Sexvangelicals

After our month-long foray into the disturbing literature from the Evangelical Christian publishing industry, we continue our new series The Sex Ed We Wish We Had. Last month, we interviewed Doug Braun-Harvey, who describes the six sexual health principles that we and many other sexual health providers use as their rubric for co-creating healthy sexual encounters. We begin with a two-part series on consent, which, to quote the Harvey Institute (8:40): “Consent means voluntary cooperation communicates permission to try and reach sexual satisfaction and intimacy with willing partners. Consent transforms the act of sex from invasion, intrusion, or violation into an act of transformation. Establishing consent throughout each step of a sexual interaction provides each sexual partner space for sexual safety and pleasure that's consistent with their sexual desire.” We also address: Consent in Church and the Country (9:50): “Consent in our country has been about folks, primarily men, getting as far as they can sexually while escaping rape allegations or charges. Similar to the church, American culture has given women the responsibility of gatekeeping men's sexuality. While keeping themselves safe from violence,” Jeremiah says. Consent is a tool used by men to absolve themselves from any hurt or crime they may have committed. It is not seen as something that should be intrinsically tied to sex. Julia then makes the connection that, “so often the Christian Church establishes themselves as countercultural. However, in terms of sexuality, the status of so many sexual health principles are quite similar. Within and outside of church walls, we have long taught women best practices for avoiding assault.” The conversation around consent usually centers around the metaphor of wearing a bulletproof vest instead of just banning guns.  The Process of Affirmative Consent (11:55): “Learn that consent is the proactive negotiation of pleasure. To catch onto this concept, a religious university in Ohio was the first to develop a model for affirmative consent.” Julia notes as we give props to a Christian institution on this podcast for probably the first time. They then list the seven principles of affirmative consent:  Explicitness. A yes must be expressed verbally. Voluntariness. The yes must be given voluntarily without pressure or coercion.   Ability to consent. Intoxicated people, people under a certain age are unable to give consent. A shift of responsibility. They mean the person who initiates the sexual act has the responsibility to obtain the consent of all participants in non-coercive ways. Freedom from presumption. Consent must be obtained repeatedly for each new sexual act. Informedness. All participants must know what consent is being given for, in particular, when we think about the role of the receiver, what would it be like to have a sexual experience where the initiator says, hey, this is what I want to kind of work through. Revocability. A previously given consent can be withdrawn at any time.  These seven principles are without nuance, which we will dive into next, but still are a strong framework and guide to affirmative consent. As well as, great starting points and rules for someone to follow.  The Simplifying of Consent (15:40): “Consent is actually very complicated. Even in more progressive circles, I've noticed this impulse to try and make consent as simple as possible. We actually have so many different contextual factors to take into account with each sexual scenario. With each of the seven principles, we can't actually package consent into a simple formula.” Julia adds to the conversation about affirmative consent, saying that even though this is a great framework, consent cannot be distilled into a simple idea. It is okay that consent is nuanced and complicated, and that is what they are exploring today. Heteronormativity (21:00): “Heteronormativity relies on narratives about how men and women enact sexuality differently inside the church. As we talked about in reading the Butler series and in the seven deadly sexual sins according to the church, but also outside of the church, we have the false narrative that men are inherently more sexual and that women have the duty to perform sexuality according to the socialized norms of what men crave sexual,” Jeremiah says. We explore the effects of heteronormativity throughout different episodes, but pertaining to the idea of consent, this heteronormative dynamic affects how consent is given and received. Many women in heterosexual relationships feel the need to say yes, and many men feel the need to initiate sex, even if they do not want to have sex.  Sex Therapist Training and Consent (31): Jeremiah talks about his experience how, in one of his sex therapy training classes, he learned what consent actually looked like, and also how his heterosexual relationship fit into a larger context within society. “I was also so stuck in the emotional cycle of protecting my ex at the time, that I didn't have the wherewithal to realize the larger societal context for our relational interaction. But in this particular class, I internalized this.” He then talks about his experience unpacking much of the ingrained ideology about martial consent within the context of Christianity.  Christianity and Consent (39): “The most heartbreaking part is that we were both trying hard to be the best partners that we could be, and the patterns that developed from our best efforts, which were modeled to us by Christian culture and Christian leaders were strong contributors to our divorce and set the stage for both of us to have years of non-consensual sexual experiences," Julia talks about how Christianity establishes that consent happens only once at the altar, and never again. This has negative repercussions as sex does not equal an enjoyable and safe experience for the people involved, but quite the opposite.  These are hard conversations to have, and next week, we’ll talk more about Julia’s experience navigating sexuality and consent in her marriage, before concluding with some Relationship 101. Let’s heal together!

