Introduction to the Episode and Guest

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast and a special edition of Mormon stories podcast. It's April 30, 2024, and for those of you who are watching, I am sitting here today with my longtime partner in goodness and health and truth, the Natasha Helfer Parker. Hey, Natasha.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:00:20] Hi. I'm super. I can't get the grin off my face because I'm so excited to interview Emily.

John Dehlin [00:00:26] It's good to have you back.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:00:27] Nice to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:28] And for those of you who don't know or remember Natasha, she is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She's a licensed certified sex therapist. Certified sex therapist, yes. She's been on Mormon Stories many times and she runs Symmetry Solutions.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:00:41] Yes. Now Symmetry Counseling. So, yes. All these things that you're supposed to keep up with. John. I know it's hard. It's life.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] Yeah. And she's probably one of the most popular and well sought out therapists for people in a Mormon faith transition and or people who've left the church. So, Natasha, so happy to have you here.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:00:59] So happy to be here. Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [00:01:01] And Natasha, why don't you introduce our guest?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:01:03] Yeah. So we have the, like, fabulous, magnificent, amazing Emily Nagoski with us. I'm just thrilled. Several years ago, many years ago, you agreed to come on my podcast that I was running at the time called Mormon sex info, and we reviewed your book, come as you are, which has just been phenomenal and I think changes people's lives. And we, you know, I see it recommended and our post Mormon circles, I see it recommended in our therapist circles, sex therapy. So it's been really wonderful. Now you have this new book out, come together, which is really about the science of relational sex and long term relational sex. And boy, are we interested in this topic for a lot of different reasons. But I would love to give you a chance to kind of just share a little bit about your own self in your own words.

Emily Nagoski [00:01:54] Sure. So I'm Emily. I've been a sex educator for over 25 years now. I started out in the mid-90s as an undergraduate peer health educator, going into residence halls at the University of Delaware talking about condoms, contraception, and consent. And I was a big nerd. So I was getting a degree in psychology and had the idea that I would be a clinical neuropsychologist, work with people with traumatic brain injury and stroke. But as much as I love the brain stuff, and I do love the brain stuff, the work I was doing as a sex educator and then as a sexual violence Prevention educator, and then ultimately as a sexual violence crisis responder. That work made me like who I am as a person in a way the brain stuff never could. So that's the path I chose. I went on to get a master's degree in counseling psychology with a specialty in sex therapy. Realized about halfway through that I am not temperamentally a therapist. I don't have the magical thing to sit there and go, I like for you, I don't have it. I admire it. It is not the thing I have. But I'm an educator by temperament and I also like to be in charge of things. To Indiana and got a PhD in health behavior, basically what's now the School of Public Health with a concentration in human sexuality. And then I worked for eight years as the Director of wellness Education at Smith College, which is where I was teaching a class called Women's Sexuality. And the last question on my final exam was, just tell me one important thing you learned. It doesn't matter what you say, you get the two points. Because it matters that you get the two points. Just tell me one important thing you learned. And I thought they were going to say, like, attachment theory or the dual control model, but instead, more than half of them, and there were 187 students in that class, more than half of them wrote something like, I learned I'm normal. I'm normal. I'm not broken just because I'm different from other women. I can trust my body because I know that I'm normal. And anyone who's been in the position of grading final exams knows that's not usually like this. I was sitting in my office grading with tears in my eyes, feeling something so important had happened for my students and I wanted to do it again and I wanted to do it at a larger scale. And that's the day I decided to write Come as yous Are. Four and a half years later.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:04:10] Yeah.

Emily Nagoski [00:04:12] And then we get into the history of the new book. So Come as yous Are is about the science of women's sexual well being. Like I just said, it took about four and a half years for it to go from an idea to publishing the process of writing a book about sex, where you're reading and writing and thinking and talking about sex all day every day. You might think it's real sexy. It is not real sexy. It is not very real. Real stressful. So, like, I had been married about a year and a half and I'm writing this book and I have, because I'm so stressed out, lost all interest in actually having any sex. So I finished writing the book. Things get better, I go on book tour, things get a lot worse. I try to follow my own advice from my own book, Responsive Desire. We talked about that last time where instead of waiting for like spark, you like, put your body in the bed, you let your skin touch your partner's skin and your whole body and brain go, all right, that's a great idea. I like this. I like this person. And I would put my body in the bed, let my skin touch my partner's skin, and I would cry and fall asleep. And I thought, I need more help than I gave in my own book. So I did what any good sex nerd does. I went to Google Scholar and I looked at the peer reviewed science on how couples sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term. And what I found there is what I put into come together.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:05:42] That's amazing. I love it. And I love your vulnerability and sharing just kind of your own realistic. You know, I think sometimes when we're sex therapists and we're in the sex fields, everybody assumes that we're having like the most fabulous sex of everybody out there. And sometimes I'm going to say that's true and sometimes it's not.

Emily Nagoski [00:05:59] Sometimes it absolutely is true. There are advantages in your sex life to being a person who does this for a living, but that doesn't make us impermeable to all of like the stressors and illnesses and other life factors that can get in the way.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:06:14] Exactly, exactly. Well, so I've been reading your book over the last week and it's fabulous. It's really like the other book has a lot of great information, but not just information, like applicable information and ideas and strategies and things that I think couples will find really useful. What we're hoping to spend the next hour and a half talking with you about is how these, these basic principles and concepts that you're talking about in this book might apply to the population we tend to work with, which are people leaving high demand religions, you know, Mormonism in particular. And. But there's lots of people who listen to both of our podcasts that don't just come from a Mormon background, but Jehovah's Witnesses or, you know, Pentecostals, like evangelicals, lots of different people who have a lot of the maybe purity culture background and also like standards of behavior that were very much, you know, a big important part of our upbringings and our belief systems. And now that you've gone through a worldview shift, sexuality is a big Part of that. Right. How are we going to approach our sexuality? What do we think about our current sexual experiences? And so I thought we would talk about some of the basic things that we see a lot of couples storing their relationships after a faith transition and saying, well, this is why our sex life doesn't work. And I'm not sure it's always as simple as the stories people come up with. Right. And I'm hoping that you'll help us complicate that. Does that sound good?

Navigating Sexuality After Religious Upbringing

Emily Nagoski [00:07:43] Absolutely.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:07:44] Okay.

Emily Nagoski [00:07:45] And then resimplify it so that it's nice and manageable.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:07:48] Yes, yes, we can resimplify it. So one of the things that's really typical for people to think is, okay, we are struggling sexually now because we got married too young. We got married when we were young. We didn't really know each other very well. Maybe something that piggybacks on that is that we got married maybe even before we understood ourselves sexually. Right. Especially if you come from traditions that discourage masturbation, that discourage sexual exploration, that discourage erotic stimuli, fantasy, you know, all the things. Right. That help us sexually develop. So we got married under the pretense that we would be good, righteous people and raise righteous children. But sexual compatibility wasn't necessarily one of the main things that we were taught

John Dehlin [00:08:40] to look for because we couldn't have sex before we were married, and we've never had sex with anyone else, at least in my case. So, yeah, it's like no experience at all. It's like throwing darts with the blindfold. Right, Right. Yeah.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:08:54] Yeah. So how might that relate to some of the things you're talking about in the book?

John Dehlin [00:08:59] And, Natasha, tell me if I'm wrong. The way that that narrative goes is, okay, now I'm 40 and we don't believe in the church anymore, or we no longer have the beliefs we did, and we're going through a midlife crisis and maybe the marriage satisfaction is dipped. And so there's a real. It's really easy to say we're not sexually compatible right now, or we have different interests because we never got to go to college and do the fraternity and the sorority thing, have lots of sexual partners, have lots of experimentation and make sure that we picked each other because we're sexually compatible, amongst other things. So it's this idea of blaming the faith crisis and the religious background for the predicament that. That we're in, quote, now in.

Emily Nagoski [00:09:45] Yeah, yeah. I think in some ways, this couple might actually have a slight advantage over a couple that is in the same phase of life. But is without the faith crisis. Who did have experience and knew they were sexually compatible. Because they knew they were sexually compatible. And then they lost something with this couple. They got married. Let's assume they had a basic, like, I'm attracted to this person. I have an expectation that when we get to the sex part, the sex card's going to be good because this person is basically attractive to me. Let's assume that that's in place. Right. Awesome. Everything you have ever learned about sex is wrong. You are now open to the opportunity of learning how sex actually works. So let's figure out there's really two ways that couples can be struggling. Let's say they have never had sex that they like. Awesome. Let's find out what kind of sex you like. What kind of experiences are pleasurable for you. I'm going to send you right to the play space in your mind. We all know we can recognize play when we see it's a universal mammalian behavior. Play is any behavior that we engage in for its own sake because everybody involved likes it and there is nothing at stake. Nobody has anything to lose. You're just playing a game. You're just having fun. And there are lots of different kinds of play. There's rough and tumble play like kids play when they chase each other. Rough and tumble play. Sex can absolutely be rough and tumble play. There's story play. You be the teacher and I'll be the student. You be the plumber and I'll be the householder. There's story play. Kids play story play. Adults have story play. And then there's my favorite, especially for beginners at play. Playful sex is object play. Object play is what's happening when a. When. When a little baby discovers they're. They're in the bath and they're splashing the water and they're like, what can I make this do? And they figure out that they can make water splash. And they go from what can I. What.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:11:56] What.

