Sexual desire differences are, unfortunately, very common. In fact, it’s one of the top reasons why couples seek sex therapy or any kind of help in their marriage.
It’s really painful to be in a relationship where your spouse doesn’t desire you the same way you desire them. And while it’s painful for the spouse with the higher libido or higher desire, it’s also just as painful (for different reasons) for the person with a lower desire/lower libido.
The good news is that there are actually tools and solutions to help couples get on the same page sexually, and we’ll discuss some of these in this episode.
I was interviewed by my friend Taylor Chambers, a marriage and family therapist. Since we talk about these things often on this platform, we’ve included this interview on the Get Your Marriage On Podcast.
In this episode, we cover the following:
- I share some of my personal examples from my own marriage
- Why traditional sex therapy doesn’t quite work.
- The role of pleasure
- Integrity culture versus purity culture
If you and your spouse have differences in sexual desire that’s causing some problems in your marriage, you’re in luck because next week I’m going live doing a deep dive discussion on this very topic. You can join me there.
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors or inaccuracies. For the most accurate and complete experience, we recommend listening to the full podcast episode
Episode 213
Dan: hi, everyone. Thanks for joining me today. Sexual desire differences are unfortunately very common. In fact, it’s a number one reason why a couple seek. Sex therapy or any kind of help in their marriage. Now it’s really painful to be in a relationship where your spouse doesn’t desire you the same way you desire them.
[00:01:00] And it’s painful for the one with the person, with the higher libido or a higher desire. And it’s also just as painful for different reasons for the person with a lower desire. Uh, or the lower libido.
The good news is that there are actually tools and solutions to help couples get on the same page sexually.
And we’ll discuss some of these in this episode.
I was interviewed by my friend Taylor chambers. He’s a marriage and family therapist. And we talk about these things often. So,, we’ve included this interview on the, get your marriage on podcast.
And this episode, I share some of my personal examples from my own marriage. Why traditional sex therapy doesn’t quite work.
It fails us Americans. The role of pleasure. And we’ll conclude the discussion on integrity, culture versus purity culture.
If you and your spouse have differences in sexual desire, that’s causing some problems in your marriage. Well, you’re in luck next week, Thursday night, I’m going live doing a deep dive discussion on this very topic. You can join me there. All that information will be in the show [00:02:00] notes.
Also, you don’t want to miss our upcoming couples retreat next March. This is for a couples that want a fun vacation, where they can also work on intimacy in their marriage. And it is an absolute blast. You’ll find all those details on the, get your marriage on website.
Taylor: Hey everybody, this is Taylor Chambers and I’m really excited for our discussion today . I’m joined by Dan Purcell, who is a sex and intimacy coach. And just in terms of a bit of background, Dan and his wife Emily founded Get Your Marriage On, which is, it’s a podcast, it’s a website, you guys have run events in the past, tons of resources available.
Get And I was thinking earlier, like that wasn’t your original career and it kind of started as a passion project.
Dan: That’s right. It still is a passion project and it’s occurring now, but right.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of both. I was just thinking, like, it’s the ultimate passion project in terms of like.
You know, this is all about passion, literally. And so you guys are right in the right zone. [00:03:00] So, uh, I also wanted to mention, you’ve got a couple of apps that just tons of people have logged and, um, use regularly called intimately us and just between us. and those are worth checking out as followups to our discussion for those who are interested.
And, uh, you know, I, I just view you, Dan, as kind of an all around good guy who helps people have great sex. And I think that that’s a pretty cool thing to be. So thank you.
Dan: Thank you very much.
Taylor: Cool. I’m glad we could, connect. So, we’ve talked in the past a bit about your story. And so today our discussion is going to center primarily on what couples can do when they find themselves in this situation of one person desiring sex more than the other, um, and how we get there, how we get through that and stuff like that.
And I feel like this is just such a common challenge, and one that, There’s a lot going on in and around it, and there’s a lot of simplistic advice, and I know that you have done a lot of study and learning to actually present really thorough and sound counsel in this [00:04:00] regard, so. Right. So, in that regard, let’s get into, you know, first of all, what’s the context or what are the.
What are the common experiences for a couple when they have different sexual desire levels?
Dan: it’s painful for both people, and that’s what we need to remember. In any marriage, you’re going to have one person that wants sex more than the other person. And sometimes it’ll flip flop, but Generally, one person wants it more than the other, and that’s not a problem.
