Let’s Talk About S*x

Sterling: You are a doctor, aren’t you? Aren’t you a doctor?

Sarah: I am!

Sterling: Don’t you have a doctorate?

Sarah: PhD. Not DR. Not MD. Yeah.

Sterling: Yeah. In what?

Sarah: In Moral Theology and Christian Ethics. I got that from Catholic University of America in 2010.

Sterling: Yeah. Very nice. It’s super cool. I love that, which is such a great degree to have. It lends so much credibility to the work that you do because you talk to Catholic women about their intimate lives. So you guys, before Dr. Sarah and I get into this; I want you to know that we’re going to be talking about “Your Intimate Life with Your Husband” so it’s gonna be Catholic approved, but not kid appropriate.

So, if you’re listening in your minivan, probably skip this episode for right now and tuck it in your back pocket for later, because we’re just going to have a very candid conversation about the things that we do with our husbands within the context of marriage. And you may not want your kids listening to that. So that was our asterisk.

Sarah: Yes. This would be ideal to listen to when you’re finishing up the dishes at night after all the kids are in bed. And then perfect setup go find your husband afterwards.

Sterling: To go find your husband afterwards. I love it. Yes. So tell us a little bit about what you do before we start having our conversation.

Sarah: Yeah. I have a course for Catholic women to help them improve their experience of their marital intimacy, their lovemaking with their husbands. And morally licit Catholic approved ways that respect the meaning of marriage and sexuality. So it’s called my delight and I run it in three month groups, twice a year.

So I have a spring cohort and a fall cohort. And this was actually an outgrowth of the online marriage renewal ministry that my husband and I had created. We have a course called abundant and we have our free little way of marriage workshop. So we’d already been working with couples, helping them grow in their joy in their marriage, mostly with their emotional intimacy. But then I had a beautiful young bride who’d been married just two or three years, reach out to me and say, you know what? Our marriage is great. We get along so well. There’s just one area that’s not working. And I said let’s see if I can help you with that. And low and behold, God had really prepared me to help her with her issues. And that was really good encouragement. Things went great for her after the work we did together. And that encouraged me that I could do this for other women as well.

Sterling: Yeah. And I just think it’s a conversation that we’re not having enough and it’s awkward. Like I have some really good friends and it’s not like we’re sitting around going, how long does it take you to orgasm? Do you ever orgasm? Like just some of my very good friends, I don’t know how to bring that up or it’s so personal. It’s almost like I want to talk to people who aren’t my friends. That would be easier. I think talking to my friends. So I think what you do is so needed.

Sarah: Yeah, we feel so much isolation and shame in this area.

Most women feel like, oh, there’s something wrong with me. I’m not really enjoying it. Or I enjoy it too much and my husband’s not interested. What’s wrong with me? Like basically women feel like they can’t win either way. And you’re right. This isn’t like you can strike up a conversation at coffee and donuts after church. So Walt, or so Mildred, how do you and Walt, get you to climax?

That’s why doing this as a group in the safe space I create in the class is so powerful because you realize you’re not alone and how all of us married women need to figure out our relationship with our marital intimacy in one way or another.

Sterling: Yeah. I think it is such an important topic and the reason I have it and I feel very comfortable sharing things about my life on this show and within our membership. But that’s just not, like my biggest cross. My biggest struggle is in my marriage. And so I would say actually that does show up a little bit in our sex life, not mechanically it’s almost like ours is the emotional stuff that you do in your other program, right? Like we are still working on building some of those emotional things that then translate into the bedroom. And so that’s why I haven’t taught a lot about it here because I feel like it’s just not; I don’t know, I don’t have the tools yet to teach that even though I would be willing to talk about that. So I was so excited when you agreed to come talk here. So I want to share just one thing that was difficult for me, that I researched and solved problems. And then I’d love to hear from you more common problems that women experience. So it, for me, was after Violet. So after my third pregnancy, all of a sudden, and we waited our regular six weeks, is it six weeks?