16 years ago, Linda Kay Klein embarked on a storytelling journey that would change her life (and the lives of many others). In her 2018 book Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, Linda captures the experiences of hundreds of women, herself included, who grew up within and confronted the consequences of the Evangelical purity culture movement in the 90s and early 2000s. Through Pure and her nonprofit, Break Free Together, Linda has created numerous spaces to bring folks together to share their stories about repression, bravery, and ultimately freedom. We are thrilled to have her as a podcast guest! Freedom comes in expected and unexpected ways. For instance, in this episode, learn how shrimp tails and boxes drawn on a dorm room wall were formative experiences that helped Linda access the bravery to tell the story that she was so afraid to share. “The great thing about doing something that you’re really, really afraid of is the feeling when you survive.” Linda, Jeremiah, and Julia also discuss: What makes purity culture particularly appealing and damaging to adolescents (10:00): At a time in which youth are particularly vulnerable, leaders within the purity culture movement combine language of belonging and intense emotionality to create a culture of conformity. Linda describes, “When I left Evangelicalism, I had to contend with how damaging it was. I went in with a pretty good sense of myself and the world.” Sadly, the confines of purity culture had long-lasting, devastating consequences. The grief and anger that accompanied the writing process (21:30): Initially, Linda was hopeful when she met other women who could relate to her story. “But then, when the numbers started to add up, and it became clear that this was a lot of people who are hurting, that became something to grieve over time.” Additionally, the systemic coverup of overt and covert sexual abuse in churches and the ensuing silencing of survivors showed that the people who were supposed to protect a generation of women had failed to keep them safe. The confusion in finding your freedom (30:00): As a sexual health coach, Linda’s clients often want to dive right into “fixing” sexual problems. Linda wisely takes a step back and asks people to explore simpler decisions. After all, purity culture’s rigid binary system increases the anxiety around the decision-making process. Identifying what you want sexually is really challenging when you’re not even sure how to decide what you want for dinner. What it’s like to have relationships with people who are “worried” about you (42:00): When a person leaves Evangelicalism, those within the community tend to worry about your wellbeing, and even your salvation. Linda describes her experiences of navigating this, and Jeremiah and Julia introduce a potential support group: Moms of Millenials Straying from the Church. How motherhood impacts sexuality (58:00): Linda describes how she talks about sexuality with her 19-year-old stepdaughter differently than she experienced in the church, and how parenting a newborn can introduce a new type of intimacy within the couple and family relationships. Wherever you are in your journey toward sexual freedom, we hope that you can find comfort and healing in the power of telling and sharing stories. Let’s heal together!

Tia Levings is a writer and content creator whose work explores the female narrative in patriarchal spaces. A survivor of church-sanctioned domestic violence, Tia shares the realities of Christian Fundamentalism, and sheds light on the strategic influence high control religion has on our society and headlines today. Her memoir releases in 2024 with St. Martin’s Press and you can find her videos on Instagram and Tiktok. We are thrilled to have Tia share her experience of surviving and escaping a religious fundamentalist community, discovering healing and self-exploration, and using her story to help others find their own versions of healing. In this episode, Tia talks with us about: Religious fundamentalism (6:00). Tia defines fundamentalism as “putting ideals over people. Nothing is more important than the idea. Human-to-human connection gets shunned because there’s danger about connecting around a human need.” For three decades, Tia’s cultural context was rooted in “a base human fear, and someone else in a position of power who presents an attractive solution. These folks can take the things that mean the most to me to exploit and serve their purposes. When it doesn’t work out, the person gets blamed, not the system. They never want to admit that their system may not be working.” Women in fundamentalism (12:00): Tia reminds us that "Christianity teaches at its heart that a young girl [Mary] was impregnated by a deity and became a vessel. She is objectified and used for a purpose.” This young woman gets very little character development, despite her importance, and Tia draws upon the parallel process to describe the role of women in these systems: “I had one job—satisfy my husband and bear babies. A woman’s brain never factors in. What’s necessary is her hands, service, womb, and vagina.” Messages around sexuality (24:00): Tia describes purity culture as such: “My job as a Christian girl was to stay pure and refine my Christian sweetness. No touch, no hand holding, no relationship, no crushes because you don’t want to hold someone else’s spouse’s hands. You’re pure. You’re sweet. He [because same-sex marriages are unacceptable in conservative Christianity] decides that he wants