Emily Nagoski [00:11:57] What is that? What can I do? What can I make this do? What happens when I do this? And they know that they can splash you and it is a fun. And they laugh and giggle and they're having a delightful time when. What if we experience our partner's bodies as an opportunity for mutual object play? What can I make this do? How does it feel when I try this? There is nothing at stake. No one has anything to lose. There is no performance, demand or expectation. It's just exploring and seeing what sensations happen when you touch your bodies in different ways. How's that for A place to start.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:12:36] Yeah, I think, I think that's a really good place to start. I think what I'm kind of getting at is like right away, like, let's challenge some of these assumptions, right? Let's challenge some of these assumptions that if like you said, there's two kinds of couples, one that maybe thought they were sexually compatible or had sexually compatible behavior and a lot of fun, and now 10, 20 years later, they don't have that anymore, right? So I think sometimes there's this expectation that if we would have found out we were sexually compatible, we would still be sexually compatible today. And I think that's one of the myths, right? Or one of the stories. You talk a lot about stories and expectations that people have about what sex should look like. And so I see this as when you say, okay, let's get into a playful mode, I think that's beautiful. Now, some of the things that immediately, as you say that come up for me that people might say is like, well, I'm not in the mood to play with this person that now we have like a 20 year history, so maybe we can talk a little bit about repair, right?

Emily Nagoski [00:13:39] Oh yeah.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:13:40] And this goes into even a lot of the chapters you had on patriarchy and gender roles and the books that we received, right? If you were born with a vagina or if you were born with a penis. And so we have 20 years or 30 years or 15 years of deep wounds as far as how they try to navigate.

Emily Nagoski [00:13:59] However old you are, you have that many years worth of being lied to about who you're supposed to be as a sexual person and how you are supposed to do sex and who your partner is supposed to be as a sexual person and how they're supposed to do sex and what a long term sexual relationship is supposed to look like and how you're supposed to co create it. Literally when I say everything you were taught is wrong, I mean literally there is not one thing that is not open to being challenged. And I am so excited that you brought up the patriarchy chapters.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:14:32] We are like patriarchy on steroids. All of those issues that you brought up, I'm like, oh, this is absolutely what we deal with. And you talk. I don't know if we're ready to go here yet because there's so much in what we just talked, but you talked about if you're born with a vulva, you're kind of given this message that you're going to be a giver and if you're born with a penis, you're kind of given this message, you're going to be a winner. And how those two things show up in these sexual scripts. Right. That so many people have.

Emily Nagoski [00:15:04] Yeah, some couples might want to skip right to.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:15:06] I think it's.

Emily Nagoski [00:15:07] Chapter 11 is the. So the book is as inclusive as I could possibly make it. But there is one chapter where I assume that the reader is in a heterosexual type of relationship. And that's specifically because the research has been really clear for the last couple of decades that people who are in heterosexual type relationships have. May have more frequent sex than people not in that kind of relationship, but it is lower quality. They kiss less. There's a lower variety of behaviors. There's less oral sex. There's fewer orgasms. So they have more frequent sex that they enjoy less. I am real worried about the Straits. So y'.

John Dehlin [00:15:43] All.

Emily Nagoski [00:15:43] Y' all get your own chapter. And chapter 10 is the Patriarchy for Everybody chapter. And then chapter 11 is the One that is like. So if you find yourself in this tricky situation where one person was raised to believe that they have a moral obligation to sacrifice their well being on the altar of other people's comfort and convenience, and the other person was trained to believe that they're entitled to anything the other person gives, and they are not allowed to need or want anything from anyone. And they're supposed to be competitive and ready to go at any moment. Those two scripts are entirely contradictory and lead to the kind of Facebook posts. So one of the reasons that's all in there is because my editor's boss read it and she is a single mom, but she's a member of her local, like, Facebook moms group for her neighborhood. And she was shocked that mostly that page is full of women saying how much they hate their husbands. And the cause of that is not because, like, the husbands are terrible human beings or the wives are terrible human beings, but because they are both so stuck in these scripts that they have been taught they're supposed to be following, that they cannot find their way back authentically to each other. The human beings they fell in love with

John Dehlin [00:17:16] love it.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:17:17] Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's. That's really good. And do you want to talk a little bit about repair work and what you have to say about it in the book?

Repair Work and Recognizing You Are Not Broken

Emily Nagoski [00:17:26] Yeah. So one of the first steps is to recognize that your partner is not the enemy, but you also are not the enemy. You are not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. Your partner is not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. It is the third thing it is these scripts, it is the lies you were told that are your mutual enemy. You don't have to construct it as like an enemy if you don't want to. You can construct it as like you were taught this lesson and now you get to make choices about what you want to keep and what you want to throw out and let rot. There's. I quote a poem. So John Green, in his book the Anthropocene reviewed, talks about this essay by Donald Hall, a poet who was married to another poet. And they live lived in upstate, middle of nowhere, New Hampshire. And their friends from New York City would come visit them in middle of nowhere, New Hampshire and say, this is a very beautiful place, but what do you do all day? And after his wife died, Donald hall wrote this really beautiful essay called the Third Thing, where he writes that they do not spend their days gazing into each other's eyes. You do that gazing during lovemaking or when one of you is in trouble. Mostly you turn your shared attention toward third things. For a lot of people, that third thing you turn your shared attention toward might be your kids, it might be your favorite artists, it might be, in their case, it is poetry itself. But you share your joint attention onto this thing that brings you pleasure. So one of the third things in your relationship can be this project of dismantling all these messages that you learned. You're already in the process of rejecting some of what you've been taught. So treat this as like your partner is your ally in this dismantling. And one of the harmful effects caused by all of the messages that you're rejecting is that it has absolutely interfered with your ability to find your way to your partner. And together you're going to dismantle that because it's a third thing. And also a third thing can be the construction, not just the dismantling of the bad stuff, but the co creation of an erotic connection that is authentic to who you are, authentic to who your partner is, and authentic to who you are as a unique partnership. You are peers who are collaborating to create something entirely authentic and unique to who you are. There are not actually any rules, except everybody involved has to be glad to be there and free to leave with no unwanted consequences.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:20:14] Yes. Do you want to say anything at this point?

John Dehlin [00:20:17] Yeah. Take turns?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:20:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:20:19] Or do you want to keep going?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:20:20] I'm giving you a turn.

John Dehlin [00:20:21] Do you want to keep going?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:20:22] Do you want to keep going consensually giving you a turn?

John Dehlin [00:20:24] No, but I don't want to stop a thread if you have a Follow.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:20:26] No. No.

John Dehlin [00:20:27] Okay.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:20:27] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:20:27] No. Okay. All right, so we'll just ping pong back and forth with some questions, if that's okay, Emily. So one. One question I have is around pornography and masturbation, obviously in high demand religions, pornography is forbidden. And then in maybe many Mormon contexts, it's usually when people come to me, it's the husband that sort of quote, gets caught masturbating. Although we know that women masturbate too. But. But more often than not stereotypically, the scenario that I see is sort of like the husband gets caught masturbating or looking at porn. The wife is mad. The wife feels like he cheated on her. The wife feels like, you know, like maybe this is grounds for ending the relationship or the marriage. The husband's in trouble and. And then there are all these breaches that have to be worked through with the husband feeling like he's in the doghouse and, you know, and then if all of a sudden one or both lose their faith, they still have all that conditioning. They still have all those conditioned beliefs and feelings. But now the religious lens has been taken away and they're kind of like figuring out, well, does that mean porn's okay? Does that mean masturbation is okay? You know, is it a don't ask, don't tell kind of thing?

Masturbation, Pornography, and Permission

Emily Nagoski [00:21:56] I'm going to interrupt briefly. Yes. Masturbation's okay if it's okay for your body, if you feel okay. Permission. Yeah, I had to interrupt that one thing.

