For so many Christian couples, sexuality and spirituality can feel like they’re at odds. We’ve been taught that to be holy means to suppress desire—but what if our sexuality is actually one of the most powerful ways to love?
In this deeply insightful episode, we talk with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife about how to integrate faith, desire, and embodiment. We explore how repressing our sexuality keeps us disconnected, how true intimacy begins with self-honesty, and why learning to love through our sexuality is a profoundly spiritual act.
You’ll hear about:
- Why sexual integration, not suppression, leads to spiritual strength
- How ego, fear, and control distort connection—and what it means to love from the soul
- The difference between sex as validation vs. sex as communion
- How couples can cultivate that eros energy—aliveness, joy, and freedom—in their marriage
Whether you’ve wrestled with shame around sexuality or you just want a richer, more connected relationship, this conversation will inspire you to see your body and your marriage in a whole new light.
👉 Check out Jennifer’s brand new book, That We Might Have Joy.
👉 Get our free training about how to get your marriage unstuck.
👉 Apply for our amazing couples retreat coming up in the spring!
👉 And join our free private facebook group, Christian Couples Improving Sex & Intimacy
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.
How to love through your sexuality with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife
Dan: [00:00:00] Hello friends. Welcome to the Get Your Marriage On Podcast. If you’re new here, a warm welcome. This is a podcast dedicated to Christian couples that want to improve sex and intimacy in their marriage. Now this episode you’re about to hear is very personal to me because, for the first 13 years of my marriage, I had a really hard time reconciling spirituality and sexuality.
I thought if I wanted be a more spiritual person, I had to suppress my sexual nature, and I really didn’t see them two going together hand in hand. All that changed on one fateful day in, uh, 2017. Wonderful day. A conversation with a friend totally changed the way I viewed things. Well, it challenged the way I view things would probably be a more accurate way of saying that.
And the fruit of that is get your marriage on and what you see today with our podcast, with our events, with our coaching program and MA and our mobile apps and all of our offerings. All spring from [00:01:00] this idea that we’re about to talk about today with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson Fife. She’s been a guest on my podcast several times and she’s one of my mentors.
I absolutely admire what she creates and the way she thinks of things.
She just released a brand new book called that They Might Have Joy, which is a fantastic description of what a loving sexual relationship ought to be. It’s a place of joy, but how do we get there? Well, that’s what we gotta talk about today. By the end of this episode, you’ll learn how spirituality and sexuality actually work together.
You’ll learn how to actually love another person. Through your God-given sexuality. And it’s no longer an obstacle to overcome, but it’s something you learn to embrace and work through, and our sexuality can be a deep and wonderful gift.
I also wanna tell you about our upcoming in-person couples retreat. It starts April of 2026. It’s four days and four nights of beautiful and wonderful accommodations. Now, this isn’t some stodgy, conference room of a hotel kind of a thing. We rent [00:02:00] out a resort, we bring in a private chef, we take you outdoors, and we have adventures.
So it’s a mix of romance. And fun, but we also do a real deep dive on all things intimacy in your relationship. You’ll have an opportunity for private coaching with either myself or one of our coaches that we have coming to the program, and it is a beautiful opportunity for any couple who is in an otherwise happy relationship.
But wish things were better when it came to sexual intimacy, and that’s what it’s all about. So, don’t hesitate. You need to apply to come. So fill out an application. It’s free to apply You go to get your marriage on.com, click events, and you’ll find the link to our couples retreat with all the details.
Dan: Jennifer, what a pleasure it is to have you on the podcast today. How are you?
Jennifer: Good. Thanks for having
Dan: Good. Emily and I have been reading your new book that’s coming out. It is absolutely fantastic. And the title, I can’t think of a better title for it, that they might have joy ’cause it’s, it’s [00:03:00] this, theme throughout the whole book about real joy that we can experience, especially with those with a good Christian background and reconciling with sexuality.
So.
Jennifer: Yeah. Great.
Dan: Sure. It’s a labor of love, what you’ve done.
Jennifer: It’s been, was supposed to be a short book and, you know, to be written in a few months and then it turned into a much longer book and took four years. But I don’t regret any of that. It, it’s, uh, it was also me sorting out my mind a little more on the subject, so it was time well spent for me anyway.