you and says that he’s sent from God. That’s how engagement worked.” Tia was married by 19 and had three children by the age of 23 in the name of being a “good Christian girl”. Deconstruction (43:00): Tia’s marriage and community gradually became more conservative and, in her case, extremely dangerous, but Tia found online platforms, specifically blogging, as her first system for practicing deconstruction. She says, “The virtual spaces gave me a space to exist. I wasn’t allowed to be me in the real world, but online, I had control and agency on how to present myself. The relationships with these people were folks who hid me when I was on the run. There’s power when you have a space to exist and grow.” The dangers of change (58:00): When one person in a system begins to change, typically, the other members of that system will do whatever they can to keep said person stuck in their known, familiar roles. Tia compares her change experience with war, an especially potent metaphor given the fact that conservative Christianity is invested in war. She explains, “Your life is preparing for the war so you can usher in the second coming in Christ and bring the rapture. You’re either going to get raptured in the beginning, middle, or all the way through, which is the big Armageddon. This becomes self fulfilling prophecies because they’re creating the end times in the ways they’re behaving.” Tia’s change resulted in her being excommunicated from her religious community (she’s in good company, having her life threatened, and having to go into hiding. Knowing yourself and the nervous system acclimation (1:23:00): Healing involves learning and listening to the type of person that you are based on your own traits and needs, rather than the type of person society tells you to be. In Tia’s case, this involved reengaging with her high sense of sensitivity, which involves creating buffers for transitioning in and out of certain experiences. We discuss differentiation, and Tia says, “you’ll know you’re in a differentiated relationship when someone will take care of you whenever you start taking care of yourself.” Tia concludes, “I had been waiting for rescue my whole life. Someday my prince will come. Someday God will save me. When it came down to it, I had to get us out of there. I’m the heroine of my own story.” The healing process from navigating and leaving religious fundamentalism is extremely daunting, and we hope that Tia’s story provides courage, imagination, and resilience for those who are in similar contexts. We heal best when we heal together!

This week we highlight a few of the reasons we began Sexvangelicals and what is to come in the following weeks. We will be doing a Summer Rewatch Series highlighting three of our favorite episodes, which include new content at the beginning of each episode. It is important to reflect and realize how we have grown and evolved and we want to share that with you. In this mini-episode (or trailer) we reflect on some of the reasons we started this podcast to begin with and what episodes we will be covering in the next month! Relationships and Deconstruction (6:00):  “Our focus within the sexuality and deconstruction sphere is on the relationships that have survived a church exit or the relationships that are forming for the first time without the rigid confines of the dictates of purity culture.” Jeremiah talks about their work within the sex and deconstruction sphere is centered around what happens to relationships after you leave the Church and a big portion of this podcast is dedicated to exploring that question from multiple angles.  Julia adds: “Building flourishing partnerships and sexual relationships after leaving an Evangelical Mormon or Pentecostal community, or as Jeremiah has coined, EMPish religious structures are uniquely hard work.” These organizations make it so that it is hard to leave and just jump into fulfilling relationships, and friendships, and just have a healthy sex life in general.  Deconstructing the ‘Right Way’ (6:30): “I’ve noticed that folks leaving EMPish communities put a lot of pressure on themselves to deconstruct the quote “right way” and transition smoothly to a whole new way of engaging themselves in the world.” Jeremiah notes this idea that there is only one way to deconstruct and that it is linear, clean, and simple. None of that is true and that is another motivation for this podcast, to highlight different deconstruction processes, to show that it is inherently messy in nature and that’s not a bad thing.  Positive Sex Ed (7:30): Engaging in positive and pleasurable sexuality takes time to build and develop, especially if you received sex-negative messages for years and maybe even decades of your life. Something that we talk about in our interview with Amber Wood several months ago. What happens when you haven't received good relational and sexual health education until sometime in your adulthood? So you might be for me, 27 - 30. Operating in some ways with the sexual resources of a teenager.  So that's part of what I mean when I say, oh, I was 28, but perhaps engaging with sexuality for the first time.” Julia shares how because of the system under which she grew up she was working under the sexual resources of a teenager as an adult when she left the Church. It is essential to give ourselves space and to reflect on the resources we have been given and not shame ourselves for not being “ahead” because there is no such thing, there is only our journey, our pace, and our lives. 