John Dehlin [00:22:05] That's great. No, that's great. I think we wanted an outsider's view, realizing that a lot of these people come from mindsets where they're going to say, who's Emily Nagoski? She's not a prophet. She doesn't necessarily know what's right. And so there's an issue with even trusting external authority. And so, you know, with all that said, do you have thoughts on how you would navigate? Do you want to add anything to my scenario, Natasha?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:22:30] No, I think. I mean, I guess what I would add is that I think when I explain this to clients, I think that we come from what I call ownership model. Right. So I belong to you, you belong to me. This all sounds very romantic and a love song maybe, but when you really start thinking about the language of that, it's very territorial. And I think we do grow up in cultures where we are taught that in order for you to love me, you have to keep me sexually comfort. Which even goes back to some of the things you were talking about. Consent, with consent. When you said, oh, the idea would be that we can both be in this space, and at any point, anybody can leave the space without consequence. Right. And so. But there's a lot of consequences to feeling like this idea that if you love me, if you're loyal to me, if you're fidelitous to me, that means that you keep me sexually comfortable regardless of what's going on for you.

Emily Nagoski [00:23:25] That word. If. If you did, then you would. Right?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:23:28] Yes.

Emily Nagoski [00:23:28] Remember when I was talking about play? I said there was nothing at stake. No one had anything to lose. That means that if you're like, that was fun, and I'm done now, and you walk away, I haven't lost anything. There was nothing at stake. You're just done playing the game. And I might be like, oh, I wasn't done playing the game, but, you know, we'll play another game. Right. It's a totally different way of engaging with, like, the mental state that you're in when you approach an erotic situation. I don't. At all. Yeah. People. And the. And the. Your. You belong to me. That's. That's. I'm gonna go ahead and say the word slavery out loud. No one's body belongs to anybody else. There are very few, like, things that I say are absolutely required. One of the most important things in a sexual relationship or in a life that includes sexuality is basic bodily autonomy. Everybody gets to choose how and when they are touched, and they get to decide how they feel about their body. That's my personal definition of sex positivity. You get to decide how and when you are touched, and you get to decide how you feel about your body. I get to decide how and when I'm touched and how I feel about my body. And you get to decide how and when you are touched and how you feel about your body. And if some of the times that I don't want to be touched are times when you would like to touch me, like, that's a negotiation we get to have. But I'm not depriving you of anything that you're entitled to. Right. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:25:13] Absolutely. And you feel like. Can you confirm whether the scientific literature agrees with you that masturbation is healthy and normal?

Emily Nagoski [00:25:24] Oh, yeah. 100%.

John Dehlin [00:25:25] If there's anything it says about erotic. I know I saw some of your speeches about, like, feminist pornography or erotica? Ethical pornography?

Emily Nagoski [00:25:35] Ethical porn. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:36] Yeah. What would you say about the empirical literature on masturbation and ethical porn that exists?

Emily Nagoski [00:25:44] Masturbation first.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:25:47] Yeah.

Emily Nagoski [00:25:47] There just isn't any particular Harm associated with masturbation, as long as the person doesn't feel bad about it. The harm that can be caused by masturbation is that if you believe you're doing something wrong and you do it anyway and it makes you feel terrible, that's the harm that's associated with it. But if you're like, this is my body. I get to decide how and when I am touched, and I choose to touch my body in these ways, there's no harm associated with it, and there is a lot of opportunity for growth. You get to know what pleasure even feels like in your body. So that when your partner is touching you and part of your mind is distracted and worried about whether or not you're meeting your partner's needs and whether or not they're satisfied. When your partner touches you and says, do you like that because you have the experience of. Of feeling what pleasure feels like? You know the answer to that. You know the answer to that question. That's. It's so important.

John Dehlin [00:26:47] Got it. Beautiful.

Emily Nagoski [00:26:48] How are you ever going to talk to your partner about what you want and like if you don't know anything about what you want and like? And the porn part. There is such a thing as ethical porn. In fact, most of the harm caused by porn is caused in the production process. When performers are not granted this basic bodily autonomy and opportunities for protection and choice about what behaviors they engage in. It's more harmful to the people involved in the production, potentially than it is to people who are viewing it. When porn goes wrong in a viewer's life, it's generally because they are using it as a. I'm going to throw a technical term at you. It is a maladaptive strategy to manage negative affect, which means they are watching porn instead of coping with their stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, and repressed rage, which we've all got because it is so easy and comfortable to watch porn and experience sexual arousal. That is a more attractive option than actually feeling your uncomfortable feelings, and especially easier than talking with your partner about your uncomfortable feelings. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:28:06] That's great.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:28:07] Yes. And I would just clarify too with that, that you're using the word maladaptive. Because I do think that sometimes, whether it's porn or video games or playing with your kids or however we manage stress, it's a legitimate way to manage stress. Right. Like, when are we managing it so much through that one avenue that then we're.

Emily Nagoski [00:28:26] That you'd like that. You don't have adaptive strategies. You don't have skills in place besides I'm so, I am. I'm a don't be a hero person when it comes to negative affect. Like if you are super duper stressed out and sugar helps you feel better, you eat the sugar. If you have just been like parenting exhaustion out and disappearing into erotic fantasy just like, feels better. Yes, do that. It can't be the thing all the time. But I'm, I'm in favor of pleasure.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:29:01] Yes. Pleasure is the measure for sure. For sure. Do you want to add anything else about porn and masturbation before. Okay, all right. So.

Emily Nagoski [00:29:13] And they're not cheating. So whether or not they're cheating, people have feelings about that. But it is absolutely possible to be in a healthy, satisfying, long term, committed, monogamous sexual relationship and one or both partners masturbate solo. The experience of masturbating solo is an entirely different kind of sexual experience than having partnered sex. Sometimes you like, you just want to like, take a nap and that's a way to get to a nap real quick. Sometimes you just want to experience your own sensations without having to think about somebody else. Right there. It's. There is a framework to think about solar masturbation in a relationship as being a legitimate behavior that is in no way a betrayal of your partner.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:30:03] And I think that's a really important point. I don't think we have a lot of context for thinking of sexuality in any other way than by being partnered. And that's why it can feel like, well, if you've got energy for yourself, solo, in that space. And that means you're taking away from energy that could be spent with me.

Emily Nagoski [00:30:20] Absolutely right.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:30:21] When in reality, like in any other human behavior, most of us do a lot of things solo. It doesn't mean that we don't want to take away.

Emily Nagoski [00:30:28] I went over to my office and I closed the door door to eat my lunch by myself. Sometimes I just want to eat lunch by myself and not have to talk.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:30:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:39] One super quick follow up. Sometimes a compromise I see with progressive or post Mormon couples is that the husband has permission to masturbate, but he has to report when he does to the wife to let her know. And I know it can be the reverse as well, but in my case, again, it's normally the male, female, sort of. What do you think about this idea of reporting to your spouse accountability around masturbation?

Emily Nagoski [00:31:10] I love the idea of my partner telling me about his masturbation. It makes me really happy to know that he's experiencing that pleasure. It sounds like that's not the framework that People are bringing like, oh, did you really. Did you catch the come in your hand? Make sure you put that towel in the laundry, honey. Love you.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:31:33] Well, I think this goes back to your giver versus winner. You know, I think not only were we given the book of being givers as vulva owners, we were given the role of as caretakers, being the monitors of sexuality and making sure that not only our sons, but our husbands and everybody around us can make it to heaven.

Emily Nagoski [00:31:56] You know, you have to, like, make sure they're behaving themselves and we can't make them stumble. Right.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:32:01] Yeah. And how, from a feminist perspective, how does that totally screw us over? Right. Is the women that are playing these roles and how does that interfere with our erotic potential?

Emily Nagoski [00:32:14] I think when people need. When a wife needs her husband to, like, report in to be like, I masturbated, I think that's probably a situation that's not really going to play out successfully for very long because he's going to have feelings about, like, having to report, like, a child to his parent. Because, again, your peers in a relationship and your body is your body and you get to do what you want, and their body is their body, and they get to do what they want. So I'd be interested in knowing what is it that the wife feels she is gaining by knowing about the times when he masturbates? Like, does she feel out of control otherwise? Does she feel like it's a. It's a preventative, that he's going to do it less if he has to report back? Like, what's. What is it that she actually wants when she wants that information?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:33:18] Yeah. And I think you're hitting it right on the head. I think it is about control. I think everything in our Mormon culture about sexuality was controlled. And so even if we. We've stepped away from the belief system, we still have a lot of those processes. Right. That we're trying to deconstruct. And I think it feels very ambiguous and uncomfortable to not know everything that's happening.