In fact, one wanting it a lot more than the other person in and of itself isn’t the problem, but it’s how you go about dealing with those differences is where the problems tend to arise. And it can be really painful for the one with my higher desire because, um, I’m going to use a stereotype here.
I know this isn’t the case for many marriages, but let’s say it’s the husband, he’s the higher one with higher desire, he’s going to be like, I feel rejected all the time. Or I hear this line a lot. I just want to be wanted. I’m tired of being the [00:05:00] only one initiating all the time. I feel like I’m the only one in our relationship that cares as much about this, and I feel the weight of the sexual burden of the relationship on me.
And then for the lower desire spouse, it’s also really painful. It’s painful because sex is so personal and core to who we are. And, uh, whenever that’s questioned or. Just even the idea that the sexuality that I have isn’t sufficient is a very painful meaning for a lot of people with a lower desire. Um, and sometimes it’s also painful for them because they’re like, can’t he think about anything else?
Like, this is all we talk about. I’m really tired of this. Can we connect in other ways instead of just sexually? Why does it always have to be sex? But there’s also like, I just feel used. I feel like all he wants me for is, is for sex. He’ll only do nice things for me, in order to get sex from me. And sometimes they feel like they’re in a hard position too, because they’re like, if I say yes and give [00:06:00] in, I know that’ll make him happy.
but I feel resentful after. But if I say no, then he’s going to be grumpy and withdraw from me and I feel that distance and I don’t like that either. So whether I say yes, or whether I say no, I’m still stuck in a bad position and I hate being in that position. So those are some common symptoms of when you have sexual desire discrepancy, as they call it in your relationship.
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and it’s, it’s funny that you use the language that you did because I’ve had several couples that I’ve worked with where this has become, you know, kind of the predominant narrative in our work together. And they’re saying some of those exact same things. And if you are listening and paying attention, you can see the pain of both sides of it, but for the people that are in it, it gets really difficult to do anything other than like, Hey, you know, this is obnoxious, or you’re annoying, or this is incredibly hurtful.
And, it can be hard to kind of see the other [00:07:00] person’s point of view when you’re in the thick of it.
Dan: Yes, definitely. Can I share a story about me and my own marriage at the risk of being a little, uh, vulnerable here? Like, I’m not immune. I’ve gone through my share of sexual desire discrepancies too, or differences in libido or the gap or whatever you want to call it.
There was a time I, wanted sex a lot. My wife didn’t, and I was frustrated about the difference. I just thought in my mind, if she would just, just devote more time to exploring her own sexuality more, then our sex life problems would be resolved. Like so there’s a book that I had read that was, I think, fantastic.
In fact, I had doggy eared highlighted and written in the margins of the, the special passages that I thought if my wife were to read this, it would be She’d finally get it. She’d get me and then everything would be resolved. And I really want to read this book. And I had strategically placed on the nightstand sometimes on her pillow, like hint, [00:08:00] hint, you need to read this book.
Right. And she wasn’t reading the book and I was getting more and more frustrated. Like, cause, ah, If only my wife was more horny, right? I would be so great. Like, because, because, you know, you hear about read about women who are very sexually aggressive towards their husbands. And like, how come that can’t be me?
Right? Like, what was me? I wish we had that.
Taylor: Yeah.
Dan: And maybe this book would solve it because it’s written by someone that kind of she claims have crossed that path. And now she loves sex more and that wife, you need to read this so that you fit the ideal what I want it to be. Yeah. So we had an argument.
How come you’re not reading the book? It’s like, Dan, I busy. I’m a mom. I’ve got so much on my plate. How in the world am I ever going to sit down to have even an hour to myself? Without an interruption just to read like that’s a luxury to me and you’re expecting me to do that I it’s not fair says I’d find them.
I’ll take over all the cooking meal [00:09:00] prep Shopping everything which to do at dinner for two weeks And, in exchange for you reading the book, I thought I was, it was a good compromise. It was, it was being really fair here. Yeah. And another part of the detail that makes the story great is we also argued around about dinnertime because my wife, who usually is in charge of meals for the family, dinner would be come on or seven, seven 30, even eight o’clock sometimes.
