Introduction and Why Sexuality Matters in Marriage

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 300

Guest [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

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Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:00:30] well, welcome, everybody. I'll just introduce myself a little bit for anybody who doesn't know me. You must know something or else you wouldn't be here. But my name is Jennifer Finlayson Fife, and I am LDS and grew up in Vermont.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:00:45] Burlington, Vermont, in a large Mormon family. One of them is back there taking the money. My brother, who used to tease me mercilessly. But anyway, so I grew up in Vermont. I went to BYU for my undergraduate degree, which I did in psychology and women's studies, and then I went to Boston College and I got my master's and PhD in counseling psychology and developed an interest there in thinking about sexuality. Well, in particular sexuality for us as Mormon women. I was about to get married, had friends who were married and miserable in the sexual realm.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:01:25] Was thinking a lot about some of the feminist critiques around patriarchy and sexuality, as well as really knowing the ways in which I felt the church had really blessed my life in the sexual realm. The ways in which I felt that the law of chastity had been very protective of me.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:01:44] And in that it was expecting men to comply with the same standard of sexual behavior. That being a very domesticated version of sexuality. Right. One that promotes family stability. And so I saw the real upsides of our faith, but also wondered about how women did in the sexual realm. Because I had a lot of friends who, upon getting married, felt the. I got married for this feeling and just the anxiety and the discomfort and the lack of knowledge in the sexual realm. So before I say more, can everybody hear me? I feel like I'm reverberating through the hall. Is it okay, a little closer? I might actually just hold it to my face.

Guest 3 [00:02:38] Hang on.

Guest 2 [00:02:39] Sorry.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:02:40] Is that better?

Guest 4 [00:02:41] Yeah.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:02:42] Okay, but maybe you want to turn down.

Guest 5 [00:02:47] Okay,

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:02:53] So I'm going to. I'll just keep talking.

Guest 4 [00:02:55] Okay.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:02:56] I'm just going to talk a little bit about some of my kind of basic assumptions around sexuality, sort of, I guess, core beliefs that I bring to the subject matter. And the first is that I think sex really matters, that I think healthy sexual functioning is really important in our long term relationships, and it's powerful in bonding a couple. I mean, many people know that they're loved by their spouse, but it's less clear to them that they're wanted. And many people, you know, some of you may feel too wanted in the sexual realm, but it's also very painful to not feel wanted. It's. It can start to undermine our sense of self and our sense of mattering.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:03:49] I think we all want the constancy and the certainty that love provides, but I think we also want the passion and the depth that desire creates. And so when that's missing in our marriages, often that's why couples come in for therapy with me, is that they're wanting more depth. They're wanting to have something more connected and meaningful, less functional and platonic.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:04:20] So I think the value of passion shouldn't be given short shrift. It's not just about natural man taking over. It's an essential part of keeping a marriage alive. I think a lot of marriages survive, but very few thrive. I think very few people are able to create a passionate marriage. I think it takes a skill set that few of us have the anxiety tolerance to develop or the knowledge.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:04:58] But I still think if there's heaven on earth, it's that. Just one more bit about why sex matters in a couple is Barry McCarthy. He's a researcher. Let me just check in on the sound again. Can everyone hear me? Okay, okay, okay. So Barry McCarthy's a researcher in kind of mid Atlantic area, and he did some research that talks about when sexuality is working well for a couple. It accounts for 15 to 20% of satisfaction within the marriage. But when it's not working well, it accounts for 55 to 65% of their dissatisfaction. Meaning it has a more negative effect when it's not working well than a positive effect when it is.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:05:46] And I think partly, and I'll be talking more about this tomorrow, it's because of the meanings that we create about why the sex isn't happening, what it means about me. He's not attracted to me, she's not attracted to me. What does it mean about that we don't matter? We don't have what we used to have. There's something wrong with us. And so when it's not working, it can really corrode marriage.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:06:12] I think it used to be that marriages were much more functional, that people got married because they had to survive on the frontier, and it really didn't

Guest 3 [00:06:19] matter

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:06:21] much more than trying to stay alive together. And often in the trying to survive, that's really where people built their bond. But now in our modern era, we have a concept of marriage that is lofty. It's really based on the notion of choice and passion and fulfillment. And so we're much less happy if our marriage isn't giving us all those things, giving us fulfillment and satisfaction and happiness and passion. And I think, you know, marriages can kind of crumble under the weight of those expectations. They're high expectations.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:07:04] But the reality is that when passion isn't working in a marriage, it really is often the factor that erodes it because people feel like, well, I can choose someone else or I can go somewhere else, or I can be happy somewhere else. And you know, President Kimball's quote about that often the sexuality in a couple is the reason for the divorce when things are not working well.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:07:28] Okay, So I think, at least in our modern era, addressing and attending to the sexual relationship is really essential to the well being of a marriage. It's not just a luxury. So now here's my second position, is that I believe sexuality is a gift from God to us, and in particular to us as women, that it's meant for us to enjoy. It's meant to be a resource for couples that, you know, it shouldn't be relegated to the carnal, the peripheral, not a necessary evil. And I really feel that in our Mormon theology, we really have a basis for that belief. You know, in many Christian ideologies, the, there's the feeling that the body competes with one's spirituality.

LDS Theology and Sexual Desire

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:08:20] It actually undermines your spirituality. And so the carnal pleasures subtract or detract from your spiritual endeavors. In our LDS theology, we see it the opposite, that a body is necessary for our spiritual development, for our growth, for our movement forward, for our ability to become more godlike because God is embodied and we have, if God is embodied and we are given bodies, that our bodies are beautiful and they're godlike, right? And so all of our parts and passions are essential and good. And we often feel so much rejection towards our bodies. We feel rejection towards specific parts of our bodies down there. This kind of, this anxiety that this is somehow yucky less than not okay, rather than a part of myself that I really embrace and I really value, and I'll talk more about this tonight and also tomorrow, is that I really think in reality it's not just about, okay, our sexual relationship isn't working and if we get our act together or I get my act together, we'd have a happier marriage and I would be legitimate.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:09:38] I don't think about it in those terms. I think about it in that as we develop ourselves and we use our most intimate relationship of a marriage, that it's really a way for us to develop into more whole people, that our sexual relationship becomes the vehicle for us to become more actualized within ourselves, to become more accepting of ourselves, to to be more willing to really share who we are with someone else. And in the process really becoming more whole, more grounded and more capable of love and more capable of desire, healthy desire.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:10:19] So here I am saying how wonderful sex is and it's a gift from God and it's lovely. And so you may be holding the question of if it's so wonderful, why hasn't it been wonderful for us, why hasn't it been wonderful for me? And you know what I would say is that the trouble with desire or how to say it, that for most people, I mean, like 99.9% of us, that sexual relationships are going to be challenged in long term relationships at some point or another, Right. I think there's this kind of cultural notion when you watch the movies that people fall in love and if they're really the right people, that they have a passion that will kind of connect them through life and that will stay.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:11:09] And that's how they know they chose the right person. And yet in my experience, that desire is just part of the premarital state. Okay, your desire is happening to you when you are dating and I'll talk about all the reasons why, but. But the context changes in long term marriage. And that contextual shift makes it much harder to sustain a sexual relationship if certain skill sets, skills aren't developed.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:11:41] So in the beginning, as I said, desire is just happening to you. Your body's taking over. Falling in love is a hormonally drenched state. Dopamine is flooded through your brain and dopamine has this ability. What it does is it makes you want, it makes you feel attached, and it actually inhibits the discernment part of your brain, the discernment centers of your brain, right?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:12:06] So as you're falling in love, you just, you know, you can have all kinds of fantasies about who that person's going to be for you and what you mean to them. And so there's all kinds of, you know, you think about sexuality. Fantasy has a lot to do with it, right? Well, in the beginning of a relationship there's a lot of fantasy going on.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:12:26] And so he's reflecting back to you the most wonderful version of yourself you could ever imagine. And that's compelling. And the thing is, there's research that shows that we tend to want to have sex with the People who make us feel good about ourselves. And that's happening in spades when you're dating, because even though maybe he's a vegetarian, he's going to eat chicken because he doesn't care.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:12:51] And he says he likes that song. He doesn't really like it, but you're just kind of trying to sell yourselves on each other. You're trying to get them to join your act. And so there's all kinds of accommodation and mutuality, and so it's just easy to want in that context. The other thing that's happening is that there's all kinds of barriers. And especially for us as members of the church, there's barriers that, you know, you can't touch him there. You can't go past this line.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:13:20] There's all kinds of want. There's so much space to want because you haven't yet fully conquered, right? And so that can really drive desire up. The structural difference that's part of dating relationships, that he lives somewhere else, that you drop him off. There's this sense of it's easy to want to merge with someone when you know that you can retreat back when you want to, right? But in marriage, when he's. And I've said this before, if you've heard it on a podcast, I'm sorry, but you know, when he's lying there naked with just his socks on and wants sex, right? It's not that compelling because there's no mystery.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:14:01] You wish there were more mystery, right? And you don't really. Now there's a sense of sort of obligation or there's no bridge to cross, right? There's nothing to be conquered. So the other thing that happens is once you move into marriage, you know, all that positive projection that was happening starts to fall apart. You know, you move out of the. What I call the love without knowledge stage and move into the knowledge without love stage, right? When you're dating, you know you love them even though you know very little about them.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:14:38] But now you move in with them and you start trying to create a life together. And it's really annoying the way that they leave their clothes all around or how they are late for everything. And so now you start knowing more than you ever wanted to know about them, and you're not sure you love them all that much. Well, and not only that, they start telling you things about yourself. You start learning more about you than you ever wanted to know, right? And in that tension and that difficulty, desire can be much harder, right, to want the same person who's saying you're hurting me, or I'm not happy with you in this way.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:15:16] So the realities, they're not making you feel good about yourself necessarily. And so it's harder to want. The other thing I'd say is that in the beginning of a relationship, there's so much novelty and there's so much uncertainty. And as I'll talk about tomorrow, uncertainty correlates with desire.