Emily Nagoski [00:33:43] Yeah.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:33:44] In your sex brain or your sex life if I'm your partner. Right. But. And I think that's an entitlement as well, you know, that I, I am. I should be privy to everything that's happening for you sexually.

Emily Nagoski [00:33:58] Yeah. And so there's actually a researcher and therapist in Russia that I talked to when I was there a few years ago who was studying couples where either they did or they did not have at least one partner who believed that they ought to be a part of literally every aspect of their partner's lives. So, like you're saying, they feel like they need to know every single aspect of their sexual behavior and be involved in every sexual experience that they have and also every other domain of their life. And it's pretty clear in her research that the couples who felt like space was permitted, where, like, your partner is allowed to have aspects of their life that you're not directly involved in, were the ones who were more satisfied because there's an anx driving that need to be a part of every part of your partner's life.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:34:50] Yeah, yeah, no, I would agree with that. Anything else you want to say?

John Dehlin [00:34:54] No, that's good. Thank you.

Consent, Desire, and What You Want From Sex

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:34:56] So I'd like to delve a little bit deeper into consent and your ideas about consent. By the way, I loved your intro. It's like condoms, contraceptives, consent. Oh, my. This what immediately came to mind. But there is a huge. A huge issue, I would say, with, you know, there's the concepts of that we grew up with, that monogamy is the one and only way that this is the place where you're going to get all of your sexual needs met. Right. And this. And so therefore, there is a bit of entitlement, I think that's baked into the equation, like, you should give me your body. And although I don't know that we have as much of this as in Mormon land, as I've seen in, like, evangelical land, where it is, like, actually talked about very explicitly that it is the duty of the wife to meet her husband's needs. I think we see some of that in our culture as well, but not quite as explicit as I've seen in, like, when I've been in the Bible Belt. And so this sets up this dilemma where it's not about pleasure, like you say. Right. And it's about, you know, I now have to show up in a certain way. And I've talked to a lot of women who will even say, I never even got pressure from my husband. It's not like my husband was upset that I wasn't having sex with him, but I felt this inner kind of space where if I was going to be the good wife, if I was going to be wanted, if I was going to make sure he wasn't going to look at porn or have an affair or go outside of our marriage, it was. I did feel that internal message that it was my duty to keep him happy.

Emily Nagoski [00:36:30] Yeah. A lot of women have talked to me about the clock they have in their head about how long it's been. And they know that they should have sex again sooner. It will have been too long. Yeah. And all of that is. Are you going to be surprised when I tell you that it's grounded in a bunch of patriarchal lies?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:36:46] Yeah. No, I'm not going to be surprised.

Emily Nagoski [00:36:49] And this narrative is actually really close to the mainstream. It is not at all an extremist experience. It was only in 1990, the early 1990s, that finally, in all 50 states, it became mostly illegal to rape your wife. The idea before that was that when a woman says, I do, she's basically consenting to all the sex ever for the rest of her life. That, and under the law, for a very long time, her body became her husband's property, just as it was her father's property before that. Which is part of why when I hear, you belong to me, I belong to you. That language makes me. Makes me squick, Makes me feel icky. Because we come from a long history of women's bodies disappearing legally, becoming part of the property of the man, and he's allowed to do any. There's no such thing as sexually assaulting an object that you own.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:37:57] Yeah.

Emily Nagoski [00:37:58] So this is absolutely a part of people's consciousness that women owe men their bodies, and it's not true. One of the main things I find helpful in getting people to release this idea is to recognize that sex is not a biological drive. So a biological drive is an uncomfortable internal experience that you have that pushes you out. So you're a mammal. You get pushed out into the world to go meet a need because you have this uncomfortable feeling. So go meet the need. Like hunger, thirst, thermoregulation, even sleep is a drive. Right. And the consequence if you don't meet the need is you will literally die. Those are biological drives. Sex is not one of those. There are no physical consequences that happen to your health when you don't have access to sex. And what it is, is an incentive motivation system. Now, I am not delusional. I do know that we're going to keep saying sex drive, and we're not going to start saying sexual incentive motivation system instead. I know, but let's remember the difference in what we mean. An incentive motivation system is like curiosity. Instead of being pushed by an uncomfortable internal experience, we get pulled by an appealing external stimulus that makes us go, ooh, oh, what's that? We want to go explore and find out more. So the analogy here would be like if a person is starving and they steal a loaf of bread to save their life. We can kind of understand that if a person is just really curious or really very much wants to try somebody else's bread and so they steal it, that's something else. Right? We get that.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:39:50] Yeah. Yeah. No, I would agree with that. And I guess I would also maybe not push back, but just say, like, obviously we know that, well being. Mental health. Well being does have a lot to do with being kind of in a space where your sexuality.

Emily Nagoski [00:40:07] To answer your question, no, there literally just is no health risk. There's none. There's an ethologist in the 1950s named Frank Beach. The way he put it was, there is no tissue damage associated with lack of sex. There are no physical health consequences. But because men get raised with this script that says that they're not allowed to feel lonely, that is just not an emotion they have access to. What are you? Pussy? Sorry for the language, but, you know, what they are allowed to feel is horny. And so instead of approaching his partner and saying, you know, I've been feeling really isolated and alone in our relationship and I'd love to spend some time skin to skin with you, because that's going to settle my heart. It's going to make me feel connected with you in a really deep and healing way. Because connection is a biological drive. Bad things happen to people. Loneliness is the equivalent of a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. But sex is only one of the many, many ways that we can experience connection in a relationship. Alas, men have been lied to their whole lives that they're not allowed to express a need for connection through anything other than sex.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:41:19] Sex, Yes, I would totally agree with that. That's toxic masculinity. And why I get a little bit annoyed every time I hear a man saying, touch is my love language, and a woman telling me, you know, like, emotional connection is my love language. I'm like, well, I think you both need both of those things. But you've been socialized, I think, in a lot of ways to that, you know, if a woman has sex without emotional connection, she's considered a slut. So you can't have that. And if a man asks for connection without sex, then he's kind of weak or pussy, like, right? And so then you can't have that either. So I'm like, let's step back and kind of consider what. What might be behind some of these kind of ideas that you have about what connection is. But going back to your sense of. Of drive, I. I do see a legitimate concern when, you know, somebody is, you Know, maybe high drive, you know, whatever words we want to use, versus low drive and the, the implications of that going forward as far as wellness, and it's not necessarily just as much. I mean, I think connection is definitely something that I agree with you. But there is a legitimacy to people wanting sexual expression as well as far as creating a life of wellness. Right. And not just a life where you survive. Right. So.

Emily Nagoski [00:42:38] So there's so many things, so many things. The place to start is, so what is it that you want when you want sex? Let's take. So we have one high interest partner and a lower interest partner. Let's have both people tell us, what is it that they want when they want sex? People's off the top of their head answer tends to be orgasm. And 95% of people can have an orgasm on their own. So what is it that you want when you want sex with another person? Because the orgasm part you can probably get on your own. And if you can't, there's whole books and workshops just about the orgasm part. And people say things like they want connection and they want shared pleasure and they want to be wanted and they want to escape all of the demands and roles and identities and obligations that they have in their life and just pay attention to the pleasurable stuff that's happening right here in this moment. All of which are things that you can get through. Things other than sexual, though sex is a great way to get those things. And when people talk about what is it they don't want when they don't want sex, the single most common answer I've seen is a sense of obligation, of being required to have sex, to meet somebody else's needs when their needs don't matter. So I would love a couple to have a conversation. What is it that you want when you want sex? And when you've got a partner who's like a very high interest in sex sex, very interested in engaging sexually with their partner and the other partner's lower interest. What are behaviors that they can engage in where the higher interest partner can engage with a higher intensity in sexuality and the other partner, I don't know, can watch them masturbate and celebrate and be like, that was really entertaining. Thanks so much for sharing that with me. You're allowed to do anything you want. You can create any structure that works for everybody in the relationship. If you've decided this is a monogamous relationship and one partner's interest in sex is like they. So one of the people I talked to in researching the book is the highest sexual desire person I've ever met. She's a lesbian in Texas, and it took her a long time to realize that the best way to manage in her relationship was to make sure her partner knew there was always an open door and a welcome. That. But there was never any pressure, there was never any demand, there was never any expectation. Because as soon as you put pressure, demand, expectation, that's going to hit the brakes, that's going to shut things down, it's going to slow things down, it's going to make it even more difficult for the lower desire partner to be interested in having sex. But all of this is just about the desire part. And the desire is not actually the part that matters. It's the pleasure. If you like the sex you are having, you are doing it right, regardless of how often you have it. And if it means that 90% of the sexual outlet of the higher desire partner is them masturbating with or without their partner present. Okay. Do they like all that sex? And do they really, really enjoy the sex they have when they have sex with their partner? Fantastic. If you like the sex you're having, you're doing it right. Oh, and by the way, it's not a dysfunction not to want sex you don't like. Yeah,

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:46:08] well, and it's not a dysfunction to not want sex. Right, Right. So, I mean, you have the whole asexual community, the gray sexual community, and yeah, and. And there's. It's not a dysfunction to want sex.

