was much more dialogue around the behaviors that would get you rejected from heaven than the behaviors that would allow you into heaven." Double Binds & Goals (12:00): Julia discusses, "I learned that the most important thing I could do was help the non Christians get to heaven through the process of evangelism. However, here was the double bind. I also learned that these secular folks were dangerous. So I had very little contact with anyone who was not in my fundamentalist community. The double bind was to save as many souls as possible and don't spend too much time with the people that need saving because they're dangerous." The Goal of Play (13:00): Jeremiah points out that in EMPish circles, "Play can't be play. Play has to have a goal. It has to have a function to it." EMPish Communities & Developmental Loss (18:00): Julia notes, "Folks who survive high control religious groups experience what a previous therapist of mine would call a developmental loss. In the context of today's episode, this might mean that the anxiety of witnessing to your friends, the hypervigilance about modesty, and the learned denial of needs for the sake of the kingdom that impeded your ability to play, use your imagination, and so forth." The Concept of "I'm Third" (20:00): Julia shares, "The concept was I'm third, which means that the goals of the kingdom of God and the needs of others always supersede your own. For me, this meant that even basic human needs like sleeping, eating, and engaging in leisure activities were either discouraged or came with a deep sense of guilt denying myself was something honorable." Athletics & the EMPish (23:00): Jeremiah draws the parallel, "I actually think that there are a lot of similarities between folks who grew up in evangelical communities and folks who do either professional or collegiate athletics. The requirements are often the same. The outcome of that is people who have this sense that I am only successful when I'm able to achieve high quantities of things." The Weight of Heaven or Hell (26:00): Julia says, "Small decisions can still provoke anxiety for me. I often have to remind myself that what I eat for dinner or how I spend an hour of leisure time are decisions that don't hold the weight of heaven or hell. They can actually just be neutral choices. I also don't think it's a coincidence that for many folks, these small decisions that hold so much anxiety are often around basic needs. Sleep, food, exercise." Westminster Shorter Catechism (29:00): Julia shares, "So let's say my friend is quizzing me on a question. If I use the article "A" rather than the article "The", that would be a point off. And we would dock each other to the most extreme degree. The absolute vicious rigid perfectionism that the adults enforced on me and my peers created a culture of anxiety, perfectionism, and competition." Rubrics for Educational Success (31:00): Jeremiah discusses, "I'm also thinking about education and what the purpose of education is. And do we know that we have successful students by their ability, ability to think critically, to be creative or their ability to fall into line and repeat back and regurgitate back what adults are giving them? And in your system that you grew up in, it's very much the goal is getting it right, getting it perfect, rather than stretching yourself, or imagining something new, or being curious, or any other rubrics for potential success in education." Guilt (34:00): Jeremiah says, "The fourth consequence to the Christian obsession with evangelism directly ties to the theme of this episode, which is that taking breaks from goals can come with massive amounts of guilt and shame. When a person's soul is in a balance between heaven and hell, how can you even consider taking a break? Even after a person leaves a high control religious group, the guilt and shame that can follow them makes it extremely difficult to take a break without spiraling." On-Ramp/Off-Ramp & Taking a Break (38:00): Julia says, "Something that Jeremiah and I talk about with our clients, and something that we talk about on the podcast, is the on ramp and the off ramp towards a sexual experience. Thinking about sexuality as more than what happens with foreplay and genitals is highly essential. The on and the off ramp may be longer, or a person might need to make more modifications. You are not obligated to power through your exhaustion to have a sexual experience. In fact, it might be better not to" Making Decisions (42:00): Julia offers, "Ask yourself, are you the kind of person when you are feeling anxious about a present moment decision? Ask yourself, are you more prone to make a reactive knee jerk decision? And then the best step is going to be slowing that down. Grab a drink of water, go to the bathroom, move your body for 30 seconds, really gently challenge yourself to slow that decision making down. If you are like me and you are more prone to getting stuck in paralysis, actually the best thing to do is to speed that up a little bit." Pressure & Sexuality (47:00): Jeremiah gives a piece of advice, "Let's reframe the performative, goal oriented approach to sexuality. Orgasm and penetration is not the pinnacle. It's not indicative of a positive, successful sexual experience. It could be, but it doesn't have to be. Ask yourself what the relationship might need. If that's laughter or play, consider a touch experience, a physical experience, a sexual experience that allows you to access that without putting too much pressure on it." Urgency Trap (50:00): Jeremiah discusses the last bit of Relationship 101, "Be aware and avoid to the best of your ability, the urgency trap and the urgency trap is this anything that tells you, Hey, the best time to do this is now." Rushing Desire (54:00): Julia notes, "Rushing into sexual scenarios is not typically a great recipe. Now, if you've got the capacity and you want to have an orgy every weekend, awesome, by all means, have so much fun with it. But what I have noticed within myself and now after many years of practicing within this community is that often the desire for those more diverse experiences comes from urgency rather than a personal internal desire. Two different types of desire. An urgency desire versus a personal internal desire."