Whatever the time is until you get the go ahead to have sex again. And it hurt a little bit. And I remember thinking like, Oh, does it maybe always hurt a little bit? Or am I a little tighter or something after having a baby? I thought it was like that. But it just kept happening and it kept hurting and it was a kind of a burning sensation. And that was odd. We weren’t using any kind of other materials and, so it took a little while, but it was unusual for us. And so I did Google it and I said, burning while having sex. And I found this term vaginismus, and I’ve mentioned that on the show before, that I ended up having vaginismus, which can happen for lots of reasons.

But I’m so glad that I was willing to look into it. And that I wasn’t willing to just grit my teeth and bear it because I probably could have done that. I probably could have been like, Oh, it burns a little and I could deal with it. It wasn’t so horrible, but it stopped being enjoyable. And I knew it wasn’t quite right. And I ended up going to physical therapy for it and they healed my body. I just needed some physical therapy and now I don’t have that problem. And at least for that one thing I can speak to, it is solvable, and it’s worth the effort, and you really shouldn’t be having sex if it hurts. And so I don’t know if you’ve had experience with other clients who have had that.

Sarah: Yeah. And I’m so glad you said that. That is a message every woman should know and take to heart. It should never hurt to have sex. If it does, something’s wrong and you need to get help for it. And the more you just grit through and endure and push through the worse it becomes. It’s a terrible negative feedback loop, or then your brain begins to associate discomfort or even pain with sex. So then that makes me anxious. That makes you tighten up more, you definitely need help to undo that. And yeah, you should not push through. And yeah, I’ve definitely had many women in my course who have had vaginismus or even currently I have a woman who went through my fall course and then she got married in January, which is just when we’re recording now. So she just got married and then she realized, Oh, we have not been able to consummate because of pain. And now she knows it’s, that shouldn’t be what’s happening. And I’m referring to her as someone who I know who’s just a wonderful therapist who can help with that specifically.

But there’s so many factors: our mindset, our beliefs about sex, about our bodies, about ourselves, our expectations and intimacy. All this can show up. And yeah, that’s why we take so long in the course. Why it’s a three month course, because there’s just so many different layers to unpack. Yeah, I think another common thing that a lot of women sign up for the course because of: is feeling like they’re low libido. So that’s when I hear a lot, I’m low libido, I just am not interested. And then as we get talking more, there’s a lot of different factors there too. Sometimes it’s just your expectations, that, if you just desire it once a week instead of three or four times, like maybe a husband might be, then you think I’m low libido I only want to have sex once a week. That’s actually a really great healthy libido. So it’s just our expectations and what expectations we put on ourselves were, yeah, I think that we should be doing. And then just learning how our libido works, it hangs out in our parasympathetic nervous system.

So it actually needs care-intending. We need to get ourselves into this relaxed, playful, open state, not our sympathetic nervous system, which is fight or flight, which is. Doing it’s mom mode, right? We’re taking care of people, responding to things, getting things done. That’s not the state to be in to really be able to enjoy lovemaking. So often women just need to learn that they need a transition to relax and build that into their life in general, like more time for play and relaxation and connection with their husband outside the bedroom. But then also when you’re going to come together in intimacy to really have this preparatory period where you can let the day melt off and get yourself into a state where you can enjoy things.

If that makes sense. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Sterling: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s actually been one of the hardest things for us having six young kids is finding and creating that time. And I read, I don’t know, a book a long time ago that said, yeah, it’s you have to schedule sex and plan it. for those of you that have busy lives. And she was saying that it feels like it’s not spontaneous or sexy, but she was saying what you’re saying, which is it just takes a lot of thoughtfulness and wind up time to do it. And we do, we talk about it ahead of time and it’s mostly me that has to do a bunch of things to get really ready. And it doesn’t even have to be hours or a lot of work. I’ll tell you guys, one of the things that actually has been really helpful to me is just taking off my clothes. We have really silky soft sheets and just taking off my clothes and I get into bed and I just shimmy around and it’s just yeah, it’s like I let the day go and I feel a little silly and playful.

I’m not even touching myself. Like I’m not doing anything else. But just oh, okay, I’m just here and I feel my skin and on the sheets. And so it really, sometimes I think can be even simple things, but it does take intentionality. I think we realized that spontaneous windows where the children are all doing something and we are relaxed and our schedules line up was probably not going to happen very often.