Passion, Uncertainty, and Desire in Relationships

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:15:42] So the amount of passion in a relationship correlates with the amount of uncertainty a couple can tolerate, right? And I don't mean lack of safety, I mean lack of certainty. And I'll say more about that tomorrow. But there's a lot of uncertainty in the beginning of a relationship. You don't know if he's into you. You don't know if he. He wants you, if he's going to marry you.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:16:04] And the not knowing, you know, I remember the first time my now husband touched the back of my neck, right? We were at a dinner with other people and he just brushed the back of my neck and, you know, like, my whole body responded because of the, like, I'm like, okay, that maybe he likes me, right? Maybe he's. Maybe he's into me. And so the meaning of it kind of coupled with the uncertainty and the question and the not knowing what's going to happen next, it really ignites desire. Right now, when he touches the back of my neck, it's just not as exciting.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:16:39] So, I mean, I still like it, but it's not like the first time. Okay, so what often happens, though, is that there's only so much uncertainty. We want. You don't want to wonder if he's into you two years into marriage and one child later. You don't want to wonder if he's going to call that night.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:17:00] You want to create more certainty. You want to create more stability. And oftentimes we want to really, really create that stability to the point that we actually create almost a caricature of the person that we're with that we almost resist knowing them in the ways that make us anxious and uncomfortable.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:17:21] There's parts of them that we kind of prefer not to know, and there's parts of ourselves that we prefer not to share because they can't validate it. They can't make us feel good about it. And so when you look at the couple that's just started dating and the couple that's been married 20 years in a restaurant, you always know which one is which, right? Because the couple that's dating, they just talk and talk and Talk. The couple 20 years in is finding it difficult to find something other than the bread to talk about.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:17:50] The reason being, I think, is because it's not that there's nothing new or different to be talked about, but basically, people have talked about everything that they can agree on and everything that they can validate in one another. And they're kind of unwilling to confront the elements in the relationship that make them anxious, that make them uncertain, that sort of destabilize the stability that they've created. And when people sort of force that stability, I think it really snuffs out meaningful passion.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:18:24] Now, let me just. If you're the higher desire person in your marriage, or if your spouse were here and he's the higher desire person in the marriage, he would say, well, there's lots of things we don't talk about, but I know I still want her, right? I know I still want to have sex with her.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:18:42] But as I'll talk about tomorrow more, that's different than what I would call a passionate connection. It's one thing to want to have sex with someone. It's another thing to want to have sex because it helps you feel better about yourself or helps you feel like, now I know she wants me or he wants me, and that validates me.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:19:01] It's another thing to say, I want you to kind of take me on a trip with your body. It's very different to say that. To really be connected with your spouse through sexuality, to really have a kind of meaningful connection that happens through your physical relationship.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:19:17] So the thing that happens too often for women is that once you get married now, and this happened, it was very much in my dissertation research, which is that women felt desire premaritally, and they often felt some positive anticipation towards marriage.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:19:37] And part of it, they felt the power to be able to say no premaritally because they had God behind them. And they could feel like it's okay to say no to sex and to sort of deny what you want. But once they got married, then often this sort of sense of obligation or dutiful, you know, that as a wife, this is my duty. This is part of what it means to be married, that I now have to be sexual as a way to be legitimate in his eyes. And so it's not that there's no capacity for desire. It just gets overshadowed by this sense of duty, by this sense of obligation.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:20:15] And as soon as sex becomes about obligation, the passion will be gone. Sex can be work or it can be play. It cannot be both. It's either duty Based or it's desire based, but it can't be both. And so again, I'll talk more about that tomorrow. But when a dynamic emerges in a couple that. Where one is putting pressure on the lower desire person and then they complain that it's not passionate, they've actually set up exactly the thing, you know, if you're going to put pressure on someone to have sex and make them feel obligated, you may get sex, but you will not get passion.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:20:53] Right? And I think women are especially vulnerable to falling into that sense of, if I'm a good person, I will do this. Okay? And often, as I'll talk about in a minute, the resentment that starts to build up around feeling like your body's wanted but you're not wanted, or that I owe him this or I'm not legitimate, if I say no, that, it really starts to corrode the connection.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:21:19] I think the other thing is that again, in speaking to this idea that premaritally desire happens to you, and so you can be a good Mormon woman and just know that your body is responding and know that you're wanting. And. And some people in my dissertation research did feel anxiety about that, even premaritally, even if they weren't trying to make it happen, it was just happening. But once you get married and that neurochemistry dies down and you're just there facing your partner, you really have to be comfortable with the notion of being a sexual being in order to cultivate a healthy sexual relationship. It's no longer going to happen to you.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:22:01] Therefore, sex becomes conscious. And if conscious sexuality invokes too much anxiety, you will tend to shut it down. Some people will confront the anxiety and develop it, but many of us, in the face of the discomfort of seeing ourselves as a passionate woman, right, will shut it down and say, I'll do it for him, but I'm not going to integrate this into me, Right? And so that's why often sexuality starts to fall apart.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:22:36] And by the way, low sexual desire is not strictly a female problem. Some of you may have a spouse who wants sex less than you do, who never seduces you or pursues you. So clearly I know the dynamic goes both directions. In my experience as a clinician, I definitely see it in the stereotypical way. Maybe that's because higher desire women and lower desire men are more anxious about coming for help because they feel like there's something wrong with them.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:23:07] But I also wonder how much it is about the kind of cultural double standard that I'll talk about In a minute. You know, we have a singular theological position on the law of chastity, but a cultural double standard that many women talked about in my dissertation.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:23:22] And that the delegitimization of desire for women may make it so that if one person's going to be a lower desire person, you know, the woman will take that spot. Right. Just so you know what I'm talking about, there's a.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:23:36] A clinician, Schnarsh is his name. S C H, N A R C H. Whose work I've done some training with him and whose work I draw on a lot. And I think he has excellent theory and writes some very good books. He takes the position that every partnership has a low desire and a high desire person because it's part of the ecology of a relationship and that that dynamic emerges in every relationship on some level or another. The relationships that do well, they manage that dynamic well. Those who do poorly take it very personally. And then their behavior actually reinforces or kind of polarizes those positions. Right. Because of the meaning they make of the difference in desire.

Guest 6 [00:24:24] So

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:24:26] if we're going to buy that idea that it happens in every marriage, I think in Mormon marriages, it's. It's not unusual for the woman to be the one who Abnegate, who basically, how to say it shuts her sexuality down.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:24:41] It's almost a more comfortable position because it's not really congruent with the image of a righteous LDS woman. So I'll talk a bit about my dissertation research now. Let me just ask, does anybody have a question or anything that's unclear from what I said so far?

Dissertation Research on LDS Women and Sexuality

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:25:03] Nothing. Okay. Don't be shy, because I do better when I'm kind of in a conversation with you guys. So in my dissertation research, you know, women were never really taught that sexuality was theirs in the first place, right. That, in short, men were taught about desire and women were taught about desirability.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:25:30] Right. That even though there was this idea that everybody waits till marriage, that is what God wants from us, that there was more. Now, I think this is cultural and implicit in the messages that were given, but that desire is fundamental to masculinity. Sexual desire is part of being male.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:25:51] And the challenge for men is to control that desire, contain it, manage it until the time they get married. And if they do, their reward is to have sex for eternity with their wife. Right. Little disillusionment for some men, but anyway,

Guest 3 [00:26:10] so

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:26:13] for women, I think the message is more around men have desire, and so you're the sober drivers in the situation. And so you need to dress modestly, you know, not encourage that. Help them contain it, basically help them manage this part of themselves that's out of control.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:26:36] Right? And so, you know, the modesty lessons really often give that message that, you know, you're tempting this kind of power within him that he barely has a grip on. And so you owe it to him to manage yourself. Right? And, you know, President Holland said in a talk about five years ago that this idea makes him want to, quote, unquote, throw up, Right?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:27:02] This idea that men would somehow be let off the hook or somehow that that's not their responsibility. What they do with themselves and their sexuality is just totally not legitimate. But I think that message gets communicated. I at least grew up getting lots of those object lessons about the smashed cake and the chewed gum. Do you all know what I mean by those? Yes. In case anyone doesn't know. So I remember my teacher taking out a piece of gum, asking me if I wanted it. I said yes. I had a feeling I knew what was going to happen next. She takes it out, sticks it in her mouth, chews it up, spits it out, and then says, do you still want it?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:27:39] And of course, the answer is no. And the message is the. That don't let yourself become the chewed gum. Because if men are to desire, women are to desirability, that what's really important for women is that they get married, that somebody wants them, that someone chooses them, and so your sexuality actually threatens your desirability.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:28:00] Okay? And that might be a fine message if your only goal is to keep someone from being sexual. But of course, that isn't our only goal because we really believe in the divinity of sexuality, right? And that sexuality is good. But many Mormon women did not internalize that message. Now, some did. And I'll talk about the ones who did and how they heard the messages and how they integrated them into their sense of self. But most of the women in my dissertation research had a lot of anxiety about desire.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:28:37] Let me see where I am. By the way, I was going to say, you know, I've asked men in my presentations if any of them ever got any of those object lessons, you know, because I was just curious, maybe, maybe they were getting them in priesthood. I just didn't know about it. And I've never had any man tell me that they had those object lessons. But one said we were just taught not to smash the cake or to chew the gum.

Guest 5 [00:29:00] So.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:29:00] And I'll just say one thing about that. I think that gives a kind of negative Power to male sexuality that actually encourages a kind of anxiety in men also. Right. So that in my practice I also see Mormon men who have a lot of anxiety about the negativity of their sexuality, that their sexuality can actually be destructive. And this is not my topic tonight, but I sometimes wonder if some of the challenges around pornography have to do with some anxiety around this.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:29:29] The sexuality doesn't really get fully integrated into ourselves. And I think part of the reason it doesn't is because the people teaching those well intended teachers teaching those lessons are very anxious about sexuality themselves and they're just trying to keep their teenage children from doing it. But then they give messages that make it harder to really embrace this part of yourself as fundamental and good.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:29:52] So. So we don't learn that sexuality and desire is legitimately ours also and that our sexuality is a way to matter to men or boys in our life.

Guest 5 [00:30:02] Right.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:30:02] Depending on how old we are. And you know, accommodating someone else's desire doesn't work over the long term. I'm not sure it works. It doesn't work in a 50 year marriage. It doesn't. I'm not sure it even works, you know, a week in, because there's only so much you can sort of make your body available for someone else if you don't feel like you're a full participant.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:30:31] I think similarly and kind of consistent with this is that many, if not all the women that I interviewed, they talked about the experience of being taught. So they also taught that it's not just about the non legitimacy of sexual desire, but also by the notion of womanhood that idealizes women as being selfless nurturers who are needless and wantless. Right. That, that's another powerful message that sits right alongside that notion of being less sexual, if not non sexual. And so there's this idea that we are needless and wantless and that our only if we're really good women, if we really are sort of the essence of femininity that we will give of ourselves, we will give of ourselves freely and we'll do it with joy at all times.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:31:22] Right. I mean, it sounds so ridiculous to say that. Right. Of course that's not true. But there are a lot of lessons and messages that say that that kind of hold up women who just give and are selfless.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:31:37] And I'm not here to say that I don't think giving and selflessness are good things. But when you make that all that a woman is, you really rob her of her strength. You rob her of being A whole person.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:31:53] And you give her a deep anxiety about wanting in general. You give her deep anxiety about whether or not she's enough. Because what it's really teaching women is that my reference point is external. And so if I'm really good, if I'm legitimate, I am pushing down what I want to be what you want for me and to be what you think is good.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:32:21] And then I get my legitimacy for me being good enough for you. Giving enough, generous enough, but it always is external. It's not referenced within ourselves. Who am I? Who do I want to be? What do I feel, what do I want?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:32:37] Right. And I think that's a real setup for women because sexuality requires a kind of healthy entitlement to pleasure. And if you don't have a healthy entitlement to pleasure, if you think your goodness and your value and your legitimacy is being needless and wantless, I don't know how you're going to be able to make that bridge into having to being a participant in a sexual relationship, you know, and so I, I think LDS women have not been socialized into the art of desire, the goodness of it, the godliness of it. Right. I think desire is at the core of everything that we do, even if we don't name it.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:33:21] Sometimes we actually do want things, but we won't let ourselves name that we want them. And instead we'll say, well, I'm doing it because I should, or because somebody else wants it, or you know, we have a. We're reluctant to own our wanting, but I think really wanting allows us to expand ourselves, to develop, to become more than who we are. And when you really think about it, desire is really what pushes us, propels us forward. I think what we think about desire is if you say, what do I want? That what you'd say is, I just, you know, I want to sit on the couch and eat chocolate and watch reruns of Survivor for the rest of my life.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:33:59] Right. That we would just have a kind of indulgent relationship to desire rather than a good one, rather than one that propels us and makes us better. And so I think that desire is not only godlike and essential to who we are, I think it's essential to our own well being.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:34:26] But I'll talk about this in a minute. I think desire causes us anxiety and many of us are just more comfortable thinking about how we relate to others from the place of should. Sex is just one more thing that we do for others.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:34:40] So as I said before, in order to sustain sexual desire, and passion in a long term relationship. You really have to be comfortable with the notion of that you as a woman, a sexual being, that it is legitimate, right? That sex is a gift from God to you, not so that you can service him, but for your pleasure, for connection, for you towards your spouse, for your well being.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:35:08] I think you really have to embrace that God wants you to have pleasure. And as you've probably heard me say, you know, if you've listened to any of the podcasts, the clitoris, its only function is pleasure. It doesn't take care of anyone, right?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:35:29] It doesn't nurture anyone. It is only there for your pleasure. And if God didn't want you to have pleasure, you wouldn't have it. Okay, so, you know, we are. That we have joy. I think someone who handles this topic quite well is Laura Brotherson, who wrote a book called and they Were Not Ashamed. She's an LDS author and she really takes this issue on of the legitimacy of female desire and shows all the scriptural and theological support for this idea and really encourages women to get a testimony of desire, of the legitimacy of their sexuality, of pleasure. And so I think she really does a nice job of laying out why it's legitimate.