Emily Nagoski [00:46:19] Right.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:46:19] Which, of course, these, both of these spectrums have been pathologized or by. By mental health, also by, of course, communities of, you know, church communities that will say it's either wrong to not want enough sex or to not, you know, or to not, not want sex at all. So, yeah. So I think you're touching on something I'd like to delve a little bit deeper on, which is this pursual withdrawal idea. You know, how people bring up a complaint. Right. Or a concern without initiating that pressure cooker. And I think that, especially in post religion, what I've seen, and you can tell me if you agree or not, is there's a big hypersensitivity to feeling controlled because we're coming from a high control space. Right. So I think sometimes it's hard for people to say, well, even you just bringing up that topic or even me negotiating with you at all or having some type of compromise is now me feeling back to that control model. So how do we help people, you know, like, settle into a Pendulum, you know, instead of going from one side to another on the pendulum swings settle in the middle somewhere.

Emily Nagoski [00:47:25] Yeah, talk about that first. Talk about that feeling of, like, even just having this conversation raises my defenses and like, I'm too activated to be able to have a reasonable conversation with you. Address that. Can you find strategies for having this conversation that feel less controlling? People who are neurodivergent may experience pathological Demand avoidance is the problematic name for it, where the more you have a demand or an expectation to do something, the less likely you are to do it. And the more you're told not to do something, the more you're going to do it. And it is a kind of anxiety management where your brain just gets so overloaded by the demand that it all of its resources are used up by the monitoring of whether or not they're doing the thing they are or are not supposed to be doing. And they have no resources left actually to do or prevent themselves from doing the thing they're supposed to do. That was complicated, but basically, the more pressure you put on, it's called the ironic process. The harder you try to do something, the less likely you are to be successful at doing it, and the harder you try not to do something, the more likely you are to do it. So have a conversation about, like, what is language we can use that doesn't activate all of that, that demand avoidance? What are ways that we can deconstruct the narratives in our head that tell us what we are supposed to do and what we aren't supposed to do? And how do I separate you, my beloved partner, from all those other voices that were telling me what I was supposed to do? You're not them. And when I hear your voice and it feels like them, what are strategies I can use to differentiate you from those voices? Does that make sense?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:49:38] Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Emily Nagoski [00:49:40] Even just saying when I. So when I heard you say that sentence, what I actually heard was all, like, the church leaders in my life, whoever said they this. And I know that's not where we're at, and I could use your help. Let's take a moment and vent our rage about how traumatizing and ridiculous it is that I got taught all these lies. And now in this relationship where I love you, part of my brain still thinks you're the one trying to control me.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:50:17] Yeah, no, that's great.

John Dehlin [00:50:19] That's great.

Emily Nagoski [00:50:20] Yes. This is all assuming that the partner is not the one trying to control you. And sometimes they are.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:50:28] Well, and I think that gets tricky too, right when do we decide that behavior is controlling versus request? And when do people.

Emily Nagoski [00:50:37] When you're allowed to say no.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:50:38] When you're allowed to say no without what?

Emily Nagoski [00:50:42] Without unwanted consequences, without bribery or shame or physical consequences, or being told you're a bad person or a failure as a spouse.

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:50:54] Yeah, well, this is. And I'm going to say one more thing and then I'd like to give John another opportunity to talk because I could talk to you all day. But we suck at differentiation, right? In our culture, we're a very enmeshed culture. We really value conformity. We really value being on the same page. We value not causing distress, not causing contention. In fact, you know, we have this phrase, it's like contentions of the devil or of Satan. And so when you said in your book, like, it's okay, it's better to have hurt feelings than to be coercive or to give into duty sex, I think that's something that our population struggles with, is hurting each other's feelings, like disappointing each other. This is something I usually say in my groups is like, you can tolerate disappointing each other. And when I say when is it controlling? Because if you say, yeah, no, I'm not really wanting to do that with you, that's not sounding pleasurable to me. Is it okay for me to have a reaction to that? Or do I need to be like the golden retriever? That's like, I don't care what you just said to me, I'm fine, Or can I be sad or disappointed? But that sadness and disappointment isn't necessarily controlling. What might be controlling is that now I'm giving you a three day silent treatment. Now I'm, you know, punishing you in some way. And then I think people sometimes struggle with knowing what's a feeling and what, where does my behavior become problematic?

Emily Nagoski [00:52:26] So there's only two ideas in the book that are so complicated. They needed two chapters for me to explain. One of them was the patriarchy, and the other one was emotions. Being able to identify what emotion you're experiencing and knowing how to, what gets you into that state and how to move out of that state and maybe even into a more desirable state. So let's say you're in a scenario when your partner's like, and I'm done. Like, I maybe like, they got triggered. Maybe something was painful, but they're like, I'm done. And the other partner is left like, but, but I would. And they, they have hurt feelings. Yes, it is so much better to have hurt feelings than to think that your partner went along with something that was painful for them, that was re traumatizing for them, or even just that was coerced and unwanted. It is so much less painful to have hurt feelings than to come to recognize that an experience you shared was actually unwanted and potentially traumatizing for the other person. Like, which difficult feeling would you rather live with?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:53:44] Yeah, agreed.

Emily Nagoski [00:53:47] And let's all make sure we're learning really strong skills for coping with uncomfortable feelings, especially the the most important thing we give and receive in relationships is turning toward each other's difficult feelings with kindness and compassion. And kindness is really difficult when you too have difficult feelings to manage. Because the whole thing with kindness is that it requires you to be nice to the person. And it is real hard to stay nice when you have, like, hurt inside you because you want your hurt to be managed kindly also. And there is no easy, simple solution. It's just like, one partner has to give a little bit, and then the other partner has to give a little bit more than that, and then the next partner gives a little bit more than that, and you reciprocate back and forth until you feel well enough to be able to turn toward each other with wholehearted kindness. Does that make sense?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:54:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:54:50] Love it.

Come Together and Characteristics of Lasting Sexual Connection

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:54:51] All right, what do you have?

John Dehlin [00:54:52] Okay, really quickly, I just want to take a second to plug this book. The book is Come Together the Science and Art of Creating Lasting sexual Connections by Dr. Emily Nagoski, New York Times bestselling author of both Come as yous Are and Quoth Their Burnout. It has a blurb by Glennon Doyle, who writes Emily Nadoski is a national treasure, helping us all understand how to finally build true, joyful, and confident sex lives. I'm going to just ask everybody right now to please go to Amazon and pause this episode or create a second tab and buy this book. We want as many of you as possible to buy this book. We want to support good scholarship and good public education about healthy sexuality. Emily is a national treasure because Glennon Doyle said so. Buy this gosh darn book right now and let's have Emily really happy with Mormon stories and Natasha that we sent her book to the moon. Okay.

Emily Nagoski [00:55:57] So generous. Can I give a special shout out to the audiobook? Like, if you're listening to this, you might be an audio person. And I did put, like, extra effort, especially because there's some, like, dark parts of the book to make it as playful. There's some silly music. I make silly voices. I really, I put my heart and soul into the audiobook this time I

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:56:15] listened to the audio version and you were delightful. I love it when the author actually reads their own book. So really brought out your personality for sure.

John Dehlin [00:56:26] So, Emily, my, you know, as I was looking at the book, you kind of bring up three main points. If a couple is saying, hey, we're in a funk, or we never really had anything that we were both really loving, but we want to make things better. You've got three main points that a couple can focus on in your book. Come together where they can do an evaluation and then maybe start to do some work. Are you comfortable sharing two things, what those three main points are? And, and if there are these couples saying, okay, Emily, give me a couple, give me a couple sort of next steps for each of those three points? Do you even have any. A practical next step or two for each of those three points? Is that, is that too big of a question?

Emily Nagoski [00:57:13] No, I think I can do. I think I can do it. So the three characteristics of couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term, we're talking about. Yeah, step one, and this has been more controversial since the book came out than I ever expected. First characteristic of couples who sustain strong sexual connections over the long term, they are friends who admire and trust each other. Do you like this person?

Natasha Helfer Parker [00:57:39] Do you like this person that you're going to get?

Emily Nagoski [00:57:41] It does help.