We are continuing our summer series called Partnership Building, where we discuss how sexual health is relational health, and relational health is sexual health. We’re talking about seven principles of healthy relationships, according to relationship experts John and Julie Gottman. Last week, Luke and Lauren from the amazing podcast Filled to Flourish talked with us about the ways that Purity Culture encourage turning toward God, and as a result, away from oneself and one’s partner. This week, they discuss the ways that they learned to turn toward each other, and the ways that protected the relationship as larger systems began to turn against them. This is a really sad, difficult episode, but also a celebration of their relationship and a source of encouragement to others who may be actively experiencing something similar. We discuss: Unconditional Positive Regard (9:00): Lauren describes, “Gottman uses this idea of unconditional positive regard. We saw each other in the best light and we knew we were doing the best we could amidst all the dysfunction unhealed trauma we were still swimming in. We had this regard for one another, and that helped us to weave this beautiful tapestry versus imploding.”  Messy Work (17:00): Jeremiah sets realistic expectations around the work of deconstruction and relational healing: “Problems tend to begin three to four years before the beginning of couples therapy Shifting and development of new interaction patterns takes a lot of time. This isn't just something that happens overnight. You walk out of the church. You leave the church, whew, thank god that's over. And then I can live and skip into a new life. There's a lot of work that happens after that and it sounds like y'all did a lot of coming back to each other, getting messy, coming back to each other, getting messy, coming back to each other. I think that that's really important to name that that's a realistic part of the process.” Turning Toward Each Other (25:00 - 29:00): There are a few horror stories throughout the episode, including the involvement of a missionary organization criticizing Luke and Lauren for not enacting traditional gender roles. Luke summarizes, “Where I think the starting of us turning towards each other and not feeling safe and saying like, babe, I'm safe with you, but I'm not sure we're safe here.” He notes that this rejection led them to turn towards each other because the Church labeled their relationship as “bad,” and when they both knew that was not the reality, they chose to be with each other and on each other sides, instead of playing the blame game.  White Saviorism (35:00): We have a side conversation about transracial adoption—Jeremiah is a transracial adoptee, and Luke and Lauren have adopted children of color. The elections of 2016 and 2020 enabled Lauren and Luke to speak out against racism and sexism, which the Church did not like. Lauren explains, “So it wasn't so much I started questioning gender roles. But what happened was my outspokenness prior to this was more of a value to a lot of folks, family included, because it was their agenda and their narrative. So I think this is the very confusing thing about outspoken women in the church.” Luke and Lauren chose to turn towards each other because the Church and their families did not agree with their ideas.  There is no Hate like Christian Love (40:00): Luke describes, “I was healing and so I started getting more of a voice and speaking out and having more conversations and being more educated. And every person that we had a conversation, invited a conversation. It became hostile, angry, and abusive. We got stuck in America for Covid. So 2020, we were in America and we ended up losing 25% of our support because we were speaking against racism and our church told us to stop talking about it or they were gonna stop supporting us 'cause we were missionaries and we represented them and they didn't agree with us. […] We didn't feel welcomed at the church anymore.” This encapsulates the Church perfectly: We love you until you don’t agree with us. Lauren expands, “We were no longer the tool that we once were. And as soon as you're not a tool in a system of power that only uses people, you are invaluable to them. Your inherent dignity and worth as a human is not a consideration. It's irrelevant and everyone thinks that they are exempt from that.” When the Church deems you not useful you no longer have a community or support or anything. They push people out who have their own thoughts and ideas.  Again, a huge thanks to Luke and Lauren for their vulnerability and wisdom. Please check out their business, Flourish Therapy. Let’s heal together!