Women Who Thrived: The Law of Chastity Reframed

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:36:19] Okay, so let me just talk a little bit about the women who did well in my dissertation. The women who did well, they really saw the law of chastity as, as something that spoke to their relationship to their own bodies and their relationship to God.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:36:39] They did not see it as something they needed to obey to keep themselves good enough for some man down the road. It just wasn't even on their screen like the ones that I would talk to about that. That wasn't the way they thought about it. And they actually, this is very important and I think in the way that we talk to young women. If any of you are ever in a position of teaching young women that you talk to young women about what do you want in the sexual realm? Because when women claim the law of chastity as something that actually worked for them, as something that was going to be protective of them and allow them to ask for the same behavior from the men they were with, then it wasn't oppressive.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:37:22] You know, they saw it as something that actually protected them and helped them. And so it wasn't like, I'm doing it because I should, because everybody has told me I should obey this and if I don't, I will lose my value. That was a. Much more women who thought about that way were actually much less likely to obey it. Right? They Crossed a lot more lines. When they had externalized the standard, when someone really owned it as something that worked for them and they wanted it, then they just. They could assert what they wanted in a difficult situation.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:37:59] So let me go back for a minute. Some of the women who didn't do well premaritally is that they were struggling between what everybody wanted from them, right? So the guy they were dating would be putting some pressure on them to do more than they were feeling comfortable with.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:38:20] And so they would get stuck in this feeling of, like, well, if I stop, maybe I'll hurt his feelings because I'm supposed to be the nurturer and attentive to the needs of others, right? Especially men. And so how do I say no to him without hurting his feelings? And also, if I go further, which many times women did, the other thing women would say is they also felt this pressure of they didn't want to be seen as a prude, right? So they would feel like they don't want to hurt his feelings. They don't want to be seen as a prude. So then they would go further than they felt.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:38:59] And then they would think, oh, my gosh, now he thinks I'm a slut. Now he thinks less of me because I was willing to do that, right? And now they felt shame with God also, and they felt shame with their bishop. And the thing about it was is that never in that decision point were they actually thinking about, what do I want?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:39:16] And the legitimacy of what do I feel right now. They were trying to keep everybody around them happy, and they were totally fractured by the experience, right? That they would feel shameful, they'd feel less than. And oftentimes when women would do more than they wanted because they felt that pressure, then they would feel like, okay, well, I'm damaged. Good. So why fight it now?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:39:41] Because now I've already lost some value, and now I have even less strength to say no even if I don't want it, right? Rather than, look, this is my body, and I get to use it, and I can share with you what I choose or don't choose. You know, it's my decision, and I'm not damaged. Good. It's my body, and I get to decide if I kiss you or I don't. Right? If I participate with you or I don't. One of the women who did very well, she.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:40:15] Okay, so let me say it. So she was just really clear, you know, guys, she was quite attractive. People would ask her out quite a bit, and she remembers, this guy had Taken her out several times, and he tried to kiss her on the third or fourth date, and she just said, no, I'm not interested. And he said, what? You know, I've taken you out four times and you're not going to kiss me right now? For many women in my research, that would have been like, you know, okay, all right, fine.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:40:40] But for her, it was like, no. She had no ambit. She felt like, I don't owe anybody anything that I don't want to give. Right? He made his decision about taking me out to eat. I'll make my decision about whether or not I want to kiss you. And didn't feel the need to take care of their egos.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:40:58] The other difference in the women who did very well was that when they first had their first experience of arousal or desire. So one of the questions I asked women was, what was your first experience of desire? How old were you? What happened?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:41:15] How did you find it? And, you know, for the women who did. How to say it? This was a good predictor of later marital sexuality because the women whose first experience of desire caused them feelings of shame or to feel dirty, as one person said they had, their orientation to their sexuality was much more complicated for the women who experienced their capacity for arousal and felt good about it. Right? Like, one of the women said, you know, cool. Like, that was her. Like, kind of like that's. That's this lovely secret of what my body's capable of, that I'm happy it can do this, that I'm happy it has this capacity now.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:42:02] They also felt. These were all active members of the church that I interviewed who'd grown up in the church. They also felt like, you know, context matters. Where I express my sexuality matters. But the desire, arousal isn't bad in and of itself. Just how it's expressed matters.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:42:24] So let me just finish my sins, then I can hear their question. It might be good if you come up to the microphone, if you don't mind doing it, so I can hand you this if you want. So context matters, right? So it's not arousal or desire that are bad. It's just, oh, yeah. Sex is a very powerful currency. And it really is. I mean, and if I were to say, what's the message we should give to our children? It's that sex is a wonderful, beautiful gift from God, and it's an amazing thing. And it's so powerful for giving you joy, but it's a powerful reality.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:43:03] And so how we use it really matters in and of itself. That capacity is God given. That capacity is good. How we use it determines whether or not it's sacred or not. Right. And when I use the word sacred, I don't mean it in the kind of way that sometimes we say it, like cleaned up and pristine, but sacred in the sense of really whether or not it truly is a function of love, connection, transcendence, intimacy, or if it's used to degrade or devalue someone, use someone, and those things happen.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:43:41] Marriage doesn't make sex sacred. What you do with it, what the meaning of it is, what makes it good, is what makes it transcendent and meaningful to us. You have a question? Well, I just am shocked to hear that anybody after their first, you know, feeling with desire didn't feel ashamed in the church.

How Shame Around Arousal Gets Passed Down

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:44:03] Can we raise hands? I mean, seriously, did any of your parents tell you that when you feel the engorgement in your clitoris, that that's great. That's a great.

Guest 6 [00:44:12] That means you're normal and you're going

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:44:14] to have a great sex life someday. Who Seriously, did somebody in the church have that experience? Yes, but you're right, but you're right, right? Like how many parents would be like, yeah, isn't that great, honey? Feels good, doesn't it?

Guest 6 [00:44:28] Right?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:44:28] You don't say that to your four year old, right? We don't do that. We just. Yeah, well, I think that sometimes some of the people experienced it without any parent there. They were young enough. I mean, kids start exploring their bodies at a pretty young age, right? And so, you know, just to be completely frank, I figured it out when I was 4 years old and I just thought I'd made it up, but I thought it was a pretty cool thing. I'm like, I don't know what this is, but my, my secret, I'm not going to share it. So I think that probably matters. And you know, one woman in particular, I guess she felt clear that it wasn't okay to be touching herself. She was probably 12 or 13 when she figured it out.

Guest 4 [00:45:18] But

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:45:20] she really did see it as a good thing. She saw it as something that was, she was looking forward to. So now what I'm going to talk about tonight a little bit is the more we differentiate ourselves, the more we're tuned into what everybody else thinks about us, the more we're going to be crippled by these notions. Right? You know, the more we can embrace our own self knowledge and what we know about ourselves, the more freedom we give ourselves to really express who we are. And that's kind of where I'm going Let me just ask. Okay, So I have your questions. Thoughts? Okay. So any other questions? Thoughts? Comments?

Guest 4 [00:45:58] She said, mom, do I need to go to the bishop? And I said, no, you do not need to go to the bishop. You have not done anything wrong. But what was frustrating me is that she's getting these messages and I gotta change it. I can't let her go and grow up in that whole mentality. And so I just think we as moms, I mean, I think the whole. They should have this at general conference because all these women need it, and so they can't. Of course. You got it.

Guest [00:46:27] I will.

Guest 4 [00:46:28] But I think that we have to change it us, little by little, by opening up and being voices and our kids.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:46:38] And just to say the first part, just that you said that if people didn't hear it was that you were talking about her daughter discovering her own capacity for pleasure and then feeling guilty going to her mom and saying, you know, have I done something bad? And her mom saying to her, no, honey, that's natural and it's beautiful. And identifying is your clitoris. That's what you're responding to, and it's good. So. And I do think. And one of the things I saw is family influence had a huge effect, Right? I wasn't looking for the effect of family influence, so I didn't really write about it. But the messages that girls got from their parents really underscored the negativity of those messages or was a buffer to those messages. Right?

Guest 6 [00:47:18] So

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:47:22] when we give that counter message and you grow up thinking, my mom thinks it's good and my mom thinks it's legitimate, then you have a model of legitimacy around desire. Other questions? Thoughts?

Talking to Children About Sexual Feelings

Guest 6 [00:47:37] Thanks.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:47:38] I was just going to say, I wonder what you think about the idea that if we. We. If. You know, I wonder if there's another extreme where we are teaching our daughters that this is the best thing in the world. Like, it's kind of like when you teach somebody that, like, going to the temple is the most amazing thing that's ever going to happen to you.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:48:02] You're right. Well, I think that's true. And I just actually spoke to someone today who kind of gave her daughter that message, and then her daughter was like, what's the matter with me? It's not been that great. So I think you're right. I think what you can say, though, is that it really has the potential to be a wonderful thing in your life. It has that capacity to be that a deep way of connecting with another human being, a deep way of Expressing who you are to another person, a deep way of knowing someone and being known to them. But it is a language and it takes skill and it takes practice, it takes time, it takes anxiety management.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:48:41] Right. Because when we develop ourselves sexually, we have to be willing to step into the things that we don't yet know, to step towards the things that make us uncomfortable and see if we can master them in a certain way. And so to say it's natural, I think is often a negative message because then people say, well, it's not not been so natural. What's the matter with me? I would say it's a powerful capacity, but one that if we want to develop it, then it really will work to our good and it has the potential to be a beautiful thing in our lives. Right. But isn't necessarily so sexuality isn't inherently good or bad. Right.

Guest 3 [00:49:20] Okay. This part about teaching your youth is really hard for me because I've never really been able to talk to my kids and to say that it's not good and bad is kind of how I was raised. But then I don't want them to think it's so great that they can rush into it either. How do you draw the line of it's not bad, but it's not something you should be doing and touching yourself? I never agree that that's something you should be doing self fulfilling yourself or a man self fulfilling themselves. So I don't know how you really teach it without saying that it's.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:49:52] So a resource I would highly recommend is a book called how to talk to your child about sex. It's written by Linda and Richard Iyer. They are an LDS couple. It's a book written for the general public, but a very well written book that's promoting the notion of chastity until marriage or until you're in a committed relationship and basically really talking to you about how you both elevate sexuality at the same time, that you don't give permission in a negative way. And part of it is by sort of upholding it and saying, you know, it is this very powerful way of interacting with someone. So you don't, you don't want to engage in it lightly.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:50:35] Right. Because it can be destructive. It could pull, you know, bring a child into the world. It can make you vulnerable. So it's a way of allowing them to be, to understand it and to get your mentoring on it. See, what a lot of parents do is they are so anxious about the topic that they go quiet and then they let popular culture and their Friends take over and teach all those screwed up notions around sexuality. And then on the wedding night they're like, okay, honey, can we have our talk? And it's just too little, too late. And what the parent has actually done is taken themselves out of the role of being a mentor when our children visit.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:51:13] Very much need in this over sexualized culture for us to stay centrally in the role of a mentor. And I think the best way to do it is to start talking. I think the first thing you have to do is confront your own anxieties about sexuality.

Guest 6 [00:51:25] Yeah, I think the thing I have trouble with is eliminating the shame part because the word masturbation is such a bad word in, in the Mormon culture as far as using that word. And so we avoid using that word. And so it's bad. And so sons will engage in masturbation and then they bless the sacrament on Sunday and they're okay with that, and I'm okay with that. But then there's other boys that feel great shame, and then they're going to their bishop and saying, I can't bless the sacrament because I engaged in this activity. And so some bishops go, it's okay, you know, don't worry about it. Other bishops go, well, I guess you shouldn't take the sacrament for a month. And then there's great shame. And of course, that goes along with girls masturbating themselves as well. And so very mixed messages.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:52:25] I'm going to give you my unorthodox position on this, but they might not invite me for general conference.