Yeah.
Dan: Well, we’ve greatly benefited and I hope everyone listening to this episode will buy your book, and I’m sure they will be benefited too. But today on Zoom in on one aspect of, of the book, and that is male sexuality, which I think would be very fitting to talk about. And you share a story about a man named Samuel.
He’s very scrupulous. can you relate that story and I think that’ll frame our discussion today.
Jennifer: Yeah, so Samuel [00:04:00] is somebody who’s in his early thirties and growing up a latter day saint, but very, very religious. Really took seriously the idea that sexual sin interferes with spirituality. And took the teachings that he got very literally like to do nothing that would arouse feelings in his body.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: And because he had scrupulosity, which is a form of OCD. he quite literally obeyed the letter of the law and wouldn’t even touch himself to wash, you know, the, he took it to an extreme. He didn’t date because when he would date women or get near women, he would feel sexual feelings and he felt quite literally, he was his spiritual wellbeing, you know, safety in a certain sense. And so. You know, of course most religious people don’t interpret their, the sexual expectations [00:05:00] of chastity in such an extreme form. But I brought up the story because. We often think, that if we are literally rejecting this part of ourselves, we will be more spiritual. That we will be blessed for that. And when that, in fact isn’t true, you know, because here he was in his thirties, a very intelligent guy, who was living in his parents’ basement essentially because he couldn’t tolerate. The adult experience of integrating his sexuality, of coming to peace with his sexuality. So because he wasn’t at peace in his own skin, he couldn’t create anything intimate or meaningful with a partner. so he quite literally stayed kind of, stuck in his development an effort to be good. And so I use his story as, as a, basically the argument that sexual repression is not our [00:06:00] goal. Sexual integration is our
Dan: Right.
Jennifer: Um, and what I mean by sexual integration is that we have to come to a place of. of our embodiment that God gave us bodies, God gave us sexuality. And there are some things in life you can just say no to, and you’re better for saying no to them. Never touch them, never deal with them. But the sensuality of the body.
Dan: You can’t escape that
Jennifer: we can’t escape it. Even the pleasures of food,
Dan: right.
Jennifer: So the fact that the body is sensual and capable of pleasure, it means we have to sort out a way to be in relationship to
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: Whether it’s the pleasures of sex or touch or food a way that. Accrues to our strength and doesn’t undermine our morality. So to integrate our sexuality is to accept our sexual embodied nature, which is a process that’s not just something you just do one day, but coming to peace with the fact of [00:07:00] your humanity, your embodied, imperfect humanity, also making choices. In line with our morality, that we are living in a way that makes our lives stronger, makes our relationships stronger, that the pleasures accrue to our joy, not to an indulgent escape or in some way undermining our lives. So I use the story of Samuel to really, um. He, he’s a more extreme story, although I think many, many people relate to that story. But I think he, he, you know, he’s very, very rigid in his interpretation, but it’s pointing out that living that law perfectly does not make us stronger.
Dan: Right
Jennifer: And so we must, in a sense, we need another way to think about what the moral project is that we’re up
Dan: Uhhuh. Yeah. I used to think that, spirituality and sexuality were at odds with each other. And when I’d have a sexual thought or something, I would think, oh no, that’s [00:08:00] a sin. So I’d try to combat that with more spirituality thinking. More spirituality will squash the sexuality like one’s the angel and one’s the devil kind concept,
Jennifer: Exactly.
Dan: and it doesn’t work out very well.
Jennifer: No, no, it doesn’t. Yeah. And, and, exactly. And I tell another story, uh, in another section of the book about someone who really did that. Like he kept looking at porn, so then he would try to go do the religious practices that he thought would quell this part of him and. I make the point that repression drives obsession. So we actually end up thinking about sexuality much, much more when we’re so afraid of it and don’t know what to do with it, and fear that it’s going to interfere with our spiritual wellbeing we actually, End up having, thinking about sex all the time, in a sense, trying to not think about it and or, or we succeed in repressing it. And [00:09:00] then it actually still wreaks havoc on our lives because we then are in a relationship in which we don’t know how to bring our sexuality or we are afraid of it. So we don’t really have the option in full suppression. Usually if we won’t deal with our sexuality, it, it deals with
Dan: Right. Yeah. Emily and I were talking last night about the things we’re reading, and I related to a little bit of like, well, I kind of wanna be sexual, but I don’t wanna be too sexual. so I gotta like, pretend I’m not really interested in, in sex. I gotta do these other things. And then all of a sudden I operate as if sex is icing rather than the cake of a marriage.
