As we work to change the purity narrative and undo many of its effects, we have to look at some of the continued harm it does to marriages. There’s still so much missing in the way Christian couples are taught about marital intimacy.
How can Christians celebrate the gift of sex that God gave in marriage?
Juli shared a conversation she had with Dr. Doug Rosenau, where he shared both what is missing and what is needed in the church when it comes to talking about the beauty of sex in marriage.
Prefer to listen? You can also listen to the full conversation here.
Juli (00:01.774)
Hey friend, welcome to Java with Juli hosted by me, Juli Slattery. This is a listener-supported podcast. It’s an outreach of Authentic Intimacy, which is a ministry helping people make sense of God and sexuality. Last week, we talked quite a bit about purity culture and the ways that it has actually undermined biblical sexuality and the faith of so many, especially women. We thought we needed to continue that conversation. And so what you’re going to hear today is a conversation that was part of a series of interviews that I had with experts to train and equip ministry leaders who want to improve their understanding of Christian sexuality. This conversation was recorded a few years ago with my friend Dr. Doug Rosenau, who was a well-recognized author and expert on Christian sexuality. He sadly passed away, but our conversation contains just invaluable information for the church and for ministry leaders who are seeking to move beyond a purity culture kind of narrative and sexuality and to really help married couples embrace the beauty of God’s design. So let’s get into my conversation with the late Dr. Doug Rosenau.
Juli
Doug, I’m assuming that a lot of people will know your name just because you have been in this field of Christian sexuality for decades now. You are one of the trailblazers of these conversations, and have written a number of just super helpful books, including “A Celebration of Sex” and “Soul Virgins” and “A Celebration of Sex After 50” and on and on and on. You’re still writing, you actually are just finishing up a book on singleness and sexuality. How many books have you written?
Doug
I think about six. My very first one was “Slaying the Marriage Dragons” and it’s out of print and I thought I might resurrect it at some point because that’s always been a goal is to help marriages.
Juli (01:55.586)
Yeah, awesome. There are some people who don’t know your name, and so I’m happy to introduce you to them. Not only are you an incredible author, but you’ve been doing therapy with single and married Christians for, again, decades, and you also are part of the Institute for Sexual Homelessness. Did I get the name right? Right. Okay. Can you describe what that is?
Doug
Well, Sexual Wholeness is a Christian nonprofit that’s a training organization. So we work to recruit and then train and certify Christian sex educators and Christian sex therapists. And the sex education part, we’re still evolving and we’re hoping to get that up and running even more over the next year or two.
Juli
Yes.
Doug
Sexual Wholeness is a training organization. Our vision is to cultivate God’s truth about sexuality.
Juli
Yeah, and there is a lot of work to do. And so there are even people that are part of this website, part of this event that would say, hey, that’s me. Like I want to follow up and I want to be further trained. And so the Institute for Sexual Homelessness is a wonderful place to start. And so we’ll have links to how people can connect with you.
Juli (03:14.806)
But the purpose of this conversation is, you know, you and I have, over the last year, had many conversations for the Java with Juli podcast, and we’ll be doing some teaching together in the future. But today we’re going to focus specifically on helping Christian leaders have the right perspective of sex in marriage. So why don’t we start out with what are some of the ways that traditionally the Church has had the wrong perspective about sex in marriage?
Doug
Well, maybe there’s a couple of things, Juli, that I would comment on, the Church and sex and marriage. I would say the biggest fault I have or frustration is that the Church often talks about setting boundaries in what we don’t do, but they oftentimes don’t do a good job of ‘How do we celebrate this gift that God gave us in marriage? And how do we enjoy and create communication and conversations and just a lovemaking that’s rich and meaningful and fun?’. So I think that would be one thing is, I don’t think the Church has really worked at celebrating. It’s more worked at, be careful, don’t commit adultery, don’t have sex till you’re married. And sometimes in the midst of that, it almost makes sex suspect. So that would be one thing. And then I think another thing is sometimes there’s just simplistic teaching.
I know that becoming one flesh is a mystery, but sometimes I wish the Church could have been, and we, you and me in our writing are just more practical in talking about, well, so you guys want a little more adventure, a little more variety. Here’s some natural aphrodisiacs, or here’s some things that you could do, so I think Church leaders, if they’d encourage more sex-positive conversations and then be willing in those conversations to recommend resources or to just do some education around, you may be, because you’re not talking to each other, or maybe haven’t read much, your sex life is a little dull. And Jesus would like you to bless you with a lot more.