Guest 3 [00:52:31] Okay.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:52:33] It's just that because we are sexual beings, I think sexual exploration, self exploration, is just a natural part of discovering our own bodies. Right? It's just a part of our own sexual development. And there's even theorists and researchers who talk about the idea that this is actually an important part of becoming capable of adult, mature sexuality is that when you're exploring yourself, that you're having thoughts, you know, sexual thoughts that. Let's just take the whole thing of pornography totally out of this.

Guest 3 [00:53:11] Okay?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:53:11] But I'm just saying, like, as a child or an adolescent exploring their body, that they are imagining themselves in a future role connected with another person. Right? Being with someone, that's an important social, emotional step. And I do embrace that as being true. The women in my research who did the best knew their body's capacity for pleasure and they knew what they wanted. And so when they transitioned into marriage, you know, it wasn't such a mystery. They just were going to let someone in on it now, right? Now, I'm not here to say that masturbation can't be pathological, that it can't become a kind of destructive thing in someone's life.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:53:57] I'm not, like, promoting it. I think there's also some legitimacy in saying, you know, I understand this, I feel good about it, and I also want to preserve it for a later time with someone that I care about. So I think if there's.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:54:14] That's the message. It's not, you know, there's something about holding this for a special person that valuable. But understanding your body and what it's capable of isn't inherently bad. You keep using the term your body. And I feel like growing up, it wasn't my body. It was a gift that I was given. And so these women that you are talking about that are saying, oh, it's

Guest 4 [00:54:39] okay, it's my body, it's my body.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:54:42] Well, I would agree. It's a gift you're given and it is your body. It is your body. Right. I mean, I thought what you were going to say is that it's what I think a lot of women feel is this is something for someone else. This isn't actually my body that I get to share.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:54:59] Okay, It's a temple. You said it's a temple, and I shouldn't be doing these kinds of things. I mean, I respect the position. I think understanding our bodies as being sacred, or how to say it, that our bodies are valuable and beautiful, I buy that. But that doesn't mean that pleasure and eroticism are incongruent with that in my mind.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:55:20] In fact, I think they are congruent with it. Now, I think this is my position. Desire and eroticism aren't inherently bad, but they can be used in ugly ways. So if a child is looking at pornography and is developing very sort of corrupt notions of what sexuality is and what women are and isn't getting his homework done because he's compulsively masturbating. I mean, destructive.

Guest 6 [00:55:44] Yes.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:55:45] Right. So I'm not. I'm just saying I think there's a place for self exploration. There's a place for embracing our bodies and what God has given us and owning that and feeling good about the ownership of that and using that confidence to share ourselves willingly with someone that really matters to us down the road. It's really when we don't claim it, then we make ourselves vulnerable. In my experience. My opinion, that's when you actually allow things to happen to you because you haven't really claimed it as yours to make decisions with. Okay, any last thing?

Guest 5 [00:56:25] Okay.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:56:25] Oh yeah, last comment and then we'll

Guest 5 [00:56:27] go on my comment. Hi Jennifer, My comments may not be short. I think you should talk and hi there. I think you should talk tomorrow night in women's conference rather than the people who are going to talk. I think you should be the speaker in women's conference tomorrow night rather than the people who are going to talk because I think this is much needed.

Guest 5 [00:56:52] You said already. I think until we are comfortable with our own sexuality, we will not be able to communicate A with ourselves, B with our partner, spouse or C with our children. It just is not going to happen with our children. It's not going to happen.

Guest 5 [00:57:15] What happens if a woman, because she wants to know herself but is so frightened of the result that she wants to be able to engage in self explanation exploration but when she does it, she thinks, oh my gosh, this is who I am. So she backs out because she doesn't want to know who she is.

Guest 5 [00:57:41] And when a woman is dating and rather than submit or give herself to the man to help that man have his desire or to even say, okay, I'm going to be chaste, I'm going to be this, I'm going to be that, so you can control your desire. What happens if a woman, because she is so insecure that her way of feeling loved is wanting to give herself to a man or it's a trick, a man or herself feel validated? Okay, I don't care about my mind or anything. I will give myself to you so you validate to me. And then the shame kicks in royal after that.

Guest 5 [00:58:30] And my last thing is to me it's not just sexuality. The reference, the frame of reference that a woman has, she could be in the throes of adhd, have no clue that she has it and not realize her oversensitivity, her self deprecation, her loathing of herself is feeding into all of this. It's not just how they're taught in the young woman's program. I think that's just one part of a much bigger thing.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:59:04] So I'm not going to punt on all the questions, but it's really where I'm going right now. So what I'll say is that it really is a question. I mean, I think where we have to confront, what do we have to confront in ourselves is am I going to keep living my life looking for validation from others because I can.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:59:24] It never ends up actually working. It doesn't ever actually give me self confidence or am I Willing to start letting myself know myself, know what I know, let myself know what I know, right? Let myself hold my legitimacy and who I am within myself and share it with my spouse. Because that is much more scary, that is much more frightening, especially if they can't validate it, even if they're like, what you like that, you know, because often when we do try to change the patterns, our spouse doesn't come in and applaud it. It does increase their anxiety.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:00:02] So it takes a lot of courage to say I'm willing to know myself and have more integrity, literally, like more integrated within myself, rather than trying to always get it from everybody around me. And I think it takes enormous courage. And when I say anxiety tolerance, that's what I mean.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:00:20] It means that matters enough to me that I'm willing to confront my fears around coming to know myself more so I can connect with me, my spouse and others. Okay, So I kind of said this, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna go to my notes a little more because I don't. There's enough theory here that I don't want to kind of just jump over it and then you don't know what I'm talking about. Okay? So. So when. So when we're constantly looking outside of ourselves to feel legitimate, you'll never really know healthy desire, sexual or otherwise, that's based in your strength and in your self knowledge and in self expression, you know, rather than what you do being based in anxiety and the fear of not being sufficient.

Fear-Based Wanting Versus Genuine Desire

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:01:05] So we may want, you know, thinking about desire may want validation, approval to be wanted, you know, but those are wants that are based in fear and self preoccupation, which is much different than to want as an act of self expression, right?

Guest 3 [01:01:26] So.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:01:28] But people are really, as we're talking about, and Trish, you really segued in nicely is that we are generally conflicted about desire. And here's the trouble with desire, and I think it's difficult for both sexes, is that it's risky and it's exposing, you know, even though all of us want things.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:01:48] So I can't tell you how many complicated things that couples do, men and women in my office, to avoid the vulnerability of claiming to want something, right? So people will try to get what they want without having, without naming that they want it. You know, manipulation, right?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:02:07] All those books in the 60s for women, you know, what are those called? The Fascinating Womanhood, right? It's all about, you know, get what you want without saying you want it because it's unfeminine punish someone for not giving you what you want by shaming them for not having given it to you because it was moral or right. Right. So you still don't claim the wanting. You just, you know, you just somehow make it like everybody does, that decent people do, that.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:02:37] You hide from yourself and others what you want. You don't let yourself see it. You don't let anyone else see it, or you devalue it, or you try to comply with someone else's wants, often resentfully and detached. Or similarly to what I said, you get others to give you what you want. The manipulation which I talked about. So no matter which of these we choose, and there are probably other ways we do it, we don't claim deeper ownership over ourselves and what we really want.

Guest 2 [01:03:10] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

Guest [01:03:25] Come, come ye saints no toil nor labor filled but with joy when you're away Though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better find far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo Hearts will swell oh, all is well, all is well.

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 301

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3. Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:00:31] why do we do all this? Why are we so anxious about desire? Just give me your top of mind thoughts. What's frightening about wanting? And I'll say it in the microphone. You might not get what you want. You might not get it.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:00:46] Right. They might say no, and then you have to confront the rejection and the disappointment. You may hurt someone's feelings. Very good. So my desires might be destructive or hurtful to somebody. Maybe they're wrong. That's a good one, right? I may want it, but I may be screwed up. Right.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:01:06] And it will expose that I'm screwed up. See, it's vulnerable because we're vulnerable to rejection and disappointment. We're vulnerable to exposure. Right. That what we want is off base. And we're vulnerable to having to confront whether or not it's hurtful, you know, whether or not it's destructive to someone else. Any other thoughts about why wanting makes us anxious?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:01:31] I think you guys got them, actually. So it feels vulnerable. And I think it's so much easier to demonstrate that someone should give you what you want than it is to own what you want. And you can't control, as someone said, you can't control.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:01:52] You can't make someone give you what you want. And so if you know you don't have control and you have that vulnerability, then you'll manage it in some other complicated way. So let me tell you how I did this, okay? When I was dating my now husband, I didn't want to want him because it was too risky. You know, I, having grown up in the church, really felt like once I got married that I would lose power and that I would become vulnerable. And once I was had, I would be devalued. Right. And so I really found a sense of the way I got around that the loophole was if I could just let myself be wanted but never want, then I get all of the love and the admiration with none of the vulnerability.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:02:42] Right. It's a great system, right? So he did all the wanting, and I could feel wanted and feel secure, but never have to actually want him back and make myself vulnerable. So the way I actually managed or justified it, and I see people do this all the time in my Office, even though they're married, is I devalued him. Right. I basically made him. Not quite. I wasn't quite sure that I wanted him. And if that was really true, I could have broken up with him and moved on. But no, I wouldn't. I'd kind of say I wasn't quite sure while still staying in a relationship with him and keeping him sort of in a position that made me feel invulnerable.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:03:26] And surprisingly, he kept wanting, right. Luckily for me, actually. So, okay. Until he started to date someone else. And then I became frantic. Okay. I. I was frantic because now I didn't have the security of him doing all the wanting.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:03:49] And then it forced me. If I was going to keep the connection with him, then I would have to want. I would have to actually put my neck out and say, I care about this, right? I care about you. I want you.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:04:03] And I would say in many sexual relationships and marriages, we let you know if we're the lower desire person. We let our spouse be the custodian of desire. We let him do the wanting. We let him do the seeking, the yearning, the, you know, and we. That, you know, you can say no to sex.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:04:25] What allows you to say no to it is knowing that they're going to do all the wanting that they're going to. They're going to keep the connection because they're in pursuit of it. It's only safe to say no when you know that they're going to keep wanting you.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:04:37] As soon as they decide, like in one couple I have been working with, he wants, wants, wants, wants, and she would never want, never want. And then after a while, he would give up like that. I don't know if this marriage is going to work. And when he was literally disinvesting and would start kind of going towards the door, you know, in the marriage, then the desire would emerge in force. It's not that the desire wasn't there, right. It's that only when she was going to lose the security did she let herself feel the wanting.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:05:10] Right. And many relationships work out a dynamic in which that gets split, right? And it's. It creates. It keeps us from having to want. It creates. It keeps us from the vulnerability of valuing the person that we're with, of letting ourselves know that we're actually dependent on them. And I'm sorry I keep saying this, I'm going to be talking about this more tomorrow. What does healthy dependency look like?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:05:41] So it's just easier to react to someone else's desire and as Trish, my friend from Boston, said that it's an easier relationship to yourself in many respects to just be reactive to someone else's wants. I'm just going to give one more example around the anxiety of desire, which is another couple that I've been working with.