And then. I try to replace, you know, what ought to be the cake with all these other things that never quite really fill or fulfill. And, uh, it kind of creates a little emptiness or a little hollowness in the marriage.
Jennifer: exactly. And it, it’s, it’s an understandable [00:10:00] challenge because so many of us have been taught to think of sexuality in the body. As Satan’s pathway as
Dan: Uhhuh.
Jennifer: And so because we are starting with that idea, then we’re not sure how to relate to it. You know, like how much is too much and what does that actually mean, and is it okay to have these thoughts or not?
And is it okay to have them in marriage? Like we learn that it’s okay, but like when is it not okay? And, and I’m, you know, so they’re fair questions
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: I think. When we’re not sure it’s a good thing, then we don’t know how much is too
Dan: Right?
Jennifer: And I think a better way to think about it is sex is neither good nor bad.
it is based on what we are creating through it.
Dan: Yes.
Jennifer: Uh, that is, we relating to our sexuality and pleasure in a way that accrues to our strength, that makes a marriage
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: Are we learning how to love and be loved through it? Are we working out a real partnership? are all the questions, but the [00:11:00] cake to use that idea is that is the cake of a marriage. And I don’t mean that there aren’t, people can’t go through wax and waning of attraction and so on, but this idea that you are special to me. That I want to be close to you, that I don’t want you to be close to others in this way. That’s a kind of meaning that sits at the foundation of a marriage. not the same thing as everybody should be having sex three times a week or whatever. So I, I don’t mean it in the quite literal
Dan: Right.
Jennifer: some people
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: about
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: I’m saying this idea of you are special. I’m drawn to you. I’m sharing my sexuality with you and only you. That’s a meaning that, is the birthplace of the marriage and something that when it’s not, when it doesn’t stay alive in the marriage for whatever reason, often good reasons, that it, undermines the peace in the
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: And so, yeah.
Dan: I wanna go back to [00:12:00] something you just said a moment ago. if sex isn’t Satan’s playground, what is Satan’s playground then?
Jennifer: Yeah, so I do make an argument throughout the book that Satan’s playground is ego. It’s our desire for reinforcement, our desire for the world to yield to our impulses, our demands. It’s fear, it’s control. It’s rigidity and,
Dan: deceit is lying. Uhhuh, right? Uh.
Jennifer: deception, it’s, you know, we lie because we want to be seen in positive ways while reinforcing or controlling what we get access to within ourselves.
And so the opposite of that, and I call that the thanatos pole within us is aeros. And aeros is. The desire to reach beyond
Dan: Right. Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: another soul, towards divinity, [00:13:00] goodness in the world. It’s that ex expansive desire. And sex is about aeros, and sex can be about thanatos, so sex can be about control and despair and futility. But if sex is about aeros, this is, I want to know you.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: It’s you. I accept it’s you that I love. It’s you, I want to be close to and commune with. That’s the erotic energy, the life-giving energy, the lifeblood of a marriage. And so, we must not confuse evil with the body
Dan: Uh,
Jennifer: because the body is in fact a spiritual instrument.
And it’s a gift. It’s a spiritual gift, but. We can often relate to the body in ways that are, you know, the, the thanatos pole, that sort of sense of self, reinforcement and control. So it’s how are we relating to the body that matters? And so, yeah, deception is, is a [00:14:00] powerful form of ego. Mm-hmm.
Dan: it, one thing about deception and ego, there is sometimes. We’re so good at deceiving ourselves. We don’t know. We’re doing it like, consider the case of like a husband and wife where he, is more open to sexual novelty, has a wider range of things and wife isn’t, and then he uses things like in the name of love or in the name of whatever, like you, you need to do these things with me, like, like the Bradley and Andrea story.