Juli (05:15.054)
Yeah, and some of it is even having a theology of why Jesus would like to bless you with a lot more. I think fleshing out the why. I know that was a big part of just my journey individually was understanding that actually God is not honored when we hold back in the marriage bed, when we’re restrained or we still are carrying shame or that sense of, well, I’m not sure this is really good, that that is more the work of the enemy than it is the work of God. Has that been your experience that a lot of couples still have that feeling like there’s something wrong with enjoying sex?
Doug
Yes, like one of my clients was saying to me, ‘You know, Doug, I enjoy my femininity and I really turn my husband on’, but she said, ‘I’m just afraid sometimes I’m being too seductive’. So I was trying to explore how seduction wasn’t Christian, was somehow secular and worldly and Satan would somehow jump in if she was seductive. Cause I was thinking, ‘Friend, you have a feminine power God gave you to turn on your heterosexual husband’. But yes, I get things like that where I’m thinking, let’s give permission better.
Juli
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, part of, I think the simplistic message of sex in the Church to married couples has been the assumption that it’s going to be easy, that once you get to that wedding night, maybe you’ll have some awkwardness to work through in the beginning of your marriage, especially if you haven’t had sex before you got married. But it’s pretty much like smooth sailing from there.
Juli (06:57.838)
And I don’t feel like we really equip couples with the reality that there may be some really significant barriers. And Doug, I feel like this is more and more common today as people are getting married with more sexual trauma and baggage that they’re bringing into their sex life. How can Christian leaders, including pastors and counselors, set the stage for expecting some challenges, but then also the resources to know how to address those challenges?
Doug
Part of addressing it — you’re right, Juli — I think some of it may be that they will need even some counseling around some of the trauma to work it through, to really be able to be uninhibited and get beyond shame and guilt. And so I agree with you that’s some of the trauma, but there’s so many in this sexualized culture, even like porn and other things, sometimes they’re getting their education from very, I mean, ineffective, unreliable sources. So I think maybe one of the things Christian leaders could do, and I know we’re not trying to be self-promoting, but is just to help people find a better theology. And there’s more and more good books written now around differing baggage that they may bring in, whether it’s pornography or maybe some of, we’ve talked a little bit about it, the purity culture and some of how the Church at times has had kind of that stick and carrot mentality of be a good girl or boy and God will bless you with an amazing easy sex life, be a bad boy or girl and you’re cursed forever.
And so that idea of where do we go to help them find that theology? I think there is a lot of good stuff written now that would, even your books, I appreciate, that, and others that are writing in this area. I think that would be a way that Christian leaders… but you know, Juli, I think that Christian leaders don’t understand how creating conversations is an intervention. Really in creating dialogue and conversations around sexuality, that is just giving couples permission to talk about it, permission to explore and say, ‘Well, what do you think about vibrators?’ Or, ‘What do you think about this or that?’
Doug (09:21.826)
Or, ‘How are we going to talk through I’m feeling I’m too seductive?’ Or, let me give you an example. Someone in Atlanta was doing pole dancing for Christian women. She would try to get devout Christian women. And when I first heard that, I thought, ‘Dear Lord, what are we getting into now?’ And then one of my clients, one time I was saying… I was exploring their sex life, they’re husband and wife and the wife said to me, ‘Doug, I have been so much better a lover since I took that pole dancing class’. I thought, ‘My’, but I said, ‘Well, tell me about it’. And she said, ‘Well, the person that taught it gave a lot of really good scripture passages about self-image and, and how we’re created beautiful and included some things from Song of Solomon’. And then she says, ‘And my butt’s never been tighter. I just feel I felt more in shape. And I felt like it was okay to be, you know, to have that feminine power and to display it for my husband’. So I thought, ‘Wow, maybe maybe we’ve got to do more pole dancing class’. But I, but I appreciate what we’re talking about, about how it is hard for people at times to feel God wants us to have fun here.
Juli (10:44.194)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I don’t know how I feel about the whole pole dancing thing. I think that brings up some other issues, but I think the example is a good one that there is no teaching about what is it to be sexually pure and whole and exciting and erotic within the marriage bed. It’s sort of like there’s that expectation hanging over people, but no instruction on how do we actually move toward that. And I know one thing that you’re really big on as you work with couples, but then also as you work with the Church is modeling and promoting the kinds of conversations that can open those doors, the conversations between a husband and wife. And it’s expected when they come to see you in your office that you’re going to ask them some pretty intimate questions. You’re going to usher them into conversation about these areas. But I think the average Christian leader is like, ‘I don’t even know how to get the words out of my mouth: How is your sex life? Like that just feels like I’m violating some sacred space’. So how do we begin getting comfortable in appropriate ways of helping couples in this arena?