Sarah: For sure. And is that how we make it work with our connection with God? Is that how God set it up? Like spontaneously when you feel like connecting with me, when everything lines up, come to mass. No, it’s scheduled. Every weekend we’re going to make time to go to mass. He desires that connection with us. He knows we need it. And. Yeah. So we plan for it, but yeah, that’s great. I love that. What you described Sterling, because that’s really like a way to get in touch, like to be present to yourself, you yourself, like instead of little people, clawing at your clothes, needing their faces wiped and what not, we’re so focused on serving others in our mom life that it really is a skill to learn how to be present to ourselves and check in, like, how does my body feel? What do I need? And that’s really key to being able then to enter into a very sensory sharing of our bodies with our husbands.

Sterling: Yeah. And I just, I’m definitely I would probably have labeled myself as somebody with low libido or not a lot of interest, you guys, I had six kids in eight years. I was just always. pregnant or nursing someone or something. Wow. But it just isn’t true actually. I realize actually that when I’m calm and when I have space, my body does actually warm up and want to do that and enjoy it. I just have to remind myself. And so when he says, Hey, are you interested? I know that the answer immediately right then is no, but I will say, Oh, I’m open. So I feel open. And then there are several things that I can do and one of them is just getting undressed and being in bed where I can just see if I can wake myself up. But I will say one thing since becoming a mindset coach and learning some tools is that I really, I got to the place where I just made a deal with myself that my yes was going to be a yes and my no was going to be a no.

And so sometimes I’ll be a maybe where he’s Hey, are you into that? And I’ll be like, I don’t know, maybe, like I’m not for sure a yes. And then we will try a few things. And sometimes I go, you know what? I’m actually just not into it right now. I’m a no. And I feel really safe to say no. And then when I say yes, I really mean yes. Which by the way, sometimes my yes, you guys means I’m open to doing this. I’m not even trying to get there. I’m just happy to give this to him. But I really am happy. Like it’s not begrudging or belittling. Yeah, no resentment. And bitter that was the word I was thinking. It’s not bitter. And Yeah, I just, that really made a big difference in my safety when I just made that deal with myself. And because he was never making me, it was me sometimes saying yes, but not wanting to say yes. And I could tell that ultimately was not helping us at all.

Sarah: That’s so important. Yeah. I want to speak to those wives who think that they always have to say yes, because this is out there, this idea that you’re always obligated to provide for your husband’s needs. There’s different terms for it. Obligation sex in the Catholic world, often this gets labeled as like a marital debt type idea and it’s a phrase that the church has not used in her official teachings, since Vatican two and in any of the official documents, since then so the church is not using this phrase the church does not teach that you have to always have sex with your husband every time that he Proposes or is interested in it and doing so can really dissociate you from your body and really lead to resentment, yeah, vaginismus can develop from it.

It’s just super unhelpful. So I just want to put that out there.

Sterling: Yeah. I think that’s, I think that’s important to talk about because I’ve read that too. And I remember but here’s the thing, cause here’s what I caught myself doing is I caught myself because I didn’t feel free. to say no. I genuinely was more closed. I was, yeah, it’s like you can feel like if you have to do something, you tense up and then you don’t enjoy it as much. And then you feel like you didn’t really want to do it again. Like it just ends up being a cycle. And I found that When I felt free to say no, I gave so many more yeses. And my husband is so attractive to me when I say no and he goes okay, because he knows that I’m going to say yes a lot. Like I say yes more often than not because I feel free to say yes. And so we’ve just gotten to the place where he really respects my no, because he knows that if I was like, okay, I would make this happen, that ultimately it ends up hurting us in that area of our life. And we do it less frequently or it’s less fun when we are doing it like that. And so it was so interesting because you’d think that saying no would create eventual consequences, but I will just share my experience that as soon as I really built trust with myself, that I would honor myself and say no, if I didn’t want to, I ended up saying yes so much more.

Sarah: Yeah. That safety is just key. This feeling of safety and security that you can be your authentic self. Because it’s, this is the meaning of sex in our Catholic theology is it’s a total mutual self gift. And when you’re not giving your full self, which might mean you’re I’m exhausted and depleted right now, self like you’re, then you’re faking it. And you’re giving this fake version of who you think you should be instead of the actual you, which is a real life flesh and blood woman who needs some rest, before her body will kick in. So yeah, I think that’s really important because it should be about knowing each other more fully. And I really feel like that’s a form of hiding when we force ourselves. But I address this and a lot more in my free guide, my nine skills for mind, body, and spirit for enhancing marital intimacy guide, which is available to all your listeners, because I think it’s really important to see this in a holistic way. Sex is not just biological as the Catholic church says in the catechism it’s something that concerns your whole person.