Anxiety, Vulnerability, and Sexual Intimacy

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:06:04] When they first came in, she expressed frustration about him always that he was dominant in the relationship, meaning in the marital relationship, his wants dominated. What he wanted was what they did. What he thought was right was what they ended up choosing the vacation spot that he thought was best was what they would do. And this was getting old for her, you know, 15 years into marriage, and she was getting depressed and anxious. And that's kind of was the thing that brought her into therapy. And so he came in and he really started to confront what he was doing. His children were less interested in having.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:06:49] His adolescent children were becoming uninterested in being in a relationship with him. They didn't want to feel controlled by him, him. And he really got it and he confronted himself and he started pulling, pulling back from that position.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:07:02] And so. But then she. Now, she had to then realize that once he was being more decent, right, and not controlling that now she was suddenly overwhelmed with fear because she couldn't let him do the wanting and then just react to it and be resentful.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:07:23] Now she had to start defining, who am I in the void of him not trying to define and control me all the time? And that terrifies me to think about who I am. That means I have to actually start taking risks. That means I have to actually start expressing who I am in the world. And maybe it's going to be insufficient. Maybe I'll find myself really lacking.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:07:45] So it became clear to her how that system had worked for her also. So what I'm here to say is that. And I'll tell you what I mean by differentiated, if you don't know, but poorly differentiated people really fear vulnerability, the vulnerability of wanting, the vulnerability of being known.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:08:05] And so, as I've alluded to that Bowen, Murray Bowen is a family theorist who lived several decades ago who talked about differentiation within families. And basically his theory, which is, I think, an excellent one, is that when we're born into the world, we can't help but filter our sense of self through our relationships because we have no other context for knowing ourselves. And so we make sense of how valuable we are by the way that our parents respond to us. We make sense of who we are by the way the world reacts to us and our mattering, how important we Are in is really kind of is taught to us by the ways that our relationships define us and tell us how important we are.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:08:52] So the thing is though, that as a child, it makes sense that that external validation is your only reference point. But when we really mature and grow up, then it's around whether or not we dare to own a reference point within ourselves, whether or not we can start letting our own experience and reality start to help us shape who we are.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:09:22] And when people are enmeshed, which is the opposite of differentiated, they remain highly dependent upon the validation of other people around them. They do not dare to develop more relational autonomy, which is the ability to know themselves and be true to themselves.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:09:44] Right? So just to give an example of that, is that. Okay, this is a good one. My 9 year old really likes the song. What's it called? Can't remember, doesn't matter. I can't remember. Oh, I wish I could remember the name. He just loves it, okay? This is some song he loves.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:10:08] Oh, I just want to remember because it's cute. Okay. Can't think of the name. But anyway, he loves this song. So he downloaded it from itunes and he's listened to it with me on the computer a hundred times and he just loves it, right? And then he goes to school and he tells a friend of his that he really likes that song. And the friend says, seriously, dude, that song's totally lame, okay? So he comes home that night and he says to me, yeah, I don't like that song anymore. And I said, you don't? I said, why not? And he said, because, you know, Scott at school said that song was totally lame, right?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:10:43] So I said, well, why does Scott's opinion about that song matter more than your opinion about that song? And he's like, I don't know. He's like, mom, don't be a therapist right now. So I said, okay, no, I just think that your opinion is at least as legitimate as Scott's opinion, right? And so, you know, maybe it's okay for you to just like it because you like it. Well, I don't see why his opinion should matter more, right? So that's the point, right? Which is, can I hold myself as, you know, we know ourselves so well, and then oftentimes when we walk into a situation, we turn that self knowledge off and we totally start thinking about who we are through someone else's eyes, right?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:11:27] And that we betray ourselves in that moment, right? We betray our own value, our own legitimacy, our own perspective, and we undermine our strength when we do It And I think spiritual development and emotional maturity is really based in that. You know, I think we have two systems in the church. We have the sort of the authoritative, this is the doctrine, the top down kind of, this is what's true. There's value in that, right? There's structure. It gives us shape to what it is that we want to at least push up against.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:12:03] But then we have another system which is that of, you know, the spirit, personal revelation. And I think many of us, when we're undifferentiated, don't dare to actually have our own understanding of what we feel is true, that we feel like we have to comply with what everybody else thinks we should be, how we should believe, how we should feel. We don't actually dare listen to what it is that we feel is right for us. What we believe works in our lives, right? And I think there's a kind of spiritual autonomy that can happen. It doesn't mean that we're all right, but we are at least expressing the truest sense, you know, our genuine sense of what we really feel is right, not just trying to comply to what other people think.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:12:49] So we have their esteem, so we get their validation. And so I think our maturity is really developed as we do that. And I think we become more confident in ourselves and more able to hold onto who we are. Even in the context of people wanting different things from us, you know, wanting us to conform to reduce their anxiety. You know, relationships will always put pressure on you to conform to what they want because it makes us more comfortable when people want the same things we want.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:13:27] But if we can hold the integrity of who we are, not in an oppressive way, but just by owning what we know about ourselves, then we, then that's what is the mechanism in relationships that really pushes us to grow.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:13:42] You know, I teach the marriage and family relations class in my ward and I talk about this idea that, you know, we often think that marriage is there to make us happy and if we find the right person, then we will be happy. And I think a gospel principle is that marriage is in fact there to make it painful enough until we actually grow up and develop and become more grounded, loving people, right?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:14:10] That it exposes our immaturity, it exposes the ways we can be hurtful. And if we're going to depend on validation from the other person, we're toast, right? It's not until you can start confronting yourself, letting yourself see yourself, flaws and all, and really having the courage to develop into something stronger than someone who just needs other People's approval, but someone who can actually look for their own approval, their own integrity, their own ability to act and do the things that they believe are right.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:14:42] That's really what allows us to become loving, grounded people and people capable of passion. So someone who's differentiated, as I said, you can hold your knowledge when people see things, self knowledge when people see things differently. But you can hold that you matter even when someone is being devaluing of you.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:15:05] Brene Braun is a researcher on the concept of vulnerability. And if you probably. If you go on YouTube and you put in Brene Braun, I think it's B R E N E. And B R. What's that? Yeah, Ted.com. did you say B R O N E? Oh, okay. Brone Oak.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:15:30] Okay. B R O W. N E is her last name, right? And her first name is B R E N E. Okay. So she, she talks about vulnerability. And one of the things she talks about is that what she calls the kind of wholehearted people versus the. I don't know what they were.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:15:47] The other people, the wholehearted ones, they embraced their vulnerability. They were able to be vulnerable, to let themselves be open and knowable, to kind of take risks, to want things, you know, to basically they sort of embrace the vulnerability of life.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:16:06] And the difference between the people who were able to do that and the people who weren't was simply that the ones who did it really accepted that they mattered, that they were. That they were worthy of love and acceptance.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:16:21] And the people who really struggled with vulnerability and exposure had deep questions about whether or not they really mattered. I think in our theology we have a concept of God loving us and that that love is immutable. It can't be changed. There's no amount of righteousness that can make you worth more than someone. There's no amount of sin that can make you worth less than someone.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:16:46] But I think the courage is in actually accepting that idea. Because most of us, those of us striving to be perfect, don't buy it. What we really think is I've got to earn my value. I've got to earn it through denying my humanity, denying my imperfection, and trying to be acceptable, presentable.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:17:09] If you can really accept that you matter, even though you're deeply flawed, which we all are, we all matter and we're all profoundly flawed. And if you can tolerate that reality, then you open yourself up to really being known to yourself and to someone else.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:17:26] And if you can't confront that in yourself, you will always have a wall between you and the Other person. You know, one of my clients, I have an exercise that I give couples sometimes around hugging as sort of the first sort of intervention and partly to diagnose what's happening in their sexual relationship, but also to help them develop something within themselves. And so this couple, she tried it for the first time and she talked about the anxiety that she felt around hugging. It was just a simple hug, you know, clothes on, standing up, hugging, but the deep anxiety that she felt standing there hugging her husband.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:18:08] And I said, what do you think the anxiety was about? And she said, I was afraid that he would see something in me that I wasn't willing, that I wasn't ready to have him see yet. Right. Which I think is really profound. I don't want to be known.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:18:26] I want to be validated. I don't want to be known. And that's what most of us are looking for in marriage. But that's an immature position. Any questions or anything before I say more? Yeah, those words are just kind of going through my mind. I want to be validated. I don't want to be known. But perhaps there is a way that if we allow ourselves to be deeply known, we can be fully and deeply validated.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:18:55] You're right. So, I mean, I think good sexual relationships are a combination of that ability to validate ourselves and hold who we are and a nice dose of validation in return. Right. But there's nothing, and that's the heaven on earth, in my opinion, is when you really can let yourself, you can hold the legitimacy of who you are enough to let yourself be known that deeply and to feel that, accepted that your spouse has also been able to develop themselves enough that they can accept you that deeply, even if it's different. Right. Even if it's not what they wanted at first.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:19:33] There's nothing freer, more freeing and lovely than that. And that's what I think makes it transcendent. But I think all of us want that, but we're too terrified to ever get there because what if I don't get the validation? And what if I face rejection, which often we do.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:19:54] That's the tension of marriage is when you start exposing something about yourself that they don't want you to expose. And then their anxiety goes up and they try to shame you into retreating back to where you were so that their anxiety will go down.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:20:09] So I think our self development, and maybe a little redundant because I'm jumping around a little bit, but our self development, it's really linked to desire. What do I want versus what do others want from me or for me.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:20:24] And living by your internal compass, or discovering it and expressing it, expressing your unique abilities, your unique perceptions, your unique desires, and being true to them, you know, that's a true expression of you. If you're living your life, if you're living the life you think others want from you, if you're having the sex that your spouse wants to be having, then sex and life is not going to be a true expression of you.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:20:58] And therefore you're not going to want it. Because no one wants to submit to the tyranny in a chronic way of what other people want from them. So when sexuality is not an expression of self, it can't be intimate because you're not actually showing up and you'll come to resent it.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:21:24] No one wants that psychological loss of self. Sorry, I have this. I always have this struggle between notes and just talking to you. Because if I just talk to you, it's more alive, it's more passionate. But then I'm like, okay, wait, did I say that part? And now I'm saying it again, but, okay. So it's really in that ability to hold onto ourselves and validate ourselves that will give us the courage to actually start to explore who we are in the world. Like with my client, who always took what her husband wanted to be the reference point that it required for her, an ability to hold onto herself enough to start taking the risks of exploring what she wanted for herself and to start letting those be exposed to her and to her spouse and to others.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:22:12] The same as in the sexual realm is, if I'm going to start, you know, let me say it like, it's like a lot of people. Like, I have a client who says I have no sexual desire. And kind of like, you know, I just didn't get it like everybody else maybe got that gift. I didn't get it.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:22:30] And. Hang on. But see, I see sexuality as something that you develop. It doesn't. Meaning you have the capacity, biologically speaking. But everyone needs an erotic education, right? Everyone needs to learn how to both integrate this reality and who they are and develop it and find ways to express who they are within that language. And if you have just been too afraid of the language, you'll never learn it. It's kind of like if you say, I can't speak German, but you've never spent any time daring to learn it doesn't mean you don't have the capacity to speak it. It means that your anxiety around learning it has precluded you from mastering It.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:23:11] Right. So if we can validate ourselves, though and validate the imperfection and validate the exposure, then we start giving ourselves the place and space to start defining who we are in the sexual realm. So, you know, all sexual development requires anxiety regulation. So you think about your very first sexual experience of any kind. You know, kissing. So just take like French kissing. French kissing, when the first time I heard about it sounded pretty much disgusting to me. Right. But if you. Then your anxiety tolerance is okay, well, I'm going to try this thing and I'm going to see, you know, I'm going to step towards this thing that makes me uncomfortable that I haven't yet mastered.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:23:57] But if you can tolerate that process, then you can either include it or exclude it from your repertoire. Your sense of, if this is something that I like or I don't like, you know, that's how all sexual development happens. I mean, remember the first time you hear about intercourse, it's just like, what the. You know, that's really what God says we have to do. And yet if you actually confront your anxiety enough to actually explore it and understand it and experience it, then you start to integrate it into a sense of who you are.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:24:26] So that's the process of. I'm willing to tolerate the anxiety of my ignorance or my not knowing enough to find out more about me and what I want. Okay. I always think of Sleepless in Seattle, the big O word.