By the time we’re done with dinner and cleanup, and the kids are in bed, like it’s The day is over. Like there’s no husband wife time anymore. Like, can we just have dinner earlier? Cause that’s like when dinner’s early, cleanups early, kids get to bed early and then we can finally be a couple. And so mind you, when I was, it was those two weeks and it was in charge of meals.
Guess who had dinner done on time? Me. I was so motivated. Right. And, uh, I, I, um, I rubbed it in. I’m like, you know, I work a full time job [00:10:00] and I got dinner done on time and it was a really good meal. Like I cooked this thing. It was tastes excellent.
Taylor: Not just PB and J’s or anything. No, no. This
Dan: is like good stuff, right?
Like, and this is, these are foods that my wife wants our family eating, right? But I, I would rub it in, not, I, I was really sneaky in the way I did. I made it as if I was the good guy, but really it was a little jab in there. Right? Like, how come you can’t do this? That’s kind of the underlying message. There was condescension in it, I guess I could say.
And then I would brag to my in laws. Like I’m such a good husband. I’ve taken over meals for two weeks for my wife. Do you see, I reek with condescension towards my wife through the whole thing. So do you think my wonderful wife in the bedroom with the book in her hand, every day for the hour or so with pots and pans clinging in the kitchen.
Do you think she’s like, Oh, my husband is so wonderful. I can’t wait to dive into this book and develop my sexuality. Do you think she has that attitude?
Taylor: Yeah, not going to happen. [00:11:00] Well, no, that’s so interesting because it’s when you say it that way, we can all see like, that’s not, that’s not the end of the story, right?
No. And yeah, that that seems like such an automatic starting place for the higher desire partner
Dan: of like Absolutely.
Taylor: It sounds like service. It sounds like a fair bargain. It sounds like it could be a win-win. Um, and then it gets extra frustrating when it doesn’t pan out according to, to the plan, and in my
Dan: case, it backfires.
Hmm. Yeah. Sexual desire gets even less and less and less as a result, right? Yeah. Which, which, and a big part of it at the time is I thought our sexual desire problems was my wife’s fault. In that, in that story, right? It’s her fault why we don’t have better sex.
And cause it lets me off the hook from really working on being a better husband,
Taylor: It’s interesting because giving the [00:12:00] exchange, we would think that that would make us attractive, right?
Dan: Oh yeah, because on the surface it looks really good.
Taylor: Yeah. so, so you said this backfired, and clearly now you, you’ve got some hindsight, in your favor.
Why doesn’t this work? Cause a lot of people are trying this and frustrated. Like it’s not, it isn’t happening. Right. So why doesn’t this, this kind of story a success?
Dan: It doesn’t work because when we think about sexual problems in a marriage. We think we need to address them sexually, take a sexual approach to sexual problems.
In fact, most couples, when they have severe sexual desire discrepancies, they’ll go to a sex therapist. I can think of a husband and wife that I know, they went to a sex therapist. She has low desire. and the sex therapists are trained to treat low sexual desire like a sexual dysfunction. They have a word for it, and they have training and a protocol on what to do when you have, very low [00:13:00] sexual desire.
and so 90 percent of that coaching sort of the therapy session with this couple, the therapist is zeroing in on the, the wife’s low libido and his prescribing things that. A lot of sex therapists in their training are taught to prescribe like you should go home and take a sensual bath. You should maybe read a book with some, you know, steamy scenes and erotic erotica helps or even watch some pornographic films.
They might even say buy an expensive vibrator and use it like in other words. do things that higher desire women do,
and
Dan: if you follow, if you follow the behavior, then your libido will catch up to your behavior, and you’re gonna have higher libido. So in other words, I think they take They look at sexual desire problems as a genital issue or as an individual desire issue.
They completely ignore that Her low [00:14:00] sexual desire is happening within a system in her in her marriage like this particular couple I’m thinking about that went to that sex therapist. What if the reason why she’s low desire Is because when her husband comes to her for sex He’s really anxious. He’s really needy
and being with a spouse with a really needy energy around sex doesn’t increase one’s libido. It decreases one’s libido. Like, right. That tends to get ignored.
Taylor: what you’re describing is a normal response, not a dysfunction, not a pathology. Correct.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Normal response. Right.
And then, on the other hand, most marriage family therapists don’t have great sexuality training in their curriculum. Like, I went to our local university, just has a new MFT program. I was looking at their curriculum. And, of all the classes and all the credits you take, there’s not a single one about sexuality or dealing with sexual differences in the relationship.