And so drawing on your heart, your soul and your relationship as well as caring well for your body. All of that is what goes into creating just a beautiful love life with your husband.

Sterling: Yeah, I think that is really beautiful. I think, listen, of course we’re mixed up about it. I read once that the devil tries to get you to tries everything he can to get you to have sex before you get married, and then he tries to get, do everything he can to keep you from having sex when you’re right. And I just thought, oh, that feels really true.

Sarah: Isn’t that funny? Yeah. I think a lot of people can resonate with that. Oh, I found my quote. It’s paragraph two, three, six, one from the catechism of the Catholic church. That’s where it says sexuality is not something purely biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. And a whole human being is someone with a soul and a body and a heart and is in, relationship or created for relationship. Yeah. And that’s the whole art of it, to continue enjoying lovemaking after marriage. I’m sorry, I put that badly. You should not be enjoying lovemaking before marriage, which is a mortal sin, obviously. You know what I mean? Like that sense of attraction and desire.

Sterling: Yeah, now that I’m 39 and we’ve had six kids there’s just different levels to it. I see that. I see that there’s different levels and we discover each other in new ways. Every five years it feels a little bit different and our circumstances are different. But I do, speaking back to the marriage debt thing, cause I’m a very. Traditional conservative Catholic, and I like a lot of those circles that say that. I really do challenge myself to say yes a lot. I’ll ask myself, why would I not say yes? And I challenge myself on that. And a lot of times, that’s when I give myself like five or 10 minutes. I’m going to give myself five or 10 minutes to get into this and feel like I’m open to doing it. And a lot of times I can get there. And so I do try to say yes really often, but then I, it’s, I agree, Sarah it’s almost I can tell like my soul or my deep in my body is a no. And I just honor that when it is you know what? It just really is a no right now. Either I really don’t feel well or I’m exhausted or I had a really crummy day and I just need some space or I’m touched out. I feel really safe to say that.

But it’s also because I built up this trust within myself and within him that I, I’ve told him like, I’m going to be a yes, unless there’s really a big. a big reason, something really real to be no and we just trust each other on that level.

Sarah: That’s so good. That’s so good. Yeah.

Like it is so good for us in our marriage to make love. It is literally a growth in your sacramental grace. St. Thomas Aquinas said, as long as a husband and wife come together in sexual union, in a state of grace, They grow in grace and glory. So that’s great. And this is reiterated in different words in the official church documents from the Vatican to honor that spouses grow in their affection. They renew their wedding covenant that you’re saying with your body, what you said at your wedding when you exchange your wedding vows. So you’re renewing your covenant growing in grace, and then so many physical and emotional goods can result from this. Like even just receiving our husband’s there’s prostaglandins in his semen that help us relax and that are good for our health. So that’s, it’s really important to have a generous heart, but also, yeah, to realize like sometimes libido, it is responsive and not spontaneous. And that’s what you’re talking about there. Like I’m not just sitting here folding laundry thinking out of the blue, you know what would be great tonight, but it’s just that, yeah, being able to respond once the situation is set up and the circumstances are set up that you could have this openness than often our libido will kick in when we’re starting to get things going.

Yeah. And having a generous heart, a heart that’s predisposed to union and connection. But you were talking about your list of reasons why you might not feel like it. I would just also add maybe you guys have been in a fight or he’s been really, Grumpy and then is asking for intimacy after he’s been a jerk all day, right? That’s not fair. And you need to address that as well. You need to get your relationship in the right space so that you can authentically celebrate your sacrament together.

Sterling: Yeah. Like just requesting a repair Whoa, that happened earlier and we haven’t had a chance to repair over that yet.

Sarah: Yeah. And it’s so powerful when you get that and then you can make up and then you have makeup sex, which is amazing. The best is when the makeup sex is so great, you forgot what the fight was about. That’s like the goal here.