Can you talk about that for a little bit? That kind of a dynamic.
Jennifer: so Brad, of course, these are all pseudonyms, um, but you, in case somebody’s like, Hey, I know a Bradley and Andrea, I bet it’s them. Uh, but, uh,
Dan: I’m just glad you didn’t have a Dan and Emily in your book, so.
Jennifer: yeah, exactly. so Bradley is person in the book who. Is very high desire and very demanding around sex. So he’s always pressuring his wife to do [00:15:00] things that he wants, even when he knows she doesn’t want to. And even if he pressures her enough and she relents. He knows that she’s not into it, that she’s not really that happy, but he proceeds anyway because she did say yes. Uh, you know, so he would use that idea, but knowing that she wasn’t enjoying herself, didn’t really want to be there and was going forward anyway, because he would insist, well, this is how I feel closer to
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: And I, I think it’s true on some level that he felt less panic and despair. but he would always sell the idea or try to sell the idea that he didn’t have the sexual issues that Andrea
Dan: Right,
Jennifer: and what.
Dan: because from his point of view, she’s the bottleneck.
Jennifer: the
Dan: She’s the right,
Jennifer: She’s the bottleneck.
Dan: she’s the.
Jennifer: the one who’s, she’s the one that’s saying no, obviously, she’s got the hangups now. She would acknowledge, you know, yeah. I, I do have some sexual hangups and I [00:16:00] certainly don’t like the sex we’re having. Maybe I’m the problem. I mean, I think that was an easy thing for her to believe and almost prefer, because I think if she were to talk more honestly to him about what she saw as so undesirable about the sex he was offering. He would tend to get angry and frustrated and critical of her. So she kind of preferred the idea that maybe if I could just find some way to want this bad sex, we would be
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: He, um, you know, in my work with him, I had him write out, he, he mentioned that he felt this sense that, that God, rejected him, that God was disgusted with him.
I think he
Dan: Mm-hmm. It’s almost like a tangential comment, like,
Jennifer: Yeah, it
Dan: yeah,
Jennifer: I can’t remember how it actually
Dan: Uhhuh.
Jennifer: but I asked him to write out a dialogue with God. And, and this is something I do sometimes with clients, is, to get a better sense of how they’re carrying a relationship in their
Dan: [00:17:00] Gotcha.
Jennifer: And so he wrote out. A conversation he was having with God about his sexuality. what was so striking is that while he was totally into novelty, which just to be clear, is not about sexual advancement. I mean, a lot of men talk like they’re ahead of their wives, but. That’s just a function of testosterone. And I, I, I’m not trying to dismiss what men want at all,
Dan: Uh.
Jennifer: but don’t confuse it with being further ahead.
It’s more that you want something and your wife wants something, and sorting out how to build a bridge, an honest bridge is really the way to have something you both desire. and Bradley always talking about all the things he wanted. looked like he had no issues, but when I read this conversation he was having with God a theoretical conversation. The God in his mind, fully rejected him, thought his sexuality was disgusting, right? And he [00:18:00] was like a child trying to get favor,
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: And that this was very much, you know, the God in his mind was very similar to his actual father who was a kind of contemptuous and rejecting person. so. I use that story to just. people understand that high desire versus low desire is not necessarily a function of sexual integration, right? That is, it really depends on are you truly at peace and are you truly able to let yourself be known in this way and to really know another person in this way, And how they may be different than you and want different things. You know, Bradley had no interest in understanding Andrea. [00:19:00] Because if he were to understand her, he would better understand why she did not want to have sex with him. Because it wasn’t desirable sex, it was demanding, it was pressuring, it was disconnected
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: And. He was so afraid to see
Dan: And face it.
Jennifer: already felt so unworthy and he just wanted the validation of her acceptance of her saying yes the sense of control that would come from that. so he had no interest in intimacy, no capacity
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: because he was himself so tortured inside.
Dan: Gotcha. I like that. ’cause it illustrates that when we’re not integrated, sexually. Sex isn’t intimate. It’s, it can’t be intimate. So how about, a lot of the young men, I put myself in this camp, you know, raised in our modern conservative culture. not to blame the culture, there’s a lot of good aspects of it too, but just the idea that, when we’re not integrated sex sexually, it [00:20:00] does interfere with our ability to have intimate sex.