Social media has the capacity to bring out the worst in us as communicators. Julia and Jeremiah talk about strategies for communicating as effectively as possible on social media, which can include taking a break from it altogether. We explore: What Not to Do on the Internet (6:30): Jeremiah shares an experience he had trying to solve an internet dispute through conversation: "I re-read one of his comments and he threatened to, quote, blast us on his social media channel. Specifically with the intent to publicly shame us despite our conversation about shared values and similar work interests. Despite the fact that when I shared my full perspective including my own vulnerable stories of navigating racial challenges as a Hispanic person growing up in a white community he was vocally in agreement with me." Social Justice Warrior Olympics (8:30): Julia summarizes, "When you acknowledge perhaps a shortcoming or a blind spot within his own response to you or others, he wasn't willing to engage in self reflection on his end." Virtue Signaling (10:00): Jeremiah highlights: "While companies in actual law enforcement use suspension, fines, or contract termination as punishment for bad behavior, in the absence of that oversight from meta, discord, and fellow tech companies, shame becomes the primary consequence for bad behavior." Internet Shame & EMPish Systems (12:00): Julia draws the connection, "This reminds me of what [Jesus] said about praying in your closet versus making ostentatious shows of how righteous you are or how liberal or progressive you are. Sometimes the ex-evangelical world actually repackages the same shitty patterns of behavior that we learned within the EMPish systems." Shame & Virtue Signaling (15:00): Jeremiah notes, "As we've learned from our research on evangelicalism and from the broader shame experts like Brene Brown, shame has a lot of power and not the good kind of power. I think ex evangelicals can be especially susceptible to doling out shame to attempt to resolve their problems because as you said, that's primarily what we were taught in our religious communities of origin." How to Resolve Conflict on the Internet (18:00): After a similar anecdote, but with a happier ending, Julia reflects on how it impacted her, "I was frustrated and burnt out that the world of social media can be so reactive and frankly mean even from those who are potential collaborators, which is true for both Kevin from the internet and Jamie from social media. Sexual health work, especially in ex evangelical spaces, is challenging work, and if our own team can't learn to pass the ball respectfully, what the hell are we actually even doing?" Online Criticism & the Gottman's (20:00): Jeremiah says, "Criticism invites one of two things. Either for the person to shut down, or, defensiveness, which is another of the Gottman Four Horsemen. The Gottman Institute defines defensiveness as self protection in the form of righteous indignation, innocent victimhood, or any number of processes in an attempt to ward off a perceived attack." Gotcha! (22:30): Julia describes: "I'll define gotcha moments, [they] are when folks screenshot or repost some sort of exchange with another person or group showing how they one upped the other […] So those gotcha moments, although they are trying to solve an important problem, actually reinforce the problem that they're trying to solve." Short Form Content (27:00): Jeremiah urges, "For the love of God, I implore you do not diagnose yourself, your partner, your ex partner, or your relationship with anything that you see in short form content, especially when not posted by a licensed professional. You have ADHD if and only when you have been diagnosed by a licensed professional." Social Media To-Dos (31:00): Jeremiah says, "Part one, speak within your own scope of practice and experience. Part two, when you are speaking outside of your own scope of practice and experience, when you're giving opinions about things, for instance, please make sure to state that opinion and expertise are not the same thing. And three, be sure to follow people and engage with folks who are doing the same thing." Lead with Empathy (33:30): Julia notes, "If you would not make that insult in public, and I would like to believe, although perhaps this is naive, that most of us are kinder in person, then don't say it on social media. Check yourself, ask yourself, would I say this to a person if we were sitting across from each other at a coffee shop?" Building Community (35:00): Jeremiah ends on a bright note, "Get as personal as possible. Build relationships with other people. We encourage direct messages. We absolutely encourage whenever possible Zoom calls. Or, best case scenario, in person meetings. Take folks out to coffee. Have a nice lunch date with people. Get to know the folks on a personal level to the best of your ability that you're able to." Thanks so much! Hope you have a great week!