John Dehlin [00:57:42] And Emily, that's hard because so many Mormons get married because they, like, fill each other's checkboxes. It's like, wait, is he returned missionary? You know, is he a righteous priesthood holder? Will he take me to the temple and honor his covenants? And the man will be like, is she hot? Will she be a good mom? But hot in terms of appearance? Like, do they meet the checkboxes? Will he be a good provider? And they've never lived together. They even haven't probably sexually experimented much. So like many. And you can get so caught up in living the Mormon plan that you actually never develop a meaningful friendship. And so it's not a given that a progressive or a post Mormon couple are actually great friends.

Emily Nagoski [00:58:25] Yeah, that's, that's not just in religious communities. That is just out in the cisgender heterosexual world. People have absolutely been taught that it's not possible to be friends with a person you're sexually attracted to and you marry the person you're sexually attracted to and it's. You sort of by default can't be friends with them. And I'm here to say the couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term are friends. They admire each other, they like each other. When they see their partner walking around at a party talking to other people, they feel proud that they're connected to that person.

John Dehlin [00:59:02] Okay, and so this is going to sound weird. Do you have a tip or two for how a couple can become friends when they may be in 20 years into their marriage with multiple kids and they're like. Or is that something you really go into too?

Emily Nagoski [00:59:17] Yeah. So to make. I don't actually go deeply into it in the book, but making friends is about play. And how about we have it be non sexual play. Don't try to just have big deep conversations right away. Engage in joyful behaviors that you both play freaking board games. Get to know each other that way. Make up word games. Do you do the wordle every day? Talk about that. Like play with each other and learn that you like each other because you enjoy spending time together. Does that make sense? You start so gentle, just like little bits and pieces of like. Because you have sort of a basic shared moral foundation, even if that foundation is shifting. You have a lot in common. But do you enjoy spending time together? Do the things you enjoy with that perk? Go bowling? Do you like each other? Do you have fun when you bowl? Or is this person kind of a jerk when they're bowling? Make friends the way you make friends. Two. Oh. So that was, that was basically my tip for getting started. Making friends. And you honestly, like, that's, honestly, I can't help you if you don't like the person.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:00:37] Yeah.

Emily Nagoski [01:00:37] And how important it is.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:00:39] I think you say that it's not like every relationship needs to stay together. And that's not really the goal either. But I do think that there are things that people can try to begin a really deeper friendship. And one of the things we hear a lot as people transition is that one of the things of the gifts of the Mormon faith crisis is that now they can delve into a more intimate, more, you know, let's really figure out who we are, not just who we were supposed to be. And that process can lean into a friendship or a regard that wasn't there necessarily prior.

Emily Nagoski [01:01:16] Yeah, you been through something together. And that actually in the sociology research, you can take people who are enemies, people, I mean, like racists and people of color. And you can. This is, this is a thing they do experimentally. This is not a thing I'm suggesting we do in real life. But by creating a problem that the research participants can only solve by collaborating, you can get everybody to like each other just because they had to collaborate to solve a problem. So the fact of you collaborating to solve the problem of like if you got kids, raising those kids together, if you're trying to fix your sex life, trying to fix your sex life together, if you're trying to figure out what's true and who God is to you, doing that together, when you collaborate to solve a problem, it's inherently building that connection.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:02:06] Perfect. All right, so we're going to go to topic two, right?

Emily Nagoski [01:02:11] Characteristic number two of couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term. The first one is that they are friends who like and admire each other and they trust and admire each other. And the second is that they prioritize sex. They decide that it matters for their relationship, that they, let's face it, stop doing all the million other things they could be doing and cordon off space, time and energy just to do this very silly thing that we humans do of like rolling around naked and licking each other's body parts. They decide that it contributes something really valuable to their relationship when they protect time, space and energy to connect in that way. And that does not mean that these couples always are connecting in that way. It is normal for there to be times when sex drops off the priority list. When you've got like brand new humans in your house, when your parents are sick, when you are finishing a degree, when you're house training a puppy. Right? It can, anything can knock it off the priority list. But because it they know that it contributes something really valuable to their relationship, they are motivated to find their way back to each other. That's those questions. What is it that I want when I want sex? And what is it that I like when I like sex? What is it that I don't want when I don't want sex? And what is it that I don't like when I don't like sex? For really important questions.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:03:35] I love that and I totally agree with that. I think one of the myths that you really best in this book, and you talk about intentionality quite a bit, is this idea that sex is just supposed to happen organically or naturally or spontaneously. And I'm like, like, I tell this to my clients all the time. The only thing I know that's happening organically is whatever's happening in the compost in my backyard that's organic. Anything that we care about, we have to stick some intention to. Right? And I'm like, I'm busy.

Emily Nagoski [01:04:04] Are you busy?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:04:06] Yeah. Oh, I'm super busy.

Emily Nagoski [01:04:07] If it's not in my calendar, it's not going to happen. And the people who feel like it's not romantic to schedule sex, like, if my partner is willing to block off time where nothing else is going to happen, he is not going to allow anything to interfere with this time being spent with us rolling around like puppies. Like that is the most romantic thing I can think of right now.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:04:33] I love that. Yeah. It's so powerful to reframe things. Right. And think about them differently.

Emily Nagoski [01:04:39] I have the benefit that, like, I would be looking forward to that sex because I like the sex that we have. Have. Again, if you don't like the sex, lack of desire is not your problem. Scheduling is not your problem. Absence of pleasure is your problem. Fix that part first.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:04:56] Yeah, right. All right. And then three.

Emily Nagoski [01:05:00] Right. And then the third first character, the spaced repetitions, how you learn things. One, couples who sustain a strong connection are friends who admire and trust each other. Two, they prioritize sex. And the third one, and I admit this is the most difficult one, is that they decide they're not going to follow other people's rules about, about who they're supposed to be as sexual people and what their sexual connection is supposed to look like. They co create an authentic, unique sexual connection within a context of their relationship that makes it easier for their brains to access pleasure.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:05:34] I love this so much. I mean, it's. It's like getting to decide, right. What is successful sex going to look like for us? Not what the movies are showing us, not what the romance novels are showing us, not what porn is showing us. Right. It's like we get to decide. And again, back to the heterosexuals who are struggling the most at this.

Emily Nagoski [01:05:55] Not that it's easy necessarily for, for LGBTQIA2 couples, they struggle also in their ways. But, but it is worse for straight couples.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:06:03] Yeah. Because what, what have we been taught is successful sex? Well, a penis goes into a vagina and somebody has an erection and somebody has an. Or, you know, both are supposed to have an orgasm. And, and, and that. That's it. And you're supposed to look a certain way or act a certain way. And gosh, sexuality can be so much more diverse than that.

Emily Nagoski [01:06:22] Yeah. And one of the ways that I have found people become more willing to let go of those like shoulds as we sex educators day stop shoulding on yourself is if I point out. So this, the whole idea of a long term relationship, this whole till death do we do us part situation, is that like, you get to grow old with the person and Your bodies are going to change and how your body's function are going to change and how your body's look is going to change. And to think what a gift it is to be able to witness those changes in your partner and to allow your partner to witness those changes in you and to be ashamed of those changes or to view those changes as being broken or having a problem when really it's just, just. I mean, the people, the ones who get old are the lucky ones. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get slightly serious here. While I was two weeks away from the book deadline, a good friend of mine died of cancer. She was right around my age, mid-40s, and she had married her wife just a couple months after I married my husband. And here they had already had their till death do us part. And I was writing a book about sex in long term relationships. And it's not like I didn't already know that we don't get to control the limit of how long our long term relationship is. But it was this visceral reminder that we are not promised a long time with the people we care about. We are only promised change. And it is the way that we manage the change together that characterizes the quality of our relationship. So it's not about having hot sex on the reg. It is about turning toward what's happening in the evolving shared life that we have with curiosity and compassion and kindness and a desire to know better, the inside of the mind of that other person and to be known by that person, to collaborate, to make pleasure more available.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:08:44] That's beautiful.

John Dehlin [01:08:45] Yeah, thank you.

Non-Monogamy, Polyamory, and Relationship Structures

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:08:47] Yeah. One last question that I'll share and then if you have anything else, please share. So this is kind of going on a tangent. We have in Mormon culture what Carolyn Pearson has as dubbed the ghost of polygamy. Right. So that, that's, that's something that we have in our history. And I also, so I think that plays a role, but I see a lot of interest in post Mormon kind of sexual journeys to wonder, well, is opening up our marriage and a viable option to deal with some of these things, right? Like the what if syndrome. And you know, when we've only had sex with one person in our lives and we never got that opportunity to explore, or maybe we're even been questioning our orientation or our gender identity. And you know, I've been living with biracial my whole life and I'd like to explore something different. And I, I'm very affirming. I'm, I'm, I'm super affirming of non monogamy. I think it's a wonderful option to consider. I also just notice it's a trend, you know, that a lot of people are wondering about. And I'm not sure it's always going to have the effects that they expect or want when they're considering those options. So I would just love to. You know, you mentioned non monogamy in the book a bit. There's a couple of examples of people who are non monogamous and polyamorous in their, in the, the vignettes. Right. That you share.