Maybe ’cause it’s not modeled right. ’cause we don’t have that. Idea. In our mind it, it’s more like a transaction or something you try to get.
Jennifer: Yes. Yeah. Exchanging favors, exchanging
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: It’s more role-based or this is what we should do as a couple. And I’m not dismissing that that can’t be reassuring for people, but I think the more that we develop and grow and come to peace with ourselves, the more intimate our marriage can be and the more intimate our sexual relationship can be because we’re able. to show up there, we’re able to be at peace in our own skin and be with our partner. I mean, I think it shocked me somewhat in the beginning when I started working with couples to realize, that sex wasn’t necessarily making people feel closer. That in fact, sometimes people would get through the act of sex and feel [00:21:00] desperately lonely afterwards, like not known, free to be themselves. to manage something, how much they showed up, having to manage their spouse’s feelings or response to them. A lot of negotiating words, the level of contact in the couple and that because there was often a lot of turmoil, both either within. One of, or both people or between them, you know, that was showing up and infecting the sexual connection and infecting how open-hearted and free and peaceful and joyful it could
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: So our development as individuals, meaning our ability to be at peace with ourselves, to have compassion towards ourselves, make choices, we are genuinely at peace with. Around our sexuality and in our lives in general. All of that deeply [00:22:00] shapes how much we wanna let somebody in on who we are how much we can know another person.
Because if we need them to reinforce us, just like Bradley with Andrea, can’t, know them. We don’t want to know them. We don’t wanna know what they really think.
Dan: Yeah, so there needs to be that first step of maybe self intimacy, I guess, piece with ourselves.
Jennifer: Yeah, and, and it’s maybe easy to say peace with yourself because you know, the way that you build more honest peace with yourself is often seeing yourself through your partner’s eyes. I mean, for Bradley it was seeing that, first of all, he’s kind of a mess inside around his sexuality while pretending to be, you know, the most informed person, in the bedroom anyway.
and then also. Getting more clear about how hard it was for his wife to be open to him. He was a bundle of anxiety and [00:23:00] demandingness, even if they had sex, she didn’t wanna be very available to
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: Right? And again, this is a more extreme story, but we do this in very subtle ways where we’re negotiating meanings in sex we can’t yet really acknowledge to ourselves or to our partner because we’re afraid of the outcome.
We’re afraid of them being disappointed in us. We’re afraid. they will reject us, whatever it is. But intimacy is, is a tough business. So yes, it requires peace with with ourselves, but it’s not like first peace with yourself, then peace in your marriage. the way to get to peace in the marriage is to that the marriage itself will reveal what you have to deal with in
Dan: Mm-hmm. Got it.
JFF Touch Quote
Dan: So when couples are negotiating these meanings in the bedroom,
Jennifer: Mm-hmm.
Dan: what does that mean? how does that come about?
Jennifer: So one of the, one of the things I talk about in the book is that. You know, to [00:24:00] quote Socrates, the body is an instrument of perception, right? That that is to say body is instrument. It’s something we are able to map meanings at a level that we actually at, at a much higher level what we can communicate verbally. So like even as a baby or a child, you know, you’re mapping your mother’s face. You’re like, are they delighted in me? Do they love me? You know, you’re, you’re tracking it all at the level of the body. And so this is especially true in sex, and you can map a lot about. Your partner’s
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: in the way that they touch you or don’t touch you the way they connect with you or don’t.
Right? So we are negotiating these unspoken meanings all the time and they deeply impact how our bodies respond. it reminds me of a couple that I worked with years ago where. There had been some breaches in the marriage on his side. It, there, there had been trouble [00:25:00] in
Dan: Uh huh.
Jennifer: She was also somebody that was, deeply challenged around the body and sexuality.
She had a lot of anxieties that she was bringing into this, and they had both been handling fears in ways that were driving a deeper wedge. They started working with me and, they both were doing the hard work of self confronting. They had, it had been like a year since they’d
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: but they were really working on the question of who they were more honesty to that question and that conversation. And, like this was so many years ago. I, I’m, I’m trying to hold onto the specifics of it, but I remember that, There was one night where she, she came and told this story at the, at the next session, but that she had been just in bed. There, there been a lot of good things happening between them and she was lying in bed with her back to her husband he saw her there and was just feeling so much gratitude for her [00:26:00] he was thinking about that like that.