Doug
There’s one question that I ask that couples always say, ‘Wow, that’s profound’. But I think it’s very simple as I will ask, ‘What would you like to express through your sex life together? What kind of meaning making would you like to have? What kind of feelings would you like to enjoy?’ So I’m really not being voyeuristic. I’m not trying to get in exactly what they do. I’m more encouraging their conversations around that ability to just make meaning and what do you want it to express? I think another thing that’s pretty easy to ask is just to ask a little bit about, well, let me see how I could word this. So often as a sex therapist, couples will come to me wanting some magic technique that will turn them into instant lovers. And I’ll say, it’s more, I don’t work as much with technique as I do with attitude.
Doug (12:55.49)
And so I say, ‘Do you know how to be playful? Really be playful?’ I say, ‘That could spill over into sex. Do you know how to be structured enough to make certain times sacred and be able to have a time where you might connect with the creator and a time when you might have more conversations with your mate or your kids?’ So I think it’s less technique and more attitude and in more of those kinds of things that help us be good lovers. And those kinds of questions are not really tremendously deep or intimate. I mean, to say, ‘Well, how are you playful and can you bring playfulness over into your sex life?’ Or, ‘How do you guys just nurture each other? I want you to think about how you might nurture each other sexually’. So it’s a bigger picture here, I think we could paint. It’s a sex-positive picture though. This is good. God wants to bless you with something fun, meaningful, sacred, deep. But we can ask those questions like, ‘What do you want to express? What character traits do you have in your life that makes your marriage or who you as a person that you think, wow, this is why my wife was attracted to me or my husband was attracted to me?’ And I think those kinds of qualities should spill over into our sex life too.
Juli
Yeah, but those are some great starter questions.
Doug
Yeah, and like my wife at times, I mean, women are so interesting in what they find sexy. But she’ll just say, ‘Well, I like your dimples, Doug’.
Juli (14:23.532)
They’re cute.
Doug
Or whatever. And so there things that we’re attracted beyond genitals, although that can be really erotically arousing too, especially for men. Yeah, I think we can ask pretty safe questions that create dialogue.
Juli
And that might be a great time also to follow up with some resources like the “Celebration of Sex” and other books that can help couples go more deeply into having those kinds of conversations. And thank you for your work in providing those sort of resources. I know Cliff and Joyce Penner have a number of books that are also very helpful in just even talking through the anatomy, talking through challenges, understanding our bodies, how do we communicate, so have a bunch of those on your bookshelf ready to recommend for couples this follow-up.
Doug
And I think leaders need to understand that there’s an art to doing what I call bibliotherapy, because I’m not recommending a book simply to have them read it. I’m really recommending a book to create discussion and conversation.
Doug (15:28.992)
So, and I know oftentimes in books, there’ll even be discussion questions, but I’m really guiding clients into, let’s talk about this more. Let’s, let’s with your reading, explore ideas that maybe you haven’t thought about that may be fun to try. So I think we can recommend books, but I think we can really utilize them wisely too.
Juli
Amen.
Juli (15:56.558)
Well hey friend, you’re listening and learning from this content and I want to draw your attention to our email list. It’s a great place to get even more resources and value to find out about some of the upcoming events we have and access some exclusive content. If you’d like to join our list, I know you’ll get a great value from it. You can join on our website, Authenticintimacy.com or through the link in the show notes. Don’t miss out, sign up today.
Juli (16:26.222)
There’s a lot of conversation recently, I’d say over the last five years or so, about how female sexuality has been neglected, particularly within Christian circles, that often the conversation is men need sex and women have to meet that need. But there’s not emphasis put on the fact that this is a gift for women too, and that women have sexual drive and desire that may get neglected in the average marriage.
Can you speak to that a little bit and how we emphasize the importance of mutual pleasure within a sexual relationship?
Doug
I think how even today, even with millennials sometimes, Juli, I will get comments like, I was asking a young lady, you know, who was saying, just, ‘I’m just not experiencing much fun with sex, it isn’t what I needed it to be or thought it would be’. And I said, ‘Well, what is arousing and exciting for you?’ And she says, ‘That’s not important. I’m there to serve my husband’.