Emily Nagoski [01:10:13] Yeah.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:10:13] Any thoughts about, you know, like, I think non monogamy is great. At the same time, is it the answer, right, to some of these concerns that people have have?

Emily Nagoski [01:10:23] Non monogamy can be great. And non monogamy is not for everyone. The slightly silly way that I talk about it is that if you've got two people, you've got person A's feelings and person B's feelings. And then you've got person A's feelings about person B's feelings and person B's feelings about person A's feelings. And if you add a third person, you've got person C's feelings and person C's feelings about person A's feelings and person C's feelings about person B's feelings and person A's feelings about person C's feelings and person B's feelings about person C's feelings. But then you also have person A's feelings about person B's feelings about person C's feelings and person B's feelings about person A's feelings about person C's feelings and person A's feelings about person C's feelings about person A's feelings, person C's feelings about person A's feelings about person B's feelings and person C's feelings about person B's feelings about person A's feelings. It is multiplicatively more complex to be in a polyamorous relationship. If your communication skills are already really strong, if your trust and admiration is really strong, if your clarity of communication is already great, then in particular, like, I love the example of like, we just like never had the opportunity to try different kinds of sex. And we want to be here for each other and supportive of each other's exploration and learning more stuff. And we're ready to deal with the feelings that come with that, then yeah. And if you can't talk about each other's masturbation, solo masturbation in a way where you're not like, did you catch the ejaculate in your hand?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:12:00] Cool.

Emily Nagoski [01:12:00] Make sure that she goes into the laundry. Love you, honey. If you're not there, polyamory is not the next step for you. Does that make sense?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:12:11] Yeah. Right. Like, I think having realistic expectations and I think a lot of times what I see in our culture is that we come from task driven, goal oriented, productivity centered models. And. And when we approach Mormonism, is capitalism also. Yeah. Then capitalistic. And, you know, so we're producing results and we're blessed if we're good monetarily, all that stuff.

Emily Nagoski [01:12:37] We're blessed if we're good. I didn't know about that part. The. What I didn't know about we're blessed monetarily.

John Dehlin [01:12:44] The prosperity gospel kind of stuff.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:12:45] Yeah.

Emily Nagoski [01:12:46] I didn't know that was part of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:12:48] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Emily Nagoski [01:12:50] Great.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:12:50] Yeah. Like, if you do really good in life, then you should have wealth. Right.

John Dehlin [01:12:54] If you're blessed, the Lord blesses you with wealth if you're righteous.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:12:58] So, yeah, so there's a lot of stuff like that. But so we carry these very goal centric, productivity centric processes with us. And then when you tie that to sex, that I think goes against pleasure, right? Yeah,

John Dehlin [01:13:16] Yeah.

Emily Nagoski [01:13:17] I have actually read there was a sex educator who was trying to tie masturbation to productivity, encouraging people to masturbate to encourage their. Increase their productivity. And I was like, wow, that's cool. Okay. And that's the opposite of the point. I would like us all to, like, spend a whole lot more time enjoying all of the pleasurable sensations that are the birthright of being born in our human bodies. You only get one, right? Your. Your body is the only thing that you have with you on the day you're born that you still have with you on the day you die. And all of the sensations it can experience are your birthright to experience. That includes the deliciousness of food and the delights of human touch, whether it is through play or adventure or sexuality. And what I would like people to produce is joy and memories and people who remember them as being people with whom they could laugh and play. Was that too, like, corny hokey?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:14:26] Is that too corny, John?

John Dehlin [01:14:28] Not for Mormons.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:14:32] We're the corniest.

John Dehlin [01:14:34] We're Donny. This is Donny Osmond territory.

Emily Nagoski [01:14:36] Super.

John Dehlin [01:14:37] Check out Donnie Marie here. Emily.

Emily Nagoski [01:14:39] You know, I could sing the entire thing of Joseph and the Amazing Technical Dreamcoat right now if you wanted me to.

John Dehlin [01:14:45] Let's do a duet. Which song do you want to do?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:14:47] Don't get him started.

Emily Nagoski [01:14:48] Seven years of bumper crops were on their way Years of palenty I'm gonna

John Dehlin [01:14:53] stop because of copyright Close every door to me Hide all the window from

Emily Nagoski [01:15:01] me Bore all my windows and shut

John Dehlin [01:15:06] out, shut out the window do what you want with me. Hey, it's. This might be. This might apply. This song might apply.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:15:18] Do what you want with me don't turn me on, John. Okay, so the.

Emily Nagoski [01:15:23] Hey, what about my singing?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:15:25] Okay, fine. Emily, you too. I get all titillated. So, yeah, so I think. What else do you have? What other questions?

John Dehlin [01:15:37] Because, so, so on the. On the non monogamy thing, and I think this is asking you to repeat something you already said. The and Natasha will have more experience with this topic than me. Like a lot of couples, it's like we're in a midlife crisis. We never got that experimentation. We're not getting along. We've got this patriarchy trauma we're dealing with. We're feeling bored. We want to experiment. Maybe our communication isn't great because our whole life has imploded. I mean, what I'm hearing you say is if you're dealing with the midlife crisis and a major faith crisis and patriarchy trauma and whatever else people bring, because abuse is very common, child abuse. You know, there's a lot of trauma in these high demand religions. What I'm kind of hearing you say is because most couples, especially if they're within the first few years of their faith crisis, have way too much to deal with to add non monogamy as another factor. And I'll just add, and Natasha and I have talked about this before, there's the stereotype that some people try non monogamy as the last step before divorce because they're kind of desperate. And what I'm hearing you say is most people should probably only even consider non monogamy if things are just super good. They're both really communicating well. They're both loving their relationship and they just want to try something additional because they're already. They're already operating on the A level plane. Am I hearing you right?

Emily Nagoski [01:17:13] Broadly, I would say yes. People vary tremendously. For some people, non monogamy is like a sexual orientation. It's part of their identity. And once they consider the possibility, they truly can't imagine only loving one person at a time. And if those. If those folks are in this situation of liberating themselves from rigid, hierarchical monogamous structures, they're going to have a different kind of path than someone who's like, I just Like, I never had a chance to try anything else. And I would love it if you, my spouse, could be the safe base from which I went and explored. You want that safe base there, though? Unless you are willing to have this relationship not be your primary relationship. There are two great books by the same author. The first one is Polysecure, and I would say that's like the basics for beginners. It's about polyamory and attachment theory. Poly Secure. Jessica Fern is the name of the author and her second book is Polly Wise, which is a little bit more like Ed Advanced for folks who have been exploring open relationships and consensual non monogamy. One of my favorite things about the book, though, is that they are very clear. They say over and over, look, consensual non monogamy is not for everyone. Not even for everyone who reads a book about consensual non monogamy. So don't feel like you're committing to anything just by reading a couple of good, well informed books and seeing what people say about it.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:18:51] Yeah. And I just want to clarify for the audience too that, you know, polyamory is a form of ethical non monogamy. There are people who are not as interested in sharing feelings, but still wanting, you know, sexual experiences. And.

Emily Nagoski [01:19:03] Oh, yeah, if you just want the sex and you're not ready for the feelings, stick with swinging.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:19:08] Yeah. Right. Which I think is pretty popular in post Mormonism as a way to meet some of these needs of exploration. Right. And like, I can now say I've had more than one sexual partner. And. Yeah. And I've seen that actually be very bonding for a lot of couples. But it can also, I think people can be unprepared for, you know. Yeah, the, the feelings that come with that. Especially when we come from such a monogamous, privileged space and we've been taught that we should be, you know, like territory. I mean, every good country song about a breakup is I'm gonna kill you if you steal my man or steal my woman. Right. And so. So we just come from a lot of social spaces where we don't have the skills to necessarily deal with just pretty typical feelings like jealousy or insecurity or comparisons that come up, which are

Emily Nagoski [01:19:55] normal emotions that people in all kinds of relationship configurations continue to experience. Non monogamy is not about never feeling jealousy. It's about knowing how to manage the jealousy within the context of the relationships that you've agreed to.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:20:13] Agreed. Okay. Well, I think that was an important topic to kind of COVID because it is something that comes up quite often. Let's see. We're kind of wrapping up. So do you have any final questions?