Our work as relationship therapists invites couples to consider the variety of ways that their relationship could look, based on the values, traits, and preferences of the people in that relationship. Plenty of couples choose monogamy because it best aligns with these characteristics. However, performative monogamy refers to cultural aspects that reinforce explicit and implicit expectations of sexual exclusivity. On that note, we're talking this week about the performativity of weddings. Evangelical weddings take this a step further as the marriage and wedding ceremony represent the socially sanctioned way for two people to become sexual persons. We're joined by our marketing and communications director, Maddie, for this episode. The three of us talk about: Too Hot Too Handle (5:30): Julia kicks us off by discussing the Evangelical undertones of reality dating shows: "In these seemingly sex saturated types of shows, they're not as liberal as one might expect. There are usually puritanical rules underneath it." Capitalizing on Performative Capitalism (11:00): Julia notes: "I immediately think of how the wedding industry simultaneously creates and then capitalizes on the concept of performative capitalism … wedding dresses made of elaborate materials that folks typically only wear once are sold for thousands of dollars." Weddings as a Status Symbol (13:00): In discussing his own wedding Jeremiah highlights, "I think this is true in a lot of weddings that the bride becomes the symbol of the family's success. Both their success financially, and their success in raising a Christian daughter who is following all the rules of purity culture. Evangelical Weddings (29:00): Maddie says, "With my evangelical background, the idea that you have to wait until marriage to have sex. And so the engagements are super fast. So you might date like on average, it was about a year before he would propose. You'd say yes. And then you're married where statistically you're not even at a point where you've started to have tension as a couple and are learning how you're going to navigate that. You might be a year into a marriage before you even hit that." Giving Away the Bride & Patriarchy (32:00): Julia notes: "Patriarchal structures are about relationships between people. And relationships between social systems. So Maddie, when you talk about the giving away of the bride, that is still describing a relationship system in which the woman has some sort of belonging to the parental structure … And then ultimately say, our relationship between father and daughter is now transitioning to daughter husband, because of course the dominant norm, even in secular context, is a heterosexual wedding." KitchenAid Mixers & Marriage (37:00): Maddie shares, "When I moved to Boston … I remember I really wanted a KitchenAid stand mixer when I graduated college. But my mom actually said, don't get one now, they're really expensive just register for it for your wedding. So I never bought a mixer. The idea that there were a lot of basic kitchen implements I didn't buy because my mom actually said, 'just wait until you can register for that for your wedding.' Because she's bought a million KitchenAid mixers for all her friends. And it was going to be my turn for her friends to buy me something like that.`` Who Society Rewards (43:00): Jeremiah highlights, "Weddings remind us that society doesn't necessarily value the people that are most in need. Society values people and funds people who, like, follow the gender scripts and the family scripts." Lack of Modernization (45:00): Maddie says, "The wedding, at least in the U.S., the whole thing around them, it hasn't evolved to fit modern society. In the 1800s, you would leave your family's home and get married and you had nothing. So like people were going to like help you furnish your house and, you know, build out your food stockpile … But it hasn't adjusted to how society functions now. And we're still rewarding financially and with our attention what was kind of necessary 200 years ago." Morning After Breakfast v. Garter (51:00): Maddie answers, "At least at the breakfast, it's going to be like more elbowing and winking at the couple, as opposed to the pressure is on the woman, it's like, she's just an object that is undressing and you're just sitting there pretending to smile when it's like really far up your thigh. Everyone's watching you and you're just kind of reduced to like who the action is being done to." Surviving Weddings (01:05:00): Maddie offers a piece of advice, "Find one ally. Like, if you can bring a plus one, I would always just bring one of my close friends because then we are guaranteed to have a better time." Relationship 101 (01:11:00): Jeremiah shares, "You don't have to go to every wedding. If there are weddings that you don't want to go to though, and you feel pressure to for certain reasons, take a minute to think about what might happen either if you don't go or if you don't go to every event right in the wedding." Let's heal together!

Exploring sexual sabbaticals, pressures in Evangelical contexts, decrease of sexual activity among gen-Z, ebbs and flows of sexuality in relationships. Critique of Tim Keller's views on sex, navigating sexual expectations in marriage, importance of taking a break from sex, pleasure in relationships, complexity of breaks, and finding pleasure during stressful times.

Happy first official week of summer! We recognize that for many folks, summer requires a reorganization of scheduling and routines for parents, who have three months in which they cannot rely on schools to partner with them in rearing their children. While some parents see these three months as exciting, others face these months with growing trepidation. This week, we're talking about how to create structures that can hopefully make parenting a little less overwhelming for the next few months. Julia and Jeremiah talk about: Expectations (8:00): Jeremiah details the core of today's episode: "The pressure to be a fully present and engaged parent at all times can be really crushing. We'll discuss how EMPish communities model ideal parenting structures, and how this can harm both parents and children." Evangelical Parental Structure (14:00): Julia says, "Women were the primary nurturers of children, while fathers played the role, to use the language of my church growing up, head of household, which meant that men took the lead on major family decisions, including child related decisions, despite being less involved in the quantity of parenting than the mothers were. The father might consult with his wife. But, ultimately, the father had the final say." Fear-Based Parenting (18:00): In discussing EMPish communities, Jeremiah notes: "This parenting model is about control and controlling, about adults being able to control children, to put parameters around them. The point of parenting is to create parent child interactions where that sense of control is created. Corporal punishment is often a way to create that through a sense of a fear based parenting." Policing Parenting (20:00): Julia shares her friend's anecdote about parenting within EMPish structure, "My friend described the ensuing hyper vigilance that developed for her knowing that teachers and other parents at the school were keeping tabs on her and her husband's parenting. This is important, not from the position of offering support, but from the position of policing both parenthood roles based on gender and the gender development of my friend's young daughter." Performative Parenting (27:00): Julia says, "The main point though is that many parents may struggle to escape the pressures of parenthood because of the pervasiveness of all types of unrealistic expectations, which don't ultimately support family or relational health." Let Your Kids Be Bored (29:00): Jeremiah discusses, "The importance of giving kids unstructured space free of regulation from adults so that children can learn how to problem solve and make effective creative decisions for themselves." Easiest Lift (32:00): Julia outlines one of the relationship 101's: "Maybe an easier lift to budget in 15 minutes at the beginning or end of the day to check in with a partner and to and to let children be bored or absorbed in other ways." Let's heal together!