We are continuing our summer series called Partnership Building, where we discuss how sexual health is relational health, and relational health is sexual health. We’re talking about seven principles of healthy relationships, according to relationship experts John and Julie Gottman. In the first four episodes of this series, we’ve discussed two foundations of healthy relationships: curiosity and admiration/appreciation. In the next two episodes, we’ll talk about the third principle of healthy relationships (according to the Gottman’s): turning toward each other. And we have amazing guests, Luke and Lauren Smallcomb from the brilliant podcast Filled to Flourish. Luke and Lauren are the founders of Flourish Therapy. They live in Chiang Mai, Thailand with their kids and 3 cuddly dogs. Luke and Lauren talk with us about: An Unquestioned System (6:00) The Unforgivable Sin (14:00) Eroticism (20:00) Lack of Freedom (25:00) Falling Back on Gender Roles (34:00) Good and Bad (49:00) Luke and Lauren will talk more with us next week about how to turn toward each other when your systems of origin begin to turn away from you. You won’t want to miss it!

We are continuing our series on Partnership building by comparing the messaging from a classic relationship book in Evangelical/Mormon/Pentecostal (EMPish) circles, Love and Respect, by Emerson Eggerichs, alongside the work of couples researchers John and Julie Gottman, and their principle of nurturing fondness and admiration. As we talked about last week, practicing this principle can be challenging when you've grown up learning that admiration and fondness exist along problematic gendered norms of the Love and Respect model. Julia explains, “Admiration roughly translates to respect, which women show through deference to male authority and obligatory sex based on socially conditioned standards for male pleasure, love roughly translates to affection and emotional intimacy. Which is good, but in manifestation, often coddles women dismissing their intelligence and erasing their sexuality. All under the guise of love.” We also talk about Earning Respect (12:50) God Made You This Way (18:00 / 26:00) Gendered Lines (28:40) Surviving a Gendered World (35:24) Power Dynamics (53:00) For those of you who have read Love and Respect, what are some parts of the book that stood out to you? What are you trying to unlearn. For those of you who haven’t read Love and Respect, we highly encourage you not to. Let’s heal together!

This summer, we’re talking about seven principles of healthy relationships, according to relationship experts John and Julie Gottman. In the last two weeks, we’ve discussed the foundation of healthy relationships: curiosity. And in the next two episodes, we’re talking about the practices of admiration and appreciation. Be curious. Be positive. Sounds simple enough. Except EMPish (Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal) communities identify the success of the relationship not based on the ways that people solve problems together. Successful marriages happen when men and women effectively play the gender roles ascribed to them. And no Christian resource describes this better than Emerson Eggerichs’ Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires, The Respect He Desperately Needs. In this episode, we compare the Eggerichs’ and Gottman’s processes for exploring admiration and appreciation: Parental Models (7:00): “We talked in church spaces and school spaces about being kind and grateful and positive, but I didn't see a lot of it modeled.” Young children model after their parents, and when the models do not admire each other, we tend to mirror that in our own relationships. This episode is about initially breaking that pattern. Jesus’ Admiration (10:00): “I do have a deep hole within myself that the church told me only Jesus can fill, but perhaps the church created that hole with constant legalistic scrutiny for over two decades of my life, and now I am just constantly in need of someone telling me that I'm worthwhile and valuable. That is for my own therapy.” Julia shares how the Church created this idea that the only person that can fill your heart is Jesus. This does not actually teach anyone how to do relationships, and, when coupled with the anxiety that you constantly have to ask Jesus and an erratic God into your heart, this creates a compulsive need for validation from others rooted in a fear of never being good enough. Defaulting onto Gender Norms (11:00): Jeremiah shares, “If someone doesn't overtly teach you how to do something in a relationship, the easiest thing to do is to fall back on gender expectations. For me as a man, the most important gendered message was that men are leaders. Assume that you're gonna be in charge and that people want you to be in charge.” When admiration for our partners is not taught or modeled, people can default onto gender norms as a way to show their appreciation. Appreciation then becomes about performing the gender role as opposed to celebrating the holistic person and uniqueness of the relationship. What Does Respect Actually Mean? (27:00): Julia reflects, “I remember reading that sex was one of, if not the primary way, that men feel respected. The book also reinforced that I should be well groomed, made up, and lingerie wearing for when my husband comes home from work. Because of course I'm not working and he just needs sex for his own gratification.” Jeremiah responds, “Respect communicates a power hierarchy, and adhering to the power hierarchy means men are at the top.” The idea that women are “depriving” men of sex is a toxic idea that feeds into non-consent and un-enjoyable sex and relationships. When sex is viewed as a thing to be given and taken, it stops existing as a thing occurring between consenting people, but instead as a process of conquering. We conclude the episode with Relationship 101, where Jeremiah states, “For you and I, practicing the Gottman value of nurturing fondness and admiration requires us to develop new interaction patterns that move away from gendered scripts of love and respect, and into collaborative and non-gendered dynamics based on admiration and fondness.” The Gottman’s labeled these six practices, the 6 magic hours, and Julia and Jeremiah offer advice on how to incorporate these into everyday life: 1. Partings. The Gottman suggests learning one thing that is happening in your partner's life before they leave for the workday or whatever else they may be doing. 