Sterling: Back to, by the way, you guys, when I was researching vaginismus for me, there’s a scale. I think the scale is one to five. And anyway, I was pretty low on the scale. Like a little bit of burning when you have sex is actually pretty low on the scale. What Sarah was mentioning before is actually a five means you cannot penetrate at all. It feels like there’s an actual wall. The muscles clench so much. And one of the things I read. When I was learning about this, it was that vaginismus is common in uber religious families where the girls are brought up to think that sex is bad or dirty or evil. And then as soon as they get married, it’s hard for them to flip the switch to think, okay, now I’m supposed to do it and it’s good and it’s beautiful.

And so that’s something that your course addresses. If we’ve got women whose daughters are getting married. And they don’t necessarily have the words or know what to tell them. Women who are engaged come and take your course too, right?

Sarah: Yes. Yes. I really love that. And what makes me even happier is when I have moms in the course who have young girls and then they start talking to their girls differently about their bodies and just behaving differently. Even like becoming more flirty with their husbands in front of their kids. Like I had one mom In fall course who would be going up the stairs and her husband would pat her on the butt and she’d be like, oh, don’t do that in front of the kids. And she said, in one of our group sessions. It’s sex is so saturated in our culture that I wanted our home to be the opposite, to choose going to the different side of the pendulum there. But I was saying, no, actually you want to, instead of a glut, a famine, you want to actually show the authentic feast that you can give the example of you and your husband being flirty and playful and enjoying each other’s, your relationship with you, even with sexy undertones and model that to your kids so that they know, yeah, marriage is great. And sex and marriage is a good thing, not, at an age appropriate way.

But the same mom also told me one time that she was driving around with her daughters and I think I would imagine her daughters like around six or seven or eight. And she asked mommy, what’s a vagina? And the woman in my course told me that previously she would have just gotten really weird about it and just told her, Oh, we don’t talk about that right now or, just communicated what a voice and her words that they had entered onto a taboo topic that was shameful and dirty and bad. But instead she said, I just gave her lots of facts and was very positive about it. And then her daughter, when they, when she finished the conversation, then her daughter said, mom, I love that we can drive around and talk about things together. I, that just made me so happy that just this ripple effect.

Sterling: I think we need that. I really do because I do think that there is this huge attack on marriage and so it’s, the world, the culture is trying to yank your kids away and say, marriage is bad and sleeping around is good and you should do that. And we have to have a voice. We can’t just leave this void, and I’m, we’re not, my oldest is just about turn 13. We haven’t even no boys, no dating yet. We’ve talked about intimacy and the mechanics of it, but I have, I know we have a lot more conversations coming up and and yeah, I just, I remember a mom told me, I can’t remember if it was like an influencer or on a blog or if it was a friend of mine, but she said her kids were older than mine and her husband had gone back to the bedroom and had sex and then they came out and one of their older kids said, I know what you just did.

And she said, yeah, and when you get married, you’ll get to do that too. And I remember thinking like, oh yeah, it is like, why do we hide it from them? Any sense that this happens, like showing them that it is happening and it is beautiful and it’s fun within your marriage and that you can do that. I had never heard anyone say anything like that.

Sarah: That’s so wonderful. That’s just great. That’s healthy modeling of a positive sexuality in its appropriate context in the covenant of marriage. Yeah. That’s wonderful.

Sterling: I may be naive, but I don’t know that our kids really understand yet. It’s funny. My husband and I bought a business together. Oh, I don’t know, seven years ago, it was a while ago. And so we began having business meetings and we would tell the children, we’re having a business meeting you need to give us space. We’re going to have this business meeting and we were having business meetings with yellow notepads and making decisions about this company.

And then we sold the company, but we had trained the kids to leave us alone when we had business meetings so now that’s still just a phrase that we use Business time. And they’re not allowed. We go, we’re going to go have a business meeting. And so at our house, that’s like this phrase. I don’t think they realize it yet though.

Sarah: I love that. That’s really fun. If anyone needs to laugh, just Google the Flight of the Conchords song, It’s Business Time, which is a very comical parody on marital sexuality or at least long term partners.

Sterling: That sounds funny. So what are some other things that are like, I want to say more common than women think that they’re scared to talk about or don’t know how to ask about that you’re seeing more with their clients.