And I said to her, I said, ‘You know what, one of the biggest turn ons to a husband is..’, and she was hanging on my every word, “Dr. Doug, the guru or something”. And I said, ‘I think one of the biggest turn ons to a husband is a turned on wife, is a woman that enjoys her femininity and can be aroused and can share that with her husband’. So I was challenging that idea that it isn’t mutual. And I agree, we really haven’t given women a sexual voice at times. And we’ve made them almost fearful of their figures. One of my clients said, ‘I never wear sweaters because they show I have boobs’. And I thought something’s wrong here. Your Christian brother should be able to celebrate your figure and not lust.
Doug (18:24.492)
And so I think there’s a variety of ways that we really haven’t at times given women a voice where they’ve been able to be the turned on wife, be the person that can share and have a mutual… I like the word ‘mutual’ because I think God made sex mutual. And I think sometimes men really do believe that women don’t like sex or don’t have a drive. And you know me well enough, I hate the word need like a man needs sex. Yeah, we have testosterone and God put in us that libido, that drive, that horny, that whatever you want to call it to kind of push us towards each other and experience sexual connection in one-fleshness, but it’s mutual. It’s not just something that God bestowed on men and women have to serve.
Juli
Yeah. Well, you gave an example of how you would encourage a woman to say, ‘Hey, this is important. It’s actually even important to your husband’. But what would you say to the man who’s like, ‘I don’t understand my wife. She doesn’t seem to have any drive. I just want my needs to be met’, and may even be pointing to passages like 1 Corinthians 7 to say, ‘This is my marital right, and I’m entitled to this’.
What encouragement do you have for men and how can we help men step into what God has designed sex to be?
Doug
That could be addressed a lot of ways. I think one way it could be addressed is just to help men understand that women actually have an emotional libido, an emotional horny. I know you don’t like that word as much, but I’ll use it some.
Juli (19:55.5)
That’s all right. I’m getting used to it.
Doug
But I like, like one husband, I’ve had several husbands over the years say to me, ‘This is curious. I was just playing with my little daughter and throwing her up in the air and catching her and loving on her. And my wife said, “I am getting turned on just watching you be a man and be a man to your daughter”‘. And my client said, ‘Doug, she takes her top off. I get turned on. I’m sorry. Her playing with our daughter doesn’t do much for me’. So I would encourage husbands to understand that your wife really feeling attended to and special and you demonstrating beyond the bedroom manliness and a certain ability to protect and encourage and nurture. That’s a real aphrodisiac. So I think men sometimes shoot themselves in the foot by being too direct and zooming in on female parts in lovemaking rather than allowing there to be real foreplay. And some of that foreplay is playing with your daughter out in the yard and throwing her up in the air. So I think that’s a part of it. And then I think men, probably even more than women, need to think through the initiating facet of it. And that’s a safe question for couples to try to think through: ‘How do you initiate?’ Because that’s so symbolic. And sometimes, like one of the wives was saying, one of my clients was saying, ‘He usually initiates by grabbing me’. And she says, it doesn’t really score points or really. And so I said, ‘Well, why don’t y’all just have a conversation around what would be seductive, healthy, fun initiating? How would that look?’ So a little book, Total Intimacy’, a buddy and I, Debbie Neal and I wrote, and we were just having fun because we said we want this to be, and now your writing always is, but Debbie said, we want this to be female friendly.
Doug (21:51.34)
So often Christian male authors write books that reflect maleness and don’t always reflect femaleness. So this was actually another sex therapist, Catherine Hall, in “Reclaiming Your Sexual Self”. She said, ‘The sheer number of women disinterested in sex tells us that something is wrong, but, one might wonder whether the sex available to these women is really worth being interested in’.
Juli
There you go, that’s the quote.
Doug
So I think that’s where we’re coaching men up and saying, wow, we have a variety of ways. And another thing that I think couples can have conversations around is just really establishing, I don’t know what I would call it, ‘open door’, ‘sex-positive’, but just an attitude of, ‘I like you, I like sex with you, and we’re gonna go on that assumption’. And then, we always know that if we can’t say no, we can’t say yes.
When someone, and usually the husband, is a primary initiator, when they’re initiating, to be able to see it more as postponing than rejecting. And so helping the husband say, you may be the primary initiator, because in about 80 % of marriages, you’re the high drive. And so you’ll be the primary initiator, but learn to hear ‘Tonight’s just not a good night’, not as rejection, but more as a postponing.