Orgasm, Self-Ownership, and the High-Desire Partner

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:24:44] So is orgasm tied to all of this? Anxiety threshold, etc. Can women have an orgasm if they're doing what the other half wants them to do? Or does it have to be tied to their own reference point, their own internal compass? So I'll talk more about orgasm tomorrow, but I'll say this much, which is, yes, it has very much to do with anxiety. And the more anxiety you have, anxiety has an inhibiting effect on. So if you're totally anxious, not the productive anxiety that I've been talking about around stepping towards something that's unknown to you, but you're overwhelmed with anxiety, it will inhibit your body's ability to have an orgasm.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:25:27] Okay. Because it decreases the stimulation that you get. But what was the second part of your question? Oh, can you do it? Yeah, that's the other thing I would say, is that. And I'll talk more about this tomorrow. Sorry to keep saying that, but you know, the skill that people have in healthy sexuality is an ability to belong to themselves and to others. Right. It's a function of differentiation that I can belong to myself and you at the same Time without feeling. Those two compete with each other, which in an undifferentiated state, we feel like those two realities are in competition. The reality about pleasure and sexuality is if you won't give yourself the room to, to have pleasure for yourself, I mean, it requires on some level a kind of trust in the relationship that you can go and attend to yourself without it hurting the other person.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:26:16] And if you don't believe you can do that, that your desire and your wanting is inherently destructive, then you're not going to give yourself the space to let yourself have that experience. And you do. To achieve orgasm, you do need to be able to pull away.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:26:32] Trust that the relationship can tolerate it. Trust that the relationship can tolerate it. There's a question here. So earlier you also said that sex can be either duty based or desire based, but it can't be both. But what you just said just now, kind of. So when you said that, I was a little confused because I consider myself to have a pretty healthy sex life with my husband and I. Every once in a while there are times when it is more duty based, but then it can transition into this desire based and always does. Right. So that's what I was confused with, what you just said.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:27:07] Okay. Yeah. I think we can sometimes maybe enter in out of a place of I'm not really wanting it, but I guess I want to want it or I want to because I care about you. And so I want to kind of enter into this conversation, see where it goes. I think if you stay in the duty framework, it's definitely going to inhibit what's possible. I mean, you may even be orgasmic, but it's not going to be the same kind of communion. It's not going to be the kind of communion that you can start from that place. Yes. And I would say many women don't start.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:27:47] I mean, what's his name, the sex researchers? I just can't say their name all of a sudden. Masters and Johnson. Thank you. The model is you start out with desire and then there's arousal, climax and recovery. But that's just not true. I mean, most people, often people start with arousal that they just start letting themselves be touched and their body starts to respond. And desire is actually a decision. Desire is like my body's aroused, but am I going to own the wanting? Am I actually going to let myself claim it and step into it? Because my body might be responding, but not. I won't let myself let the wall down.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:28:30] So, yes. Okay. One other thing I was going to say is that Part of the linking of our self development to the capacity for desire is being able to tolerate that process of coming to know yourself. But it's also not thinking about sex anymore as a performance or as an accommodation to somebody else's wants, but as a way of really sharing yourself.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:28:58] So, you know, when I was 14 and I had my first boyfriend, he was. I met him at the Steak Dance. And so every temple trip and everything like that, you know, I was getting to know him better. And so I knew at some point I was going to kiss him. And Maybe I was 15, I don't remember, but so I went and got my friend to buy a book for me that was called how to Kiss with Confidence. Right.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:29:26] And it was all the techniques of how to kiss and how to do it well and to not make a fool of yourself. But the thing is, I wasn't interested in intimacy with him. I didn't really want him to know me.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:29:38] I didn't want him to see me as a fledgling, clueless person who'd never kissed before. I wanted him to see me as competent as, you know, I wanted to be presentable. And so that's not about intimacy. But so many of us think in the sexual realm, we aren't trying. We're trying to perform, or we're trying to be sufficient. We're not really letting ourselves be experienced. And again, I will talk about this tomorrow, giving couples some exercises around how to let themselves manage their anxiety, to let themselves be experienced more and to experience the other person. Yeah, talked about that exercise that you did with the couples when you have them hug.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:30:23] What are they supposed to be feeling? You know, I mean, so they are kind of feeling free and not full of that anxiety. What. What were you wanting out of that exercise? What were you wanting out of that exercise? With that, with the couple when you had them hug, what could. You know, how I can't do it justice. I will talk about it tomorrow. Are you going to be here tomorrow? No. Okay.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:30:45] It's really around the mastery of holding onto yourself while you're that connected with another person, both physically and emotionally. Because when we're referencing externally, we are tracking what they're doing. And if we think they're annoyed or they don't want to be hugging us or they're sucking the life out of us that our. Often what happens is we abandon our own experience and we start trying to manage what they want or don't want. Right. So it's really about staying more grounded in yourself, even in the context of them wanting different things. And that's really the nuance of differentiation is it actually allows you to be with them more rather than regulating what you do through them.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:31:32] But it takes skill. You develop it. Okay, let me just see where we are first before. Okay, I think so. I really like this idea of sexuality being a self progression and becoming more of a whole person. And I'm just wondering what kind of room or does it leave any room for like chemistry? Like, does that when somebody says, well, I don't feel chemistry, is that sort of a cop out of being vulnerable? Like, if you were just like in tune more with your sexuality, you could be intimate with anybody. Or does chemistry still play a role?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:32:13] I don't know. Sorry, I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know that you could just be. I guess I would say no. I don't think you'd just be sexual with anyone. I think if you had an arranged marriage and you never, ever felt anything, ever, you know, maybe there's nothing to be restored or found.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:32:34] But the thing is, I think the real question is, do I want this person? I mean, I think usually what we do is we manage. We devalue them and we split desire off from them again. I'll talk about this tomorrow as a way to manage vulnerability, but it's really not a function that there's never been anything there or never could be anything there.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:32:55] It's really about whether or not we value them. And I think that valuing of the other person is really about whether or not we can tolerate dependency. So I think the questions, and I have a lot of questions in your packet that you can answer on your own.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:33:10] But I think around this sense of, do I want to let myself be known more? I'm not there to accommodate him, to take care of him. But can I really see if I can do. Do I feel that it's legitimate for me to ask for our sexual relationship to be a reflection of the two of us? Is it legitimate for me to really let myself be known and experienced?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:33:38] Can I. Am I okay enough to let myself be known to myself? Right. Can I share myself as an equal with him, flaws and all? And I think that's really the question that you have to confront in yourself.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:33:58] I have. I don't think I have one of the packets up here, but there's several. You know what, I'll get to that. I'll talk about the packet at the end. So I'll explain to you what's there. So some more thoughts. Is that so? Another reason why holding your legitimacy is linked to desire is because the more confident you are with yourself, the more that you will express who you are. And I think eroticism requires a basic level of self esteem. You know, that you have to have a certain kind of healthy entitlement to pleasure, that you deserve it, you feel like you're worthy of it.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:34:39] I think many of us carry a question around whether or not we're worthy of good things in our lives, whether or not we're really worthy of somebody, of our spouse being uncomfortable for our sake, right? Of really giving to us. Like one couple that I work with where she has difficulty having an orgasm with him and he really wants to help her, and so he starts trying to help her. And then she starts thinking, thinking, oh my gosh, I'm taking too long, I'm taking too long.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:35:11] And her anxiety is going up and up and up, which is making it so it's less and less likely to happen. And the longer she takes, the more she feels like a burden, the more she feels frustrated, the more she feels disgusted with herself and then just says, forget it, never mind, forget it. I just don't want to do this right.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:35:30] The real issue for her is I think she has a hard time, and there's several factors, but one of the issues is she has a really hard time letting herself feel that it's legitimate for her to be given to, like, as one of the responses here, like, will my desires hurt someone else? Is it okay for someone to be, you know, be inconvenienced for my sake and am I worthy of that? Or can I just run to the. Taking care of everyone else as a way to quickly feel like I'm valuable because I'm at least valuable to them, but never can sort of own it in me.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:36:04] And one of the exercises, not in the packet that I give women who I think really struggle with this, is to just let themselves be the receivers only and to manage the anxiety around letting themselves receive. To just, you know, have an exploration in which you're discovering what you like and he's just giving to you in that way. And can you take it in and let yourself feel that, okay, that it's okay to be given to, that I matter enough to receive it.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:36:39] So in short, healthy desire is really a capacity that we develop. And culturally, we talk about desire as something that's quantifiable, that either you have it or you don't. We talk about it as though hormones determine it. And while, of course, you know, the body, sexuality is embedded in the Body. It's a lot more flexible than we tend to acknowledge.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:37:05] You know, it's like, it's when the context changes, how desire can, like, turn on a dime. And so it's oftentimes the meanings that we've created in our marriages that have snuffed it out so much that we feel like we must have a biological issue. Right.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:37:22] But often all it takes is someone else flirting with your husband. Right. And suddenly all the desire is back. Because now risk has been introduced. Right. Because uncertainty has been introduced again. And so it's really around sort of challenging that tacitly agreed upon kind of safety that happens in the marriage that when you challenge, it can really allow desire to emerge again.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:37:51] And here's just the core of the idea that I've been talking about is that the more solid our sense of self is, the more differentiated we are, the more that we can validate who we are, then the more capacity we have to really want another person to really let ourselves take in and embrace the other person that's there next to us.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:38:15] Low desire can be a reflection of your spouse's undesirable characteristics. You know, low desire can be an act of good judgment. Right? Right. But sometimes low desire reflects our limited ability to really care for and let ourselves want another person, be dependent on another person.