Sarah: What is super prevalent is just porn that so many women’s husbands use porn and were addicted to it and then got sober from porn and are not using it now. And uh, a lot of things that they’re sharing with me are frustrations in their marital intimacy are probably the result of that, which is really a bummer. Like I just, I cannot express enough the intensity with which I am just upset about the exploitation in our culture of porn and its effects. But, a lot of times a woman’s husband, who’s been, has that past. We’ll have trouble maintaining his erection during intimacy, like he’ll just come super fast. So that’s something to work on, that you can work on as a couple and that he can work on. Like you can hold in a sneeze, when you know it’s not the right time to sneeze. We can control. And also just knowing is his mind present with me? And so I talk about that in the class, like just really wonderful practices you can do to just keep that presence and emotional connection focused on each other and you know that the other is very present during your time together. And also a lot of times women will have these, like again, like wanting to swing the other way away from porn, which I totally get that. But we’ll feel like it’s bad to wear lingerie because that’s what porn women do.

Or just not being okay with receiving pleasure because they just feel like that’s not a thing a good woman does. I don’t know if that makes sense, mindset things about do you feel like it’s okay that you can be a good woman, a virtuous, holy woman who’s a good mom and great at whatever work you do in the world and also a woman who really enjoys making love with your husband. Can those two types of women be the same woman integrated and whole in you? A lot of times we don’t realize we’re not allowing ourselves to go there, to be open to pleasure in it because we feel like it’s all, it’s really shameful territory anyway. So there’s just a lot of healing to do in that area.

Sterling: Oh, absolutely. And I, and then I have the other side, which is, I was really raised in a secular world and, I lived an hour outside of Portland and then I went to college in Seattle and I definitely, I slept with people before I got married and so did my husband because we both converted to Catholicism as adults, and we never talked about it, and that was one thing I really, we both were like, hey, we’re new and we really believe in this, and so we never really decided to share any of those things that we had been through with each other, but that was the deprogramming that I had to do. I had to learn how to have beautiful and holy sex because I, my images and my experience were those of the world, which is mostly objectification. It’s not lovely. It’s not beautiful. And use. Yeah.

Sarah: And that’s just what’s great about being Catholic is we have this earthy, physical, sacramental view of matter of the body. We have all our sacraments that involve Physical material and that engage our senses. And we have in the Bible and in our tradition of saints, like there are holy men and women in the Bible who had sex. And even Sarah, Abraham’s wife in Genesis, when she hears the angels announce to Abraham or his mysterious three visitors that they’ll come back in a year from now and Sarah will be with child. And. What does she say to herself? She says, old as I am, I still have sexual pleasure? So that implies that their whole previous, sexual relationship had been one in which she experienced pleasure. And here she’s a matriarch, Holy figure in the church. And we have saints who are married. In our church, we have to assume that many of them had holy, healthy, happy, mutual sex lives, that these two things are not on opposite ends of the spectrum here, that they can be integrated. And that’s one of the things I do is I teach women how they can pray and draw their spirituality into lovemaking and feel like this isn’t dirty or shameful this is holy ground and sacred and beautiful.

Sterling: Yeah, that’s so beautiful. I do think there’s so much healing. And I remember once when I was praying and talking to God about sex, I went to talk to him about sex too, you guys. Like he’s, he made it. He’s not confused. You’re not allowed to talk to him. And I remember him really putting on my heart this idea of him saying to me, Sterling, every time you receive your husband, you receive me. And that really made it a much more spiritual exercise for me. Like I really feel like there’s this union, this kind of three way union between me and my husband and the Lord.

And I don’t know we’re just, it’s, we’re doing something special, we’re creating something special. And now listen, I don’t want to make it sound too magical, you guys. We have plenty of problems outside of our bedroom that make it hard for us to want to do that. But when we’re right with each other, that’s the way that I like to think about it. That is this gift that we give back to the Lord.

Sarah: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And so those are in my nine skills guide, some tips on prayer alone in your own prayer life, and then praying with your husband about your love life together. This one couple that I know, it’s so sweet. She had been having trouble climaxing. She had been able to before then was, I don’t know what was going on if she had a lot of stress or just exhaustion or whatnot, but she had lost that ability for a while. So her husband wrote a novena for them to pray together. To ask God to help give her back her ability to orgasm. So they prayed that they’d be together and then lo and behold, God answered that prayer, which I think is so beautiful. So sweet.