Doug (23:22.486)
And then for wives, I will say, or the low desire one, because in every marriage sometimes it’s the, the wife is the high desire mate. But the low desire mate, somehow portraying, I do enjoy you sexually, and this is just not the time that I could really enjoy, make love, have fun, relax. So I think that, I think that that whole initiating-declining, or I like to hear the word ‘postponing’ is important too. I’ve done this so long, you know, there’s always stories, but one young couple I was working with, it turned out that she was the high drive and her husband was lower drive. And so they had to kind of reverse it and work with, so how do we initiate? How do we have some frequency and so on? But she said to me, she said, ‘Dr. Doug, before I got married, she says, we really waited till marriage to have sex together’. And she said, ‘Before I got married, I heard all these stories about men having high drive and that I was gonna have to be, really be able to be invitational and inviting’. And she said, ‘I was getting aroused just thinking about how much I was gonna invite him and I was gonna be the person. And then I get married and none of that happens. I’m high drive. And so I’m waiting to give unselfishly’. And I think sometimes these conversations can help couples sort out, okay, gal, you’ll probably be the primary initiator. It’s okay. And guy, you may be the lower drive, but we’re gonna have to kind of work that through together then. So you can both initiate and postpone and allow that to be something that’s meaningful.
Juli (25:02.382)
Yeah, I think that’s so key, the story that you shared there, because often for teachers, again, whether you’re a speaker or pastor, or small group leader, we often work within stereotypes, and we’re always communicating those stereotypes. So for example, the assumption is the man is always going to be the one with the higher drive. ‘It’s men who cheat’, or, ‘it’s men who are addicted to pornography’, when in reality, it’s not always so clear cut like that. There are many marriages where the woman has a higher drive or the women struggling with pornography or the man has been sexually abused. What advice do you have just again for Christian leaders to be able to nuance conversation in a way that doesn’t make people feel like, wow, there’s something really weird about us because we don’t fit the stereotypes?
Doug
I love the word nuance, because I think that’s what the Church doesn’t do, yeah, you know, it doesn’t do very well. Like, nuancing, what would gender look like? You know, what if you’re that gentle, quiet, a little more passive male? Does that make you not manly? What if you’ve always been a tomboy and maybe in your marriage, you’re the higher drive. Does that make you unfeminine? So I think gender would be something we’d want to nuance. Desire would be something we’d want a nuance. Cause some of the research is showing that, and you’ve written about this, but some of the research is showing that desire isn’t always the initiator of sex, and that sometimes, especially with women, they may not have thought about sex on that Friday at all. And then the husband comes home and gently and carefully and wisely connects and enjoys her and initiates. And she still didn’t have a lot of desire, but she’s thinking, this could be meaningful. That usually is. And so then they get to be involved in lovemaking and foreplay and enjoying each other. And all of sudden she said, wow, we should do this more. So I think we need to nuance things like gender, nuance things like what is desire and how it’s experienced. And so that’s a wise thing for Christian leaders to say, let’s nuance some of this.
Doug (27:10.304)
This is a different topic and I know we don’t have time. But I don’t think we nuance sexual identity and sexual identity issues very well. Because you and I both believe that some people have homosexual feelings and we’re not even sure where they come from. But having the feelings isn’t a sin any more than having high libido is not always lust. It’s just something you have to learn to manage. So often it’s what we do with feelings, and how we manage them, but we don’t nuance that very well because I have especially teens and 20s where the guys, their testosterone is really high. They say, ‘It would scare women if they knew how much I think about sex and how so many cues trigger me’.
And it was funny, one of my colleagues who was working to become a sex therapist, she said, ‘I want to understand the male mentality better. We’re just, you know, like it’s Friday night and we’re home just watching TV or doing things together, would you just tap me whenever you think of something sexual?’ And she says, ‘Doug, you guys sometimes!’ She said, ‘I would say, “well, why are you tapping me?” And he said, “Well, you know, I got my guitar set over there, sitting over there and I’m just looking at the curves of the guitar and it’s reminding me of your figure”. And so she said, ‘Does everything trigger?’ So I think if we could nuance and understand that desire is okay, we just have to learn to manage it better. So I, yes, I agree. We’re trying to think through how do we really look at all this and how do we, how do we enjoy and stay sex-positive?
Doug
And yet also, you know, it’s not like we’re saying different strokes for different folks. We’re saying there are boundaries. Our marriage is an exclusive sexual relationship, just like our relationship with Jesus is exclusive.
Juli (29:13.662)
Well, thank you for all the ways, Doug, that you have fostered healthy biblical conversation in the church about these areas. And I’m so thankful that you’re continuing that work and training other people to do the same.