So, we tend to look to professionals to help us with our sexual desire differences, [00:15:00] yet they either err too much on this is a genital problem or this is a individualistic problem and we’re working on that level, or they go too far in not having enough sexual Training either so the solutions people look for and then you read like there’s a book I read recently from a very popular author About how to keep the sex alive in long term relationships.
So it’s it’s a brand new book She’s sold million copies of her first book She’s got a lot of great things to say and she has an appendix on like troubleshooting And one of the things is, what do you do if you want sex and your spouse doesn’t? And the answer is, you should talk about it and explain your needs to them.
And, you know, it’s, it’s great advice and we get that advice all the time, but how many of us watching or listening to this program right now with sexual desire discrepancies haven’t, hasn’t already tried that and it hasn’t [00:16:00] worked for us yet, right? So just sitting down and, You know, I have these needs that I really need met, and I would really like you to meet them better, that’s not enough to solve problems in a relationship.
Taylor: Yeah, just really insufficient because, um, it’s missing some of the, the interactional dynamics that are both at the relationship level and at the, like, understanding sexuality level. Yes. Yeah. It’s so cool that you are able to kind of find that space that factors in both. and I, I agree with you that my training is marriage and family therapist.
we had some information about sex therapy. Um, but I came out of the, I came out of graduate school, not fully equipped. Like it was almost like. Hey, this is a thing out there. Here’s some one on one, but if you’re going to do it, you know, I would have needed more training and, and then I get into sexual addiction work as part of my core training after graduate school.
Um, and it [00:17:00] wasn’t until a few years ago that I started doing, to look back at. Some of the sex therapy resources and try and bridge some of the systemic material with some of the sexual material. And yeah, there’s just unfortunately very few people that, have kind of the nuance or the balance to see things from those, those several angles at one time.
It’s cool that you’re, you’re right there in many ways. Your background allows you to more adequately pursue this same subject matter from a variety of different angles,
Dan: right?
Taylor: Yes,
Dan: definitely.
Taylor: That’s cool. Okay. So help us then unpack how is the trap being set, right? How is this dynamic, showing up each partner?
And in my view is doing something to kind of create this, the shared unwanted experience, right?
Dan: It doesn’t happen overnight, usually. it’s a pattern that they develop over time. So my philosophy, or the way I view it, is it’s no one person’s fault, but it’s the system.
[00:18:00] Marriages, in my mind, are a system. We form these patterns. And these patterns are formed over time, and they become so automatic to us. It’s like driving to work. You don’t even have to think about, like, what turns to take. You jump. It’s just automatic, right? And how we interact. In fact, I bet you can think of something that you know if you said to your wife, it would cause her to be upset.
With like 99 percent accuracy, what things you could say, so you know what things to avoid next.
Taylor: Well, I, I do know what to say, what I could say that would, you know, trigger that reaction. And that knowledge isn’t enough for me to stop saying them sometimes
Dan: because they’re automatic enough, right? That’s more honest.
That’s great.
Taylor: Um, but the, but the awareness of it invites the opportunity, like, okay, maybe I can undo the automatic nature of this,
Dan: right? Uh, right. So, like, in my marriage, there’s certain topics that I, Avoid. And, I, I know if I were to bring these certain things up, [00:19:00] it’s going to mean this type of a feelings as a result of these things.
So, this is adaptive and there’s nothing wrong with this. This is how you live with a person. This is how you do life with another person. It’s, it’s okay. We’re not all on islands and it’s all about me. It’s about learning how to cooperate and collaborate with another human being. And there’s going to be sacrifices.
And I think those sacrifices are good. It’s fine. We want that. Systems are good. They keep things functioning. However, sometimes we function at a lower level than we could be because of the patterns we’re doing are around avoiding some anxiety or some discomfort about certain things. And so we fall into these traps in these patterns.
Let me give you an example of one, a couple, changed their names. Hannah and James.
Mm-Hmm. .
Dan: she came from a broken home. Father had an affair while she was a teenager, in the home. And, just kind of grew up with a distrust of men in general [00:20:00] until she met her husband. Wonderful, wonderful man that she could really trust.
Falls in love, marries him. Night before the wedding, mom takes the daughter aside, says, Hey, by the way, you’re going to have sex tomorrow and it’s going to hurt. but you have to do it anyway, cause he’s going to want it. She’s like, ah, freaking out like sex. It’s going to hurt. No one told me this and he’s going to need it.