Moving Out of Low Desire and Into Self-Knowledge

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:38:41] Let me just ask some questions before I go on. Questions or any clarification. Okay. As I keep thinking about this, what about if you've been married for a while, then you a while, and you've got some bad habits, you get to where you kind of ignore each other, you've been raising your kids, and now you're in a different place, your hormones are in there, and what if he doesn't pay attention to you all day and then he expects you to at night and you're feeling like you don't connect. I mean, you just got a lot of bad habits and you learn to separate, but you feel so lonely and how to bring the good habits back back into your life.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:39:12] So what I would say is the change is in the core is around self validation and desire. And what I mean by that is you say, what kind of marriage do I have? What kind of marriage do I want?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:39:23] And I want to talk to him about what I think we have and what it is that I want. But it requires my ability to hold onto myself and my legitimacy to actually speak for something to change. Because usually when one person gets the idea that they want things to change, very seldom does the other person applaud it.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:39:45] Because Then it requires they have to confront something in themselves that the other situation allowed them to avoid. So again, it's really around and part of it, you know, let me just give this story. There's a couple I've been working with where she's been the low desire partner for. For a long time. And she did that as a way of kind of trying to move into a sort of infancy. What's the better way to say it?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:40:12] She pulled into that low desire position as a way to not have to really expose herself, to really be vulnerable. And because he was so eager to be a caretaker, which he was, that she could use his guilt and her neediness as a way to. To get him to accommodate to her fear around sexuality. And he would move into the nurturing role and they wouldn't have sex. And that's really the way the marriage went for a long time until he kind of came to a breaking point and said, I don't think I can be in a marriage that's so sexless. Right.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:40:49] So the first thing that we worked on with her was around this issue around her always moving into this kind of needy stance and then asking him to come in and be a caretaker and instead to let herself confront herself more, to see herself more, to see her ability to do that to him. All of which made her feel awful in a very good way. Meaning she started recognizing what she was doing to him, and she confronted it, and she didn't like it. And so she started to emerge and to, like, tolerate the difficult conversations and to calm herself down enough to really hear what he was saying and to really respond, not just go into the crying that she used to do that would get him to stop talking, but to say, I think you're right, and I have been doing that, and I understand what you're saying, and I'm sorry and so on.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:41:39] And so she just got to be much more solid. And so the relationship got better. And she also started confronting her anxiety around being sexual with him. Where initially she always felt like she was in a performance, like she. She would sort of see herself sexually through his eyes, and she'd want to look right, and she'd want to sort of behave in the right way and make the right kinds of sounds and, you know, like, be what she thought he wanted, which of course wasn't intimacy at all. Right. And so she started referencing it through herself. What do I want? I want to be inside of my own skin while I'm with him.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:42:13] And so she started doing a lot of these things. But as she did it, she started to confront that he, in spite of all the changes she was making, which were sincere ones, not perfect, but sincere, genuine movement, that he still was always saying she wasn't doing enough. He was still kind of looking down his nose at her, which had been an implicit part of the way that he'd related to her that even though he was running in and being this caretaker, the way he managed it was to feel above her, that she was so needy and so fragile, and even though she was really growing up and standing up, that that had really worked for him.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:42:51] It made him feel like he was so full of desire and so capable as a human being and such a good person without him ever having to really let himself be known to her. See what I mean? So when she started becoming more capable of intimacy, he just kept saying, well, you haven't done enough. I don't think you're trying hard enough. And always was to trying, trying to keep himself above it.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:43:14] And so she started to speak genuinely to that and saying, I don't like this. I don't like the way that you don't take influence from me. I don't like the way that you're always seeing me as less than you, that I'm not worthy of you. And to which he would not take her influence and he would look down his nose at her comments. But anyway. And so. And he would say, well, I feel like you're just getting talking about this, but you're still not working on yourself, right? You're not working on our sexual relationship. My response to that was, she's absolutely working on your sexual relationship because she's saying, I am confronting myself enough.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:43:51] I know what I've done to you and I see it. I also know I really want to be with you, but I don't want to be with you if you're constantly holding yourself above me. I'm asking you to come and really be with me, and if you can't come and be with me, I don't want to be with you in this way.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:44:09] Right. And that's, that's an act of self differentiation. Right. That's an act of being true to herself and true to him at the same time. Right. So improving sexual relationships is very much linked to improving emotional relationships. It's really around growing up.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:44:31] Okay. I would say that sexual desire or developing sexual desire is not about becoming less of a failure to your high desire spouse. Right. So many of us who are in that low desire position, we feel like there's something Wrong with us. You know, we have all the power in the relationship. Our spouse would say we have all the power because we have the right of refusal, but we have none of the status right that we're seen as less than for not wanting. And so oftentimes, if you're thinking that your low desire is a function of you being insufficient. What Schnarsh would say about this is that high desire people and low desire people in the same relationship, you know, in your relationship, are no more differentiated than the other.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:45:19] The higher desire person, even though they're wanting, is no more differentiated. Just like the couple I just told you about. He looked like he was so healthy. He looked like he had a healthy relationship to desire, but when she was actually offering him more intimacy, he was too afraid to actually come and be there with her. You see what I mean?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:45:40] So it's not about becoming less defective. It's really about joining with yourself more, coming home to yourself more, claiming the whole of your God given body and embracing it as yours. So I just want to transition into. This is the part in the packets, I think, just part of knowing who you are and knowing who you are as a sexual being. There's value in understanding how I got to where I am.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:46:10] So the first one is just my relationship to sexuality. Questions for exploration. This is just an amalgam of questions, some of which I ask clients when they first come in and I do an assessment, just various questions, some that other researchers or theorists have talked about. It's just a way of understanding what are the messages that I internalized as a child about sexuality from my family, from my young women's teachers.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:46:39] What did I take in and what did I really. What shaped me and, and how did I see my parents? What messages did I learn from them? Did you see your parents as sexual beings and how did you know that they were or weren't?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:46:56] Was the door locked sometimes? Did they take weekends away? Did they express affection openly or did they recoil from touch or avoid it? How did your parents relate to you in terms of touch? Was there anxiety around touch?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:47:14] Was withholding touch a way of punishing? One of the things that I bring up in here, just for me to explain a little bit, is this is something that Esther Perel, a clinician in New York City, talks about is did you see your parents as primarily as a couple, as individuals or as parents? Right?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:47:36] Because it will speak a lot to how you see your parents relationship to their own desires. If you saw your parents as, you know, as your mom, for example, as primarily a parent more than she was an individual or as part of a couple, then you might have a harder time integrating the legitimacy of desire, of your own autonomy, of you being a person in your own right, that it might feel more compelling for you that the only way to sort of legitimately be in the world is through nurturing of others. Right. So oftentimes, the ways our parents oriented to themselves taught us volumes about how to relate to ourselves.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:48:18] And I think there's more questions on the back, but I think the question for you to ask yourself is basically through that exploration, is where am I relative to what my family taught me implicitly or explicitly about sexuality? And what messages have I kept?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:48:36] What messages have I let go of? And what messages, you know, what would I still like to change? What do I want to be in the sexual realm? And really think about that, because again, if it's only defined through what your spouse wants, it really is not going to ever become meaningful for you. It really has to be, what do I want in the sexual realm?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:49:00] And then perhaps what are two ways that I can actively challenge myself to develop in my relationship to my sexuality? And I give some examples of different things you may want to do. The next one is exercises around learning about what you like in the sexual realm.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:49:20] Now, again, this is all I could give a packet like this to people, and they will never, ever do it. And the reason they won't do it is not because they're so busy, even though they say it, that's why.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:49:31] Meaning, like, this stuff here, like doing things with your spouse and figuring out what it is you really like. The reason they won't do it is they don't want to be known. Right? And so until you're ready to let yourself be more known, you're not going to ever get around to doing these things. So it really has to be done in a context of I want to know myself more, and I want to confront my fear of having him know me more. And maybe I can think about what I want and what I like and communicate that to him and give myself the space to figure that out.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:50:01] You know, one of the exercises I give people sometimes is, you know, well, I gave this to a couple that I'm working with where she was. I was saying, why don't you let him touch you? And you can just give him a scale of 1 to 10, how pleasurable it is, you know, varying kinds of touch, touching you in different places.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:50:22] And the thing is that because she felt so much like she was defective sexually that she just never wanted to do the exercise because she was afraid that it would always be a two. And what if every way he touched her was a 1 or a 2? That then it proves that she's not whole and he would give up hope on her.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:50:43] And so again, it was this feeling. It's not that. See, if she could tolerate the anxiety of stepping into that possibility, then she could actually manage her anxiety and actually probably start to experience a lot more pleasure. But the anxiety actually inhibited the pleasure and also then kept her from wanting to do it because she felt so much like it made her worth less. Right. So I'm just saying all that because these are all great exercises, but if you're not really willing to know yourself more, then you won't do them. So. Okay, let me just see. I also have a page in here about painful intercourse that's taken from Barry McCarthy's work and also guidelines around orgasm and arousal and orgasm.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:51:34] Painful intercourse is something that. It's not a psychological issue, meaning there are physiological reasons for it. And so going to. And it talks about it in the worksheet. Just going to specialists that can help you understand what's happening is necessary. And I would also say that in my experience in working with people that as women get more aroused and open themselves, they're not just in an accommodating stance. They then their bodies do become more aroused and they're less anxious and therefore it's less painful. Right. That they start experiencing less pain often.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:52:13] Okay, so knowing your sexual narrative is a part of self knowledge. You're not saying anything about physical appearance. And I. You want to say anything? Questions? No, just that it plays some role. Even if people. It's people feeling that they aren't attractive enough or if it's that they're not attractive.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:52:39] Women are taught to relate to themselves and their bodies as objects. Right. Objects to be desired by males. And women learn to observe rather than experience themselves. And there's a lot of feminist research on this that men have.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:52:57] Women have ornamental value and men have something like functional. I can't remember what the instrumental. Instrumental value. Yes. All right, so. And you know, one of the things I talk about is that, you know, men, the language of the body, sensuality, touch and all that, that's our. As Esther Perel, in her words, that's our mother tongue. Right?