2. Reunions. The Gottman suggests at least 20 minutes at the end of the day for a connection point that is purely for the sake of reestablishing intimacy and closeness. Julia offers, “For those of you who may be less inclined to physical touch, or need some other forms of connection before moving into a physical space. A reunion could include going out for ice cream, a short walk, or even just a curious conversation in which you take an active interest in your partner's day. Questions beyond “How was your day?” 3. Admiration and appreciation. Be explicit about what you love and value about your partner. Jeremiah shares how because of the context in which he grew up he sets reminders on his phone to text Julia appreciation and admiration, which can be helpful for those who also grew up in similar contexts. 4. Physical Touch. The Gottman suggests physical affection every day, especially before going to bed to be clear. This is not necessarily sexual affection. There will be episodes in the future tackling the topic for people who may not be comfortable with physical touch. 5. Date Night. The Gottman's encourage a two hour date night, once a week, the setting. “So do you go to a restaurant? Do you go out for a movie? The setting is less important than the process for communication and exploring deeper things about the other person.” Julia says, and then adds that though this may not be attainable weekly for many people, even monthly or bi-monthly is great, and everyone is just doing the best they can. 6. State of the Union meeting. Jeremiah explains, “Gottman encourages a one hour business meeting each week to discuss practical and logistical aspects of your relationship, such as finances. Trips, meal planning, childcare, chores, et cetera.” The state of the union keeps the administrative part of the relationship out of the romantic part of the relationship. Healthy relationships include all six of these items; this week, focus on developing two of these in your relationship with your partner. And then, for the next month, build one item a week into your relationship building. Let’s heal together!

We are continuing our summer series called Partnership Building, where we are discussing the work of John Gottman. Last week, we discussed how curiosity is the foundation for healthy, sustainable relationships. Gottman uses the term “cognitive room”—the ability to spontaneously recall details about positive qualities about their partner and their relationship. Cognitive room is fueled by curiosity, the strong desire to learn or know something. Cognitive room is something that continually develops; after all, we continually develop as humans. I'm not the same person as I was this time last year, and neither are you. In this episode, we follow an online program of multiple randomly generated questions with everything from  “Favorite sex scene from a movie?” to “What do you want your funeral to be like?” The purpose of this game is to inspire curiosity. When we spend every day with our partner, sometimes it is hard to come up with creative and intriguing questions to ask one another and this is a great starting off point for serious and not-so-serious questions. Getting the ball rolling on curiosity is the most important thing. Listen to all the fun and unique questions throughout this episode to find out Julia and Jeremiah's biggest fears and favorite concerts! Marriage Material (5:44): Julia shares, “Ideally the initial stage of a relationship development bonding happens in the first two years. And this involves people determining their common interests and values and sexual preferences, and creating experiences to explore all of those things and more. However, in the EMPish community, the bonding period gets tainted and intensified by the questions: Is this person marriage material, Am I marriage material? And are we not having sex?” EMPish communities push the idea that we have to assess if someone is “marriage material” from the onset of the relationship or that relationship is a waste of time.  Rephrasing for the Relationship (19:00): We got the question, “Is there anything I used to do that you miss?” We both did not have an answer; however, instead of getting stumped, we tailored it to your relationship. In changing the question, Julia got to hear a wonderful response from Jeremiah. These questions are building blocks and not set in stone.  Curious but Tired (27:00):  Julia says, “Being curious about anyone takes work. And I love asking you about your day. And that is something that like takes effort. That is well worth it. And I wonder if something like this is helpful for like days or nights, not just for us, but for folks who like want to be curious but like are tired.” We all care about our partner's days and lives but sometimes do not have the energy to figure out where to start the dialogue. These questions also change up the regularly scheduled programming because they open up more doors to a discussion that may have never come up. It goes back to the main idea that curious conversation keeps a relationship sustainable and enjoyable.  Playfulness (42:00): Jeremiah shares, “It’s important for this curiosity to go beyond how are you, be as specific as you can in your curiosity games like the one that we played can help jog your creative juices and ask about things that. Plus, if you get a question that feels vulnerable or touchy, you can blame it on chance if the question came up. And then you can choose whether or not you want to answer it.” These games do not have to be 100% serious; they can just be a fun activity that is a way of bonding. We bond with our partners over serious meaningful moments and conversations, but we also bond with them through jokes and laughter. Playfulness is a great way to spice up an otherwise boring night after work. Check out the free question generator on minimizemymess.com, the app from The And, and a number of other card games with curious questions. Let’s heal together!