He was really grateful for the changes that were happening between them for the level of conversations they were starting to have. He was thinking how beautiful she was and he just started to touch her back. thinking about that, and she said, you know, I would normally, if he had put his hands on, I would recoil.
Like I would think, is he trying to initiate sex? Is this what he wants? You know, I don’t trust him, but you know, she
Dan: Uh huh.
Jennifer: and she said it was so strange, but like when he touched me this time, it’s like, I, I knew that he wasn’t trying to get anything and she said, I, I felt beautiful. Right. And, and then I can’t remember at what point it became clear that that is exactly what he would had been thinking and feeling about her if it was in the session or if it was a conversation they had. But it just illustrated for me, this the power of how we’re mapping each other through touch all the time, you know? [00:27:00] You can even track this in your own marriage. Anybody listening that how, how much the way your spouse touches you, how much it’s saying to you? Is it like a pat, pat? Like, don’t want anything more.
I’m just like trying to like get through this. Is are you leaning in, right? Are, is there a kind of surrender in the kiss? Is it, you know, a, you know, there’s just so much that we are tracking and understanding. And sometimes it helps to bring those meanings up to surface level where you can actually look at them and think about them, think about you are engaging in your marriage.
And maybe you can, you know, sometimes people initiate, but it’s like a grab. They’re trying to, they’re trying to get something rather than, you know, a, a deeper validation of their partner.
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: yeah.
END JFF QUOTE
Dan: Is so good. All right. So healthy integration with our sexuality. I have a friend who told me that, um, he and his wife went skinny dipping at private lake. [00:28:00] No one around but for them it was a, a mark of like. Because for years they’re afraid of being sexual. He was a kind of ashamed that he wanted his wife so much and that
Jennifer: yeah.
Dan: could do this and relax and just really enjoy each other in this way.
To him was like, we have come such a long way, and
Jennifer: that’s
Dan: their marriage from, you know, from the outside in, at least just full of this aeros energy as you talk about.
Jennifer: yeah, yeah, exactly. Because you know, our sexuality wants to be free.
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: aeros is about freedom. choosing an agency and self definition. And so Aeros has risk in it because anytime we’re going to, you know, it’s stepping out outside of what we already have control over whenever we’re in aeros energy. And so it’s the creative part of us, it’s the yearning part of us. It’s the part of us that wants to [00:29:00] transcend our lesser
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: That means there’s always risk. There’s certainly risk to the ego. You may lose, you know, you may not get what you want. You may have to face disappointment,
Dan: Right.
Jennifer: but when we don’t let our fear control us, and instead we follow the soul’s longing, we forge more capacity. We forge more freedom and agency in our lives by choosing in line with who we truly are. when we do that in a marriage, take the risk to love with our whole heart, to bring our full self without the guarantee of reciprocation, but that we choose to love as fully as we can. It’s scary. There is risk. But we create a freer space and we create a marriage that feels alive. so when couples have that energy. more beautiful. It doesn’t matter how old they are, they’re beaming with energy. There’s a [00:30:00] magnetism in them and in their marriages, and it’s not about the quantity of sex or anything per se, more about the energy that resides between them.
There is an honesty, an open-heartedness, there is a deep acceptance. There’s something honest and real, they bring their full selves. To that marriage. so, you know, that takes
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: I mean, we don’t tend to think of marriage as asking for courage. but it does a lot of us get married and then try to run it from the worst in ourselves and from our control than from, our desire to create something
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: there.