Healing From Sexual Trauma and Shame

John Dehlin [01:20:26] So one, I don't know. I'm looking at some of the comments made by our livestream bombadilla. 2 asked, what are your recommendations for repression, trauma, parentheses. Most of us have it.

Emily Nagoski [01:20:41] Yeah. Yes. A whole lot of people, Trauma, neglect, it's. Instead of it being condoms, contraception and consent, oh my. It's trauma, neglect and abuse. Oh my. And a very large proportion of people are walking around with some combination of trauma, neglect, and abuse in their bodies. And there are whole books about healing from sexual trauma. The good news is that people heal from sexual trauma all the time. It is a gradual process, but people can reclaim their sexual bodies and build a loving relationship with their own sexual body and with partners whom they choose. I. So I know that that healing absolutely happens and I know that it takes time and it will result in changes to your sexuality that you were not expecting. And I have actually found it really valuable. In addition to like all of the evidence based things, the therapy and, you know, if you do EMDR or body based therapies or freaking fracking yoga. Every sexual memoir of a woman who has reclaimed her sexual body has the turning point of when she begins practicing yoga. But I also recommend noticing the stories that capture your imagination, like the stories that you return to over and over again, because they are probably a metaphor for the trauma that's happening in your body. And by staying with the story and watching it or reading it or listening to it over and over, you are helping to heal those wounds. My example is Moana. Spoilers for Moana, the Disney movie from 2016. Moana is a princess. She's called by the ocean to cross the horizon, find the demigod Maui, and restore the heart of Te Fiti. I promise I am answering a question about trauma right now. And she when you do Jungian story or dream analysis, every part of the story or the dream is a part of the main character. So it's a part of Moana or a part of you, the viewer, or of me, the viewer. So when Moana is confronting her last worst enemy, it's Te K the lava monster. And Te K the lava monster, is throwing balls of lava at her. Moana's job is to restore the heart of Te Fiti, which is the glowing green stone that has a swirl in the center of it. And because Moana's superpower is to notice things that are below the surface, Moana notices a swirl in the center of the chest of Te K, the lava monster that matches the swirl on the stone. And so, instead of fighting her worst enemy, the most hurt and angry part of herself, she says to the ocean, let her come to me. And the ocean parts and the lava monster crawls up to her. And Moana sings. I have crossed the horizon to find you. I know your name. They have stolen the heart from inside you, but this does not define you. This is the definition of trauma. They have stolen the heart from inside you, but this does not define you. This is not who you are. This is a trauma survivor confronting the most hurt and angry part of herself and sending of trying to oppress it or suppress it or fight it or conquer it. She turns toward it with courage and kindness and compassion and puts her forehead against the forehead of the lava monster and puts the heart of Te Fiti into the swirl at the center of the monster's chest. And the lava rock drops away, revealing Te K, the goddess of life and abundance. Because when you turn with kindness and compassion toward the most difficult part of your own inner V, you know that inner critic, the one who beats the crap out of you because of tiny mistakes that you make when you turn with kindness and compassion toward that part of you, you transition it into your most abundant source of joy and life, Moana. And that is why I, as a 40 something woman, sit in the theater four times in a row with tears dripping into my snack. Because this story is why I will take the ring to Mordor, though I do not know the way. That's waking up with trauma and carrying it and healing it every day. I can't carry the ring, but I can carry Frodo. Samwise Gamgee is the best co survivor in all of literature, and that is why we love him. All of these stories ultimately are about how we find our way to healing. I hope that's helpful.

John Dehlin [01:25:40] Should we do it just a. Yeah.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:25:43] No, it's beautiful.

John Dehlin [01:25:44] Really quickly, I'm going to plug the book one more time. It's come together by Emily. Dr. Emily Nagoski. The Science and Art of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections. Natasha, how do you want to close today?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:25:55] Well, I love. I love where we're headed. I love that this trauma question was asked because you do talk about shame in the book, you know, and if anything, I think most of us in post Mormonism would agree is that we are dealing with the remnants of old shame and old stories and about what sexuality meant for us and what we were told it should mean, and reclaiming that and you know, like, healing from that is an ongoing process. And I love how you talk in the book that woundedness is something we revisit. It's not something that just goes away. It's an ongoing cycle of healing. I love how you talk about magic and stories as part of the healing journey. Yes. I think this is where I kind of want to end, is letting you share a few more thoughts about. About a spiritual practice of hope and pleasure. I mean, those words to me, when you said you practice hope and pleasure as a spiritual practice, that was really touching for me.

Emily Nagoski [01:26:52] Yeah. So one, when you're in shame, in terms of the emotional floor plan, that takes me two chapters to explain, that is the panic grief space. The cure when you're in the panic grief space is connection. When you feel shame, shame. The cure is connection. It is sharing it. Insert Brene Brown here. It is connection. It is shame does not survive in the sunlight. So step number one, two. There is a reason why our stories are full of magic. It is because we, the survivors, are full of magic. There is nothing. The reason we turn to the stories is because there's nothing in our real life that can capture. Because in real life, when you heal from trauma, what do you do? You go to therapy and you do your breath practices and you do your yoga and you try to build healthful relationships. And it on the inside, you are slaying dragons, you are befriending lava monsters. You are turning into a red panda when your hormones change. That's what it feels like. There is nothing in real life that can represent what healing from trauma feels like on the inside. Stories are full of magic because survivors are full of magic. And in my house, as I say at the end, my friend Anna who died used to say, queer joy matters, stay safe, practice hope. And so in. In my house, we practice hope and we practice pleasure. Because I think household by household, if we can center pleasure in our lives and hope among friends whom we admire and trust, we build household by household, the kind of world that is resistant to the controlling forces that would have us hide away rather than celebrate in the sunshine.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:29:03] I love that. That's so beautiful. I just. I want to thank you again for spending your time with us today. I feel I've always felt like such a call to bring expertise and knowledge and further light and knowledge. How about that? Further light and knowledge to my community that I love, you know, and whether that was the believing people or the post Mormon people, which I've always served in my practice, I just think that Having people like you be willing to spend time with us is just so wonderful, so healing, and you give us so many options to think about. So I can't thank you enough for your time and your expertise and this amazing work that you've produced.

Emily Nagoski [01:29:43] It's my favorite thing to do. Thank you so much for letting me talk about my very favorite thing in the world.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:29:50] Yes, for sure. Any last thoughts from you?

John Dehlin [01:29:52] Just buy this book, please. Please buy this book. There is an audiobook. Go to Amazon right now. Let's reward our scholars and educators and reward yourself by having the best sex that you like to have. Is that the right way to say it, Emily?

Emily Nagoski [01:30:10] Yeah. Yeah. My goal in life is to help people have better sex lives. Like, and let me say that writing this book absolutely had the same impact on my sex life as writing come as you are had, which is, it made it way worse. Like, it just disappeared for months at a time. Time. But the good news is that once I had finished writing it, I now have this, like, hundred thousand word tome of how to repair my sexual connection. And we've been following my own advice. And this time, like, things are better now than they've been in all of our 13 years together.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:30:42] Oh, that's beautiful. Well, we wish you the very best, Emily, and hopefully I'll see you at another ASEC conference someday soon.

Emily Nagoski [01:30:48] Yeah. This year.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:30:51] Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:30:52] Thanks, Emily.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:30:53] Take care.

John Dehlin [01:30:54] Thanks so much.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:30:55] You take care.

John Dehlin [01:30:56] Stay in touch. And thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. Natasha, how do people find your good stuff? And if they want to hire you or one of your affiliates to be a therapist or a coach, how do they do that?

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:31:09] Yeah. Natashahelford.com is my personal website. Simcounseling.com is where you can come look at our provider services. We do everything from trauma work to faith transition work to mixed faith marriages to ketamine treatments to health help with trauma. We are all about it. So we're all about the healing journey and we want to help you find your best path forward. So thanks, John.

John Dehlin [01:31:33] All right. And thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories. If you value this content and want to see it continue, we rely on your donations to support us. So thanks to everyone who donates and is a monthly donor or an annual donor. If we lose about 20 recurring donors a month, people lose interest, move on, fall on financial hard times or whatever. We need new people to step up to replace the people who cancel. So if you value this content, want to see, continue, want to pay it forward, please go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor, and we'll keep creating this great content. Natasha, thanks for bringing this to Mormon Stories. Let's do something again soon.

Natasha Helfer Parker [01:32:10] Let's do it. I love collaborating with you, so thank you, John. Thank you, Mormon Stories listeners.

John Dehlin [01:32:14] You guys take care. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Bye, everybody.

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