The Body, Sensuality, and Women's Erotic Lives

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:53:22] That's the language in which we learn to communicate Love, acceptance, belonging, cherishing is through the body. When your baby is held, caressed, it's sensual. That's the only way you can express to them your love for them and their safety and that what happens though is that for girls at the time of puberty and adolescence, they are really socialized out of a comfort with their body.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:53:50] Because that script that I talked about around becoming desirable right now, your body has to be shaped, perfected, contained, managed, and now your body's no longer yours. I mean, think about how you were in that prepubescent state of just running around without a thought in the world with respect to your body that once you hit adolescence, now you're, you know, it's not shaped the right way. You're not tall enough, your legs aren't long enough, you're not whatever, enough. There's all this kind of scrutiny of the body and it really leads women to feel a kind of.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:54:26] That they disconnect from their bodies and they feel, as one of my clients said, I feel betrayed by my body, you know, that my body has never been thin enough. It doesn't give me orgasms is what she was saying. She felt like. My body has never been my friend.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:54:44] And so it really creates that mind body split and really undermines confidence and self knowledge and our strength. I think one of the reasons why boys continue into. Men feel more comfortable expressing vulnerability and, and tenderness and intimacy in the sexual realm is because they're still very comfortable in the language of the body.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:55:11] And yet women would rather talk, you know, rather than express it through the body. So men often haven't experienced that same split. So I think for many women to engage in sex is to focus on one's perceived inadequacies rather than on pleasure and connection. Am I desirable to him? Does he want me?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:55:39] It's hard to feel desire when you think you have to be desirable. And especially when that standard of desirability is so stringent and so demanding, right? It's so exacting. And I think these can be really intensified if you were sexually violated in any way.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:55:58] So here's my kind of simple answer to I think, what's a challenging issue? I think two people that have done a lot of work in this area, one is named. Hang on, I'll think of it. Let me just say. And I'll come back to her name in a second. Oh, Jeannine Roth. G E N E E N R O T H Jeanine Roth writes a lot about our relationship to food and the body, right? And that at the core of a healthy relationship to ourselves, not to mention a healthy relationship to food and a relationship to our bodies, is deep self acceptance and self Nurturance.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:56:36] And so that's really, you know, she, the author, was an anorexic and bulimic and became suicidal through the deep self rejection and the rejection of her body. And really her movement into health was around embracing her imperfection, perfect body and embracing herself in the process.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:56:54] I think that it's really around our courage to both reject the cultural expectation. Most of us have spouses who think we are plenty attractive, but we often will still not accept that as true because we hold a higher standard for ourselves. And you know, that our attractiveness to them is so much broader than just whether or not we've put extra weight on our thighs. It has to do with the whole of who we are that's appealing. And yet if we don't feel like we fit that standard, we will project that rejection onto them and we'll reject that. You know, we don't feel entitled to the pleasure.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:57:35] I'm not worthy of it because. Look at me. I think the way to grow out of it is around really being more willing to embrace who you are. Flaws in all that I matter that my body is legitimate, that it's mine, that I am imperfect. And yet I deserve to be connected with this person who loves me. I deserve to have pleasure with him. I'm not here to perform for him in some way or be something for him.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:58:07] I want to validate myself enough to let myself be with him as I am. So it's easier to say it than to do it. Janine Roth is one author who's a good resource. And the other one is Judith Matz. M A T Z, Judith Matz. And she writes a lot about relationship to the body and food. There's other people that write just about body image, but I just can't remember who they are right now. So I. But the others are very good.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:58:36] Other questions or thoughts about that? Yeah. Oh, well, we can do about something else. Yes. I just wondered if you'd say something about fantasizing women and. Fantasizing, I've heard. Oh, it's normal. Women do it. It's, you know. And then I've heard it's not a. It's disconnecting from your body.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:58:53] So what I would say is if you. Let's see, give the kind of. The most helpful answer. Well, okay. So one book that I read called it actually isn't Passionate Thoughts. I always give the wrong title. It's something else.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [00:59:11] The author is Wendy Maltz. Wendy W, E, N D Y Maltz. M A L Z or T Z. Maybe it's passionate thoughts. It's not what it is. Passionate something. And it's about fantasies. Women in fantasies. You'll find if you Google her name, you'll see the book. She basically cataloged all of her research around the things that women fantasize about. Okay. And it's an interesting book, but she kind of categorized it and she doesn't. I don't think she says this in her book, but kind of, as I looked at, was pretty clear that maybe she does talk about this, but it was pretty clear that the more relational trauma you experienced, and I'll talk about this more tomorrow, the more you have a split between love and desire in your fantasies and in your relationships that you split desire off from love.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:00:05] And in fantasy, you will do it also. So fantasies have the power to teach you a lot about yourself. And fantasies, you know, can seem so perverse and so weird and kind of, why would that idea turn me on? That must mean I'm really a disgusting person or something like that.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:00:21] They really, in many ways, are trying to undo the things that have been very hard for us. They're kind of like dreams that there's a meaning in a way that actually, if something is arousing, it is a source of anxiety for us. And oftentimes we're trying to kind of master a situation.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:00:39] And so Wendy Maltz writes about that also another author, and I can't think of the author's name. It's a psychoanalyst. He talks. It's a very compelling book, really talks about the meaning in fantasy and what is. Often we're trying to undo and reconcile within ourselves.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:00:57] I think the thing about fantasy is that fantasy can tell you something about what it is. You're trying something about yourself. So, for example, one of my clients never used fantasy. She felt like it was a kind of betrayal. She also had no desire and.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:01:14] But I asked her to think about what is it? If you were to let yourself think about what ideas turn you on, what turns you on? And she said, I have a fantasy of being a waitress and having multiple men, you know, knocking over tables to get to me. Right. Okay.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:01:35] I asked her husband what his fantasies were. And he said to have sex with her, which was largely in the fantasy realm at that point. So the thing is about her, she was ashamed of that. Like, what a weird thing for me to want. But if you really looked at her life history, she had a family in which there were very high demands placed on her. Around excelling in school, which she had done around always sort of Behaving in a competent way. Always sort of being on top of things, always in control. Which was part of her challenge in the sexual realm is letting go of some of that.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:02:15] The fantasy was precisely the opposite. Right. Is here she was in a low status position and yet she was that wanted even when she had, you know, even when there was nothing about her that was compelling. She was a waitress. Right. And also this idea that I could be that wantable that people would sort of defy convention to get access to me, that's compelling. Right. So there's oftentimes there's meanings in the fantasies that can help you learn something about what it is that you're unsettled about within yourself.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:02:48] The other thing I'd say about fantasy is I do think again. I'll talk about this tomorrow. I'm sorry to keep saying that, but when you have a hard time tolerating the intimacy of a sexual connection, like people turn out the lights and they disconnect as a way to. To actually make the interaction less intimate. Right. And a way to make it less intimate is to think about somebody else. Right. Or to be emotionally disengaged and thinking about something else. And I'm not here to make it inherently bad, but it. Or pathologize it. Just to say that the more we can really let ourselves be present, you know, the more we can really be.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:03:28] Be with the person we are with and feel desire at the same time. Right. More that we can really be connected. You can share what your fantasies are too. That's another way of sharing who you are. But whether or not it's intimate maybe is how the fantasy is used and whether it's used to disconnect or whether it's used to connect.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:03:50] I have a question about polarities. Like do you ever see a lot of people going from no sex to addiction or having someone get into the victim framework and the pred. The husband's the predator. Do you get into.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:04:07] Do you see a lot of people swinging from no sex to addiction or putting themselves in the victim role and the husband's the predator? Is that any. Like the woman who wants no sex feeling like the victim and the male's the predator?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:04:31] Yeah. Or like he wants it and I have to give it because I'm obligated, you know, so. Well, what I would say, what I think often happens, especially when there's been sexual trauma, is in the context of a committed relationship, often that person will become non sexual, almost present as. Almost asexual.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:04:49] But then in relationships that matter Far less meaning with strangers and they can be hypersexual. So that's not unusual for people that have really disowned the vulnerability of sex. Right. Won't bring that vulnerability into a relationship that actually matters, but will use it to feel desired or to feel powerful in relationships that don't matter. So I do see that. And then in terms of the victim predator, I mean, I would say it sounds like what you're saying is just an extreme version of what I'm talking about where someone moves into the non desire and then the spouse goes into a very high desire position and they seem very polarized and it's kind of managing something for both of them.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:05:34] I guess I have sort of touched on this already, but I just want to talk about it a little bit more. You know, I would say one more thing about our bodies. You know, sexual gaze is really important. Like the kind of, if you think about some professor in my husband's education said, you know, I think it was him, that if you, if you look anybody in the eye for more than four seconds or something, seven seconds, you're either going to kill them or have sex with them.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:06:02] Right. That it's like an intensely intimate kind of communication. Right. And so, and people have actually talked about, like right before when someone held up a gun to them, that when you looked in that person's eyes and you knew they were going to kill you, there was something intensely intimate about that moment. You know what I mean?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:06:20] So I'm sure none of you know what I mean. I mean, hopefully none of us have experienced it, but. So there is something very powerful about gays and that, that happens a lot in courtship. It often happens, much less in marital sexuality. And something about letting ourselves really have eye contact is about letting ourselves really be seen and seeing the other person. Okay. The other thought I have is gazing at ourselves. You know, I think if we look at ourselves, who do I see and who do I think he sees? Do I see myself as attractive? Do I see myself as wantable? Do I see myself as somebody who can be desired?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:07:00] Right. Even if my body is imperfect? Because I think if we can't hold that in ourselves, we're going to have a very hard time letting someone else feel it for us. Oh, I forgot about something. Okay, so we got to get to this. Okay, So I forgot I'm not going to use this. Okay.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:07:19] I think that, you know, speaking of an erotic education, we talked a little bit about self exploration. Let me tell you this, that Laura Brotherson, in her book Talks about this notion of knowing our body's capacity for eroticism. And she talks about it in terms of self learning. She doesn't call it masturbation. She calls it self learning. Kind of a cleaned up way of talking about coming to know yourself. She distinguishes it from masturbation because masturbation is something you. To take your sexuality outside of the relationship. Self learning is to know yourself well enough to know, to bring that into the relationship and to create the connection.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:07:59] If so, that was written in her book and that gets sold at Deseret, you know, Deseret book. So, okay, so if there's any legitimacy, maybe it's there from the larger church. Okay. I think many of us as women, we basically make our spouses responsible for turning us on, for making us want. That's kind of the cultural script that if he's really a man, he'll make me want it. You know, if he's really a man, he'll make me feel pleasure. But I think we really are responsible for our own sexuality and for our own ability to feel turned on. So this is one thing I just want to do.

Exploring What Turns You Off and On

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:08:38] Throw out your responses if you dare. This is easy. We'll start with this. I turn myself off. When? And just think about how. How do you turn yourself off sexually? What kinds of things make you turn yourself off? From wanting?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:09:02] Yeah. When I'm too tired. Too tired. Oh, it's gonna be hard to write. Too tired. Okay. Excuse me. I probably need a scribe. Maybe too tired. What's another? What? What? Hearing the kids. Okay. Hearing the kids. Good. When I'm angry at them. What else?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:09:28] You guys know how to turn yourselves off. I know it. Come on. Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's kind of hard to sort of hold the board while you do it. What else? When do you turn yourself off?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:09:47] Okay. Right. So Right. When I let the distractions overcome desire. When I turn myself off. When. When I feel unattractive. When I feel worried about my children. When I feel like he's placating me. When I feel like he doesn't care about me. Come on, you guys know. When do you turn yourselves off?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:10:08] When you don't have enough time. When he's not turned on. When I think he's not turned on. Good. When I see myself in my garments. Good. I know. Make him a little sexier. Okay. What else? Yeah, say it loudly.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:10:34] Feeling touched out. Right. When I don't want it. When I don't want to feel taken from. Yeah. Yes. When I feel exhausted by demands. Okay, Let me Just see if I have any more that I wrote here. Okay.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:10:56] Okay. Now let's do. Why turn myself on? It's always harder to get from people. I turn myself on when. So I'll give you some. When I feel attractive, when I feel successful, When I feel understood and accepted. When someone's flirting with my husband. That's a great one. Yes. Right. I turn myself on when.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:11:21] When I pamper myself. Good. When. When I have no responsibilities. That's awesome. Yes. I turn myself on when the kids are asleep. Good. I turn myself on when I buy sexy clothing and imagine myself wearing it. Okay, what else?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:11:47] I turn myself on when I feel loved. What else? When I was romantic music. Good. When I feel admiration for him. When he seems confident, when he seems not needy. Right. When you dance. When she. To dance. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Dancing is very sensual. Okay, good.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:12:33] So. And you can see how many. Many of these things have nothing to do with sex. Right. They have something to do with our relationship to ourselves and our relationship to the other person. But if you're wondering kind of what is the key for me feeling more desire, it may lie in this area, like, what do I need to do more of for myself?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:12:57] Also thinking about the act of turning yourself off. What am I protecting myself from when I do that? Why am I shutting myself down in those moments? I have one more and I'm not going to write it, but I just want you to think about it. To thinking about sort of what's the source of desire for you is the question of.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:13:18] I'm most drawn to my partner. I'm most drawn to my spouse. When. When one of my clients said like, a turning point for her was the other day when a skunk climbed under the porch and died. And the odor was so bad that it was just oppressive. She could barely deal with it. And she asked her husband if he would come home and take care of it. And he came home early. And she said he went out there and he got that skunk and he picked it up by the tail and the body fell off. And the kids were like, highly entertained. And she just.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:13:55] She just like saw him as such a man in that moment, you know, and he's like taking that skunk on and he like buried it in the backyard. And she was like, so blown away by like him coming in and rescuing her from this. And. And you know, seeing him be able to do something that she knew she could never do for herself. Right. When you see admire something in your spouse that makes you drawn to them. Right. Difference is really at the core of attraction.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:14:23] And so when we let ourselves witness the difference, that can really be. That can draw us to our spouse. What else? I feel drawn to my spouse when. What? When he rubs my feet. Okay. What else? When he forgives me. Great.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:14:43] What else? Yeah. Great. When he really wants the best for me. Great. When he spends time with me. Great. When he helps with the kids. Right. This is like my husband. He's like foreplay for him. He's like getting a spoon. And like, what? Jennifer is like dropping the spoon in the dishwasher.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:15:13] So let's see. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, I'm drawn to my partner when I see him at a party and he's talking to other people and he sounds intelligent and I see him as other. I see him as different. I see him as having strengths that I don't have.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:15:38] One theorist talks about the eye of the third. I'm sitting in Relief Society, and I remember John, my husband, comes and opens the door right in the front to get something from me. And he just looked so handsome in that moment. And everybody looked at him and that was like, wow, he's mine, right? Like, they all get. They see him and I get to have him.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:16:01] I was very drawn to him right then. Right? So oftentimes, like when someone's flirting with my husband, I feel drawn. But oftentimes it's when we feel sort of like we have so much togetherness, there's not enough space for wanting. And oftentimes, when we're really drawn is when we see them as separate and other.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:16:19] So I'm saying all that as this kind of a fun way to start thinking about what is it that draws me in? When do I find myself wanting and can I encourage and elicit more of that? And when I turn myself off, what am I trying to protect and what am I trying to shut down in me? And can I work with that to hold something inside of myself more that I make more space for desire?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:16:43] So I am. We are out of time. If you want to come tomorrow and you haven't signed up, there is still room. You can just come tomorrow and pay. Or you can, you know, pay online if you want. And that starts at 10am and thank you all for coming.

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife [01:17:33] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening. Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear but with joy Wend your way Though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares From a star too dry to the San Jo hearts will swell oh, all is well all is well.

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