So she’s really nervous going in, you know, wedding night and they had sex and guess what? It did hurt. Mom was right. And, uh, but she tried to cover up the pain and kind of like, you know, grin and bear it through it. Cause it’s for her husband. And that’s kind of like how their marriage kind of started kind of with that pattern where she would hide the discomfort and the pain because she didn’t want her husband to go have an affair like her father did because she’s not given her husband enough sex.
So all of a sudden you kind of create this system, this narrative around, um, Sex is for him. It’s a duty I have as a wife. Yes, it [00:21:00] hurts, and it’s not pleasurable for me, but I kind of do this because that’s kind of what I’m supposed to do. Then fast forward five years, and now they’re wondering why they have desire discrepancy, right?
Sex has never been about her pleasure or her enjoyment. It’s always been something she used to manage her husband. But he had a role to play in it too. So when you zoom out and it’s no one particular spot, but it’s the pattern that the couple has created to help them function, but as a low level of functioning, so what can we do to break patterns, understand things and improve your level of functioning?
That’s, that’s the goal of, I think, uh, for every couple, dealing with the pain of, sexual desire differences, how can we actually. uplevel our functioning and start to really address what’s going on underlying. Yeah.
Taylor: Well, and I love that we can kind of look at, as an example, like this couple, how this came to be.
And some of the details may be different for other [00:22:00] couples. but that sounds very similar to some of the background my wife and I came into our marriage with, and I think that’s incredibly common. And, When we can zoom out and kind of get a sense of like this is how it came to be and it makes sense Then that that’s a really useful Place to start an understanding and kind of seeing where each partner is coming from and you’re right, there’s a way of up leveling this.
So would you say, what are some of the common ways that, higher desire partners are challenged to grow? And what are some of the ways that lower desire partners are challenged to grow in order to, to come up with a better level of functioning?
Dan: Great. It’s going to be case by case, but let’s go back to James and Hannah in this case.
So for Hannah, It was like ever you have kids ever do Legos with their kids. I’ve got like, we’re, we’re totally a Lego home. And so my kid gets a new kit and it’s like the booklet has like 200 or 300 steps to complete this thing. Like it takes some dedication, [00:23:00] right? And we’re halfway through it and things are not lining up and are what we’re building with the picture.
It’s like way off. Like. What’s going on? So piece by piece we have to go backwards in the steps and undo it until we get like I don’t know 40 steps back. Aha. That’s where we were off like we’re off by one Bump or whatever they’re called in Lego technical language, but that was it we correct that and then now we can rebuild again And then we’re back to a good part.
So for, for Hannah, in her case, it was a willingness for her to kind of understand her scripts and where they came from to really slow down her brain. Like the Legos, can we undo things and go back to the step where I got it wrong, fix that, and then everything else would kind of rebuild from there.
Yeah.
Dan: So it was that realization of. Of now she’s back in her home and realizing her mom [00:24:00] hated sex, her mom avoided sex, and it doesn’t justify the father’s, affair, but now she can as an adult process and understand no wonder why when the opportunity presented itself, it was a easy thing. thing for the dad to justify not saying it was right, but In realizing she didn’t want to live like her mom anymore So she had to learn how to like sex for herself which in and of itself brought up a whole nother set of concerns and and everything but one thing that that helped Hannah specifically was She never understood the pleasure connection and sex for herself It took a lot of courage and that’s going to be the running thing.
It takes courage because you have to go against your initial patterns, right? You’re right. It’s like going to work. I’m used to driving this road. I’m familiar with this road. Now I have to take an unfamiliar road. I might get stuck. I might get lost. I might have to take a wrong turn and back up and go the other way.
Like that’s, but [00:25:00] that’s life. That’s, that’s the way we learn. You have to be willing to go through some mess. And so she went through some mess. But for her, she discovered her clitoris one day and it was like a great day for her to realize this feels good and I think I can enjoy this, more and find more pleasure in it.
And so just, And then working with her husband and like, well, let’s work together. Let’s make sex really pleasurable for me. Can we slow it down? Maybe take penetration off the table. Help me understand what feels good. And once they did, all of a sudden she now found, That sex was just as much for her that it was.
It was having a good pleasure experience made it easy for her to rewrite the scripts in her head to something that’s kind of better for her.
