Get Your Marriage On! with Dan Purcell

Feeling shame about our natural sexual urges is more harmful than we think. Clinton and Charity Munoz decided to share their story in hopes of helping others. A few years into their marriage Clinton’s secretive and compulsive use of pornography was distressing to Charity and took their marriage to dark depths. With the help of God and good resources, they’ve been able to restore their marriage to more than it was before and find new meaning. I hope you enjoy this podcast episode as much as I did!

Al Carraway is probably the most optimistic and positive person I’ve ever met. Just being with her for an hour was life-changing. “Life is too short to stay unsatisfied.” and “Stubbornly refuse to have a bad sex life.” are two quotes that have rung in my head ever since our conversation. Al is from New York, and became a Christian in her early 20s. She’s a mother, wife, award-winning motivational speaker, and author of three books, including one about marriage. She’s inspired millions of people through her message. I hope you enjoy this podcast episode!

How does your current marriage dynamic help or hinder intimacy? Are you good at expressing your desires within your marriage? How does growing into your best version of yourself translate into a deeper connection with your spouse? And how can these things contribute to really good sexual experiences? These are the questions I’ve had on my mind as I reached out to Eric and Kate MacDougall, founders of Evolved Marriage. They’re marriage and relationship coaches, and I hope you learn as much as I did from this conversation.

Talking about sex with your spouse is not easy for most of us. Whether it’s about preferences, desire level differences, pornography use, physical difficulties, or a number of issues, many of us find it easier to just resent our spouse rather than see the situation honestly as it is and take responsibility for our role in the matter. I enjoyed this interview with Amanda Ammons. You’ll get to hear us discuss practical and helpful strategies on how to discuss sexual issues with your spouse and how to design the kind of sex life you want for yourself and for your marriage. You can learn more about Amanda and her work by clicking here.

What if your spouse isn't enthusiastic about the same things you are? I get this question often. Specifically, what to do if your spouse isn’t on board with your desires sexually. I have five thoughts about this that I want to share. There is much more that can be discussed here, as every person’s situation is complex, but I hope some of these ideas can help!

This is episode #69, and in honor of everyone’s favorite two-digit sexy number, I thought we’d have some fun and do an episode all about oral sex! The best sex is intimate sex, and if you have the right mindset, oral sex can be very intimate, leading to deep connection and relationship satisfaction. There’s something very intimate about opening your heart and letting yourself be known to your special someone in this way. From a practical standpoint, oral sex is also very pleasurable, which we’ll talk about. As Dr. Ian Kerner, an American sex educator, once said, “When it comes to pleasuring a woman, the tongue is mightier than the sword” (and you can probably guess what the sword is). My friend Amanda Louder returned to join me in this fun discussion today. If you’re not familiar with Amanda, she’s a certified life coach and coaches women on embracing their sexuality as a part of their wholeness. She’s also the host of the Sex For Saints podcast.

The thing that stood out to me the most in this interview you’re about to hear is how important it is to focus on being our best selves if we want to fix our marriage. Also how important it is to shed our egos. And when we married, we signed up to love our spouse: meaning, to be their champion and cheerleader, not their critic. Laura Doyle is The New York Times best-selling author of several books, including The Empowered Wife. She’s also the star of the Amazon Prime series Empowered Wives. Her books have been translated into 19 languages and published in 30 countries. Over 15,000 women credit her with not only saving their relationships but also showing them how to become desired, cherished, and adored for life. She is the founder of Laura Doyle Connect, an international relationship coaching company that teaches women the intimacy skills they need to have passionate, peaceful relationships. Laura lives in Newport Beach, California with her hilarious husband John Doyle, who has been dressing himself since before she was born. They have been married for over 30 years. Resources: Laura Doyle's Website: https://lauradoyle.org/

Passionate marriages require a healthy tension between two forces that paradoxically are at odds with one another: Security which is love and intimacy and Growth which is desire, autonomy, and adventure. In this episode, I had the privilege of interviewing Alana and Paris from the Kingdom Sexuality Podcast. We discussed how one can navigate love and desire in marriage and cultivate more desire & erotic energy in your relationship. Alana and Paris have a cool story. They were friends as youth, attended the same church, but each moved away, married, and started a family of their own. About the same time, each of them felt impressed to start a ministry around helping others understand God’s design for sex and intimacy. Alana and Paris reconnected and are now best friends, sharing their message of faith and hope. And that’s how their podcast Kingdom Sexuality came to be!

Part of being an adult is unlearning the things that no longer serve you, and learning new things that bring richer meaning to your life.  When it comes to sex, there’s a lot that isn’t helpful that we can unlearn, and a lot we can learn to bring deeper meaning and joy to our most important intimate relationships.  I had the pleasure of interviewing Cami Hurst, a talented and passionate certified sex therapist out of Boise Idaho. We talk about how to make sex more “nutritious” and “gourmet” for the couple, why motives (or the why) around improving one’s sex life are more important than the “what”, and what to do when your spouse has different sexual preferences than you do.

A few years ago, I was sitting around a campfire with other dads, hearing their stories of exciting trips and getaways they've been on with their wives. I was depressed, thinking, "woe is me!" With 6 young kids, and on a budget, all I could think of was reasons why I would never be able to enjoy that kind of an experience. Fast forward six months later, I was sitting on a beautiful beach in Florida with my wife, just the two of us, enjoying one of the most intimate and romantic moments of our marriage up until that point. We had experienced a miracle in our marriage.  Miracles happen, and 2022 can be the year you experience more of them in your life.  One of the most often-repeated themes in the New Testament is "ask and ye shall receive." In one way or another, that theme is expressed 100 times! God is a giver of good gifts. He wants to bless us with good things and experiences that give us growth, joy, and hope. We invite God to help us by identifying clearly our goals, creating a vision, asking, and living with gratitude for everything we receive, both the good and the bad. It's up to us to desire, ask, work for, and be grateful for the kind of marriage we want. You can have a smoking hot sex life as you put this process to work in your life.