This summer, we’re exploring the seven characteristics to healthy relationships, through John Gottman’s Sound Marital House theory of relationships. Gottman suggests that curiosity is the root of a strong foundation for a relationship. Curiosity, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is the strong desire to know or learn something. In this episode, we talk about how EMPish (Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal) communities discourage curiosity, and the ways that people can learn and practice curiosity in your relationship. We discuss: Cognitive Room (11:40): Julia summarizes, “The Gottman’s suggested that the more facts that a person had about their partner, the more likely they were to understand their partner's psychological or emotional world. They noted that cognitive room is also an ongoing process. This makes sense because the things that a person likes, wants, or needs at any given moment is likely to change throughout the lifespan like sexuality and given other circumstances. Couples who are able to update the other about the cognitive room are much more likely to have a positive relationship.” Culture Inhibited Curiosity (16:00): Julia continues, “This whole culture [EMPish Christianity] inhibited curiosity. So if grace was the only way out of an otherwise terrible world, success happens by knowing a ton of facts about God and retrieving and saying those facts perfectly.” There was no room for curiosity, only room for answers that matched exactly what the authorities say. After all, in EMPish communities, when we ask questions, we may question God, and, of course, that is blasphemous. Curiosity within Religion (23:00-24:00): Jeremiah muses, “I’m thinking about this binary that's happening in religious circles, religion versus science. Science provides this decision-making process that informs curiosity. You identify a question, you develop a hypothesis, you form a process to test that hypothesis, and you observe what the results are. Now, this process can get hijacked by our own biases. Sometimes we're looking for specific things and we can miss out on more pertinent information. But this binary also assumes that religion is inherently a non-curious process.” Julia responds: “I think curiosity requires a more mystical approach to religion, which I certainly did not receive in my growing up contexts. The mystical approach assumes that life is about discovering how the world works and allowing yourself to be surprised. Curiosity requires us to see the best in people, and every person has the capacity to teach me something new, both about myself and about the world around me.” Performing Gender (28:15): Jeremiah reflects, “The strong desire to perform gender roles shuts down any dialogue in an interaction. Performing gender roles is specifically an individual task. I do my thing. You do your thing. And any conversation about how the other person is performing gender roles can really quickly move into criticisms, sexist ones at that. I would argue that this was one of the biggest ways that I contributed to the demise of my marriage.” Julia responds:  “Performing gender roles gives a person very few options for how they choose to live their lives.”  Focusing on the Destination, not the Journey (33:00): Julia shares about our relationship, “So many questions that weren't rooted in deciding whether or not you were going to be my future husband, but were rooted purely in the desire to get to know you. My genuine curiosity about getting to know my ex as a full human being was undergirded with the expectation that I needed to know as soon as possible whether this person would be my future husband” Julia talks about how her curiosity being limited in her marriage was due to the fact that she was focused on getting to know if her ex-husband would be suited to fulfill his gendered role instead of getting to know him, while with Jeremiah she focused her curiosity on getting to know him, not getting to know if he was going to be a good husband. Missing Out (42:00): Jeremiah reminisces about a high school crush, “Now we built this connection online. Hello, AOL Instant Messenger, but there was also a fair amount of sexual tension when we were in the same space. There are all sorts of reasons that I didn't actually ask her out. I didn't have a lot of self-confidence. Oh, I was afraid that she would say no. I didn't perceive myself to be particularly confident, and I thought that she was way cooler than I was. But a major factor was that I was a Christian and she wasn’t.” Religion taught him not to be curious about what lies outside the binds of Christianity.  Next week, we’ll continue with our curiosity through Gottman’s Love Maps. But until then, Let’s heal together!