Taylor: Right. Well, and then all this, it’s not, uh, he did so many nice things that I could. Find the desire more. It required her to go back into like, why did it make sense for me to be averse to this?
Right. And what [00:26:00] would make sense for it to become desirable for me? And so it wasn’t a transactional thing that she did with her husband. It was something that she had to deconstruct and then grow again for herself.
Dan: Right, right. And to give her husband credit, he knew when to back off. And just to trust that she’ll figure it out.
And that’s really scary for a lot of higher desire husbands because they want results. They want outcomes. They don’t want an indeterminate timeline. So that’s, that takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to love this person enough and to trust this process and there’s also no guarantees.
Hannah has a great outcome. It’s a good story, but there’s other couples I’m sure where she didn’t care. She didn’t want to do the work while the husband was just as patient as James was. But, but, but that’s, that’s not the point. It’s, yeah. how can I use our desired discrepancies to refine who I am?
Does it invite me to become more [00:27:00] patient? Does it invite me to become more caring? Does it invite me to become more understanding, more empathetic? Like, that’s the prize of doing all this work, I think.
Taylor: That’s a good distinction because, a client of mine comes to mind where he had another provider that instructed him to do, you know, a a 90 day sex fast or something like that.
And so in our work together, um, he was counting down and he was like, I don’t know, you know, on day 91, I don’t know that she’s even gonna, you know,
Dan: give it to me, basically. You kind of missed the point of the fast. Yeah. And so
Taylor: We were trying to look at It’s still transactional.
You’re still trying to trade something for to get something. Right. And which is different than becoming a more attractive partner.
Yes.
Taylor: But I love how you put it. It’s not, it’s not even just about finding a new strategy to get better [00:28:00] sex. It’s about using our difficulties to become better people.
And I think that’s a really, profound way of looking at it because whether or not we get outcome is not always like a, you know, apply the technique and then it’ll, it’ll happen.
Right.
Taylor: In fact, for humans, that’s frequently not, not how it works, but we can kind of take those experiences, learn where we’re at and how we can take one step further. And so I really like that reframe no, I don’t know if this is, this is related. I’ve heard you use the phrase integrity culture, in contrast to, or as a, I don’t know if you’d say alternative or maybe even a supplement to things like culture, okay. So, yeah, I’d be curious cause we’re talking about more alignment with the people that we want to be.
So could you tell us a bit more about integrity culture?
Dan: Right. Well, let’s first talk about purity culture briefly. Yeah. Um, if you’re not familiar with that term, it’s, it’s popular. There’s memes about it online. You can read books about purity culture. And [00:29:00] it’s the idea that, those that grew up in conservative Christian homes, specifically in the eighties, nineties, and early two thousands, grew up around this idea that your virtue and your purity is, and your chastity is paramount.
So, Therefore, anything sexual ought to be, shunned or is less than. I think at the heart of it, I, my personal beliefs are chastity is definitely an important virtue. It’s good for society, right? It’s good for homes, good for individuals. but the motive behind it was a very fear based thing because if you are not chased, then your value diminishes.
If you, aren’t pure, then you’re not going to marry a knight in shining armor. You’re going to marry, I don’t know, some guy from the slums. Like it’s very much, it was very fear based type of an approach. Right. And so it painted sexuality in a very negative light. It’s like [00:30:00] saying, these are all the reasons why sex is bad.
And, and not, not good because look at all the harm that sex can, can cause. So, people growing up in that and down, they’re married and they have real struggles, you know, adapting to a healthy sexual relationship with their spouse.
Yeah,
it’s an easy place for them to go is to blame purity culture and it’s very human nature, right?
When we feel shame, we blame. That’s the, we feel great to find a scapegoat. Like there’s someone we can throw rocks at, man, it feels great. Cause every, in every story you’re, you need a victim and you need a villain. So if you feel like you’re a victim of purity culture, they throw rocks at, they’re priests or their pastors or their church leaders or parents or whatever, and I and not saying that there were any bad actors.
We’re not excusing people, right? Like their things happen. We live in a world where, you know, there are some really bad, [00:31:00] unfortunate things taught that that can be damaging. But that being said, when I talk about integrity culture, it’s it’s realizing that, wait a minute. I’m not only a product of what other people told me, I have a say in who I am too.