Dan: Yeah. Any last stories to like put a bow on this to illustrate that very thing? Couple that’s really moved into that. You know, they have that aero synergy alive in them,
Jennifer: I mean, I would just say that, I, sometimes do 10 day retreats with couples where I’m teaching a few hours a day, and then they’re [00:31:00] out doing different experiences and, you know. It’s interesting ’cause I get to watch people over 10 days and, and I don’t mean I’m watching them, watching them, but I just like, you know, I’m interacting and seeing them. And you, you watch the couples where they’re, they’re self confronting. They’re having some hard conversations. Usually by day three people look pretty bad. Like they, they don’t look that happy. They’re, they’re dealing with some tough topics and things between them often, if couples stay in it and so on, and they keep. self confronting, you know, moving into more acknowledgement that I can see that problem. I can see my part in that problem. They start to, um, there’s like a rebirth that’s happening. Like there’s something, there’s a change of heart. There’s a, there’s a transition in their countenance. You can feel it. You can see it. they look like they got, you know, a facial because people just admit. They, they do. They really do. They, they’re radiating [00:32:00] more energy and more joy. More joy, so it’s, it is often a change of heart, a change of perspective that is life giving and life giving to the
Dan: Yeah, as I like to say, it’s like the grass is greener, the sky is bluer.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Dan: Everything’s like there’s a pep in your step.
Jennifer: alive.
Dan: absolutely. That’s good. Great. Now you’ve written this fantastic book and to accompany the book, you’ve developed a new course called Sex with Wanting that. Plug that real quick before we end, please.
Jennifer: Yeah. So sex worth wanting is really based on, on the and just the things that I’ve learned about it, but it’s speaking to how do you really cultivate. A sexual relationship that two people understandably want, right? Uh, that’s not just about having more sex or better sex, but how do you actually cultivate something that has a real soul in it? [00:33:00] You know, there is a spirituality to this, but it doesn’t sell well. People are like, what does that have to do with sex?
Dan: Right, right. Uh,
Jennifer: I mean the, I mean, the spirituality of joy.
Dan: yes.
Jennifer: Of feeling like I’m talking about that sense of aliveness, that sense of deeper
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: honesty, deeper openness, like that I can be myself here, that I can be real and find acceptance with you, that I can climb into bed and feel enjoyment and being together without a sense of pressure or having to manage you That we are better able to manage ourselves and cultivate real connection with each other in what we do. so yeah, so it’s, it’s a, it’s a good course. it’s coming out. we think at the same time that the book is, that it will be dropped then, but I hate to brag, but it’s probably my best course.
Dan: Well, you see that about every new course you develop, you just get better and better.
Jennifer: Well, I mean, that is the [00:34:00] gift of writing a book is it just pushes you to really think about these
Dan: Right?
Jennifer: really kind of get more clear about what actually helps people shift, what helps people
Dan: Yes.
Jennifer: people are looking
Dan: Uh mm-hmm.
Jennifer: so, you know, so it’s really there to help support people.
A lot of people read the book and be like, I want this. I need more support in creating it. And so the courses is that?
Dan: Great. Well, Jennifer, thank you for sharing your gifts with the world and for your courage to step into your best self and to share what you’re learning and just your expertise. You’ve blessed our marriage. You’ve blessed, millions of people, I’m sure through generations with, with your, with your work.
Jennifer: Well, it’s my deep privilege, so thank you. you both.
Dan: If people aren’t familiar with you, where can they go to learn more about you?
Jennifer: Well, my website, which is fife.com, and on there you can find a free podcast, a podcast where I work with real couples, the [00:35:00] courses, it’s all there.
Dan: Very good.
Jennifer: yeah,
Dan: Great. Well, thank you.
Jennifer: yeah. Thanks you guys.
Jennifer: Hey, sometimes it’s not about what we need to know, it’s about what we do. We need help with implementation. So if anything in this podcast episode inspired you today, I want to invite you to take the next step of taking action and let me help you implement these principles in your marriage. To do that, go to Get Your Marriage on.com.
Click on the free training link. I have an in-depth video all about what most couples do wrong when trying to fix sexual problems in their marriage and what actually works instead. It’s a great training for anyone that wants to dive deeper into learning how to love your spouse better through your sexuality, and no longer let sex be an obstacle in your marriage.
But actually the, the glue, the passion. The, the fun, the pep, the aeros energy that Jennifer talks about to really bring you and your marriage closer together and, breathe more life into your [00:36:00] relationship. All those details, right? Get your marriage on.com and I look forward to, hopefully working with you and helping you put into action these principles in your marriage.