I’m the captain of my own ship. I’m the author of my own story. I have the ability to self author here and I can decide who I want to be in the context of what’s happened to me. So in order to do that, it really invites you to tap into your integrity, meaning Now I’m married, to the person, I’ve, I’ve had a history of struggling with sexuality as good, but is that really how I want to continue living my life?
What does my integrity dictate? And I would assume for a lot of people, they might come to new conclusions when they take full responsibility for themselves in the sexual relationship. It’ll be, I might not like sex, I may not have yet found how it can be pleasurable for me, [00:32:00] but I love this person enough, and I know it matters enough.
that I’m willing to push myself a little bit here and I can do that and it’s in line with my integrity. Or the flip side is I’m married to a person that’s the product of culture. He or she has a lot of hang ups about sex, but I love this person. What’s within my control? Instead of getting angry at her, angry at purity culture, what’s within my integrity here?
It’s actually really good for our relationship. How can I nurture and, help this person thrive? in our relationship. It calls for more integrity. Integrity is about standing on your own two feet. It’s about self reliance. It’s about, tapping into your highest and best values and living a value based lifestyle rather than purely on the whims of what other people say you should do.
That’s why I think we need more integrity culture.
Taylor: Yeah, I love that. It’s, it’s a, it’s a very useful reflection for anybody who finds [00:33:00] themselves in this dynamic or, you know, numerous other dynamics, but, you, you gave great illustrations of integrity looks like. If we’re in this situation, now what? And what decision is going to be a values aligned decision here?
Um, which might look slightly different for each partner and, you know, their unique values. But, again, we’re starting to ask questions that allow this to grow us up. Um, which is not the same, necessarily, as, How do we make the pain go away? Or how do we get the other person to be the way that we want them to be?
and so, I love that emphasis on integrity and I also like the ability to, acknowledge where, you know, the source of some of our. Dysfunction or pain may come from without needing to spend too much time casting stones or, you know, tearing things down once we see where we’re at. The invitation is to then do the best that we can from that position forward.
So, yeah, cool. Very well put. So. [00:34:00] Anything else with this libido gap that we haven’t already touched on? Any other, thoughts or, tips or encouragement that we haven’t yet discussed?
Dan: I just want to give our, people a lot of hope. I believe a passionate marriage is completely possible for almost any couple, any couple out there.
Your path to getting there might be different than my specific path, but the principles are all the same. The stepping stones are, are all the same. And it’s work worth doing. Don’t give up. I think building a strong sexual relationship is one of the most challenging, ruling, and most rewarding things we can do in this life.
Yeah. It’s worth it. It’s worth the effort, so don’t give up. Yeah.
I appreciate that and I appreciate that because I, you know, you and I both help people and I know that people need to hear that. But [00:35:00] also, you know, I’m, I’m in a phase right now where there are certain elements where I’ve had to. I’m kind of check myself and see that I wasn’t an integrity.
Taylor: And I’m kind of facing some things where I’m like. And how I approach intimacy with my wife specifically, and I’m like, okay, I don’t, I don’t see the way through this particular hitch that we’ve got right now. But, A, it’s nice to kind of keep that contained. It’s not the whole thing. It’s a piece of the relationship.
Many couples in this situation, like, hey, sex gets tough, but, you know, we co parent really well, or, you know, we’re great in other categories. We’ve got a good friendship in place. So there’s that, but also just that idea of, When we run into those roadblocks, the invitation is to look inward and kind of find that integrity.
And, uh, so yeah, I mean, I don’t have it all figured out and I’ve, I’m still on that path of growing. And so it’s, it’s cool to hear the discussion and that invitation to, to kind of [00:36:00] self examine. So yeah, very appreciated.
Dan: Thank you.
Taylor: all right. Well, it’s been a pleasure, Dan, as always, and, uh, we’ll have to get lunch sometime or something like that. Let’s do it. We happen to live close by. Yeah. I really appreciate the deep wisdom that you bring to this, which could otherwise just be a pretty basic conversation. And I think that wisdom is really appreciated by viewers. So thank you. We’ll take care of everyone. We’ll, we’ll see you soon.
Dan: All right.
All right.
If you want a more meaningful sexual and intimate connection in your marriage, I invite you to check out my, get your marriage on program.
Dan: Over a hundred couples have said this program packs tremendous value and has helped their intimacy grow to the next level. Now go get your marriage on. [00:37:00]