Sterling: That’s amazing. Yeah. I think I just want to grab all of you. And really one of the reasons I wanted Sarah to come on and talk about this is because You’re just not as alone as you think, I promise. There are so many women that have similar problems. And, our coaching program is so powerful because women come and they talk about struggles with kids and school and husbands and everything. And I think one of the biggest benefits is just being in a room full of people going, yeah, me too, or I’ve done that, or that was me and here’s what I did. And I just think that’s probably even more true in this area of our life. It is just really worth it. to be part of a group of women that are willing to explore these things and talk about them and heal and to make this area of your life a priority because it can be better than it is right now.

Have some hope and that you’re not alone in whatever it is that you’re dealing with. And I’m so thankful, Sarah, that you have taken your theology knowledge and your willingness to research this and talk about this out loud to, to bring these tools and this healing to so many women.

Sarah: It’s really, I don’t know if Jennifer Fulwiler’s term blue flame. That’s when you’re doing just what gives you joy and energy and like what you most love to do. Supporting marriage in general is my yellow flame. I like to do that. But then when I’m helping women with this, it’s just, I really love it. And I feel like God prepared me, first of all, by being in an academic setting where we seriously discussed sex and could talk about things with a straight face, but then so many experiences and training since then even helping my kids go through anxiety and come out the other side has helped me help women who struggle with anxiety and matters related to sexuality. So I’m thankful to be here for it. And I especially want to invite any young women engaged early in your marriage. Those first 10 years really love to be able to help women before they settle into bad patterns and habits with their husbands.

And often we just are more naturally in a growth mindset space where we’re open to trying to change things. And I’m happy to have women who are further on in their marriage as well. As long as you’ve also got that true belief that things can improve and that is related to your proactive, making changes and yeah, not just complaining or blaming your husband for everything bad, but realizing I’ve got agency. I’m the hero of my own story and I can take steps that will, try to do things that will improve. So yeah.

Sterling: Yeah. I love that. And I think it’s true. It’s so easy for us to blame husbands. And it was so easy. I was like, you don’t even flirt with me or you don’t even mention it. And I am the one who always has to orchestrate it. By the way, you guys, I am always the one who’s like, where are the kids? What are we doing? I am the instigator, but he’s the high desire partner, but I’m still the one who manages the schedule. And I used to be grumpy about that. And then I just thought, you know what? I’m only hurting myself. And that’s when I realized that it’s just, I’m able to put myself in the mood. Like I’m able to think about him he doesn’t need to tell me, you guys, that he wants to do it. I already know I did. He does not need to communicate that to me. I already know that’s just a baseline. And so then I can go, what do I need today?

And how can I give it to myself so that I’m in a place where then I can give him this gift later? And once I stopped blaming him or feeling like it wasn’t fair, I found that I really enjoyed figuring out how to get myself there so that I was saying yes more often and enjoying it more.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Like planning a vacation or something, there’s, you have to arrange things, but it’s for having. A wonderful experience. And Sterling, while we’re chatting, I would love to put in a word for the 20 percent of women or who are the higher libido spouses. The high desire partner. Which is me. I’m one of them. And there aren’t a lot of reasons. sources out there. There’s not a lot of acknowledgement of this. Usually you just hear cliched jokes and whatnot about husbands always asking and women then who are the higher desire partner can feel so oh, there’s something wrong with me. Why am I so weird? Am I unattractive? And it’s just, we all have brakes and accelerators. And sometimes it’s the man who has more breaks and. They’re more sensitive and have fewer accelerators. And once you learn that about your spouse and about yourself then, you can realize oh, if he’s really stressed about work or he hasn’t slept well, or he’s preoccupied.

It’s not me that is unattractive to him. It’s not that he doesn’t really have a lovely time when we come together. It’s just hard for him to spontaneously think about it and be proactive about initiating. So there again, giving up resentment and just celebrating what you do have and figuring out how you can set the situation up for things to be more positive can be really helpful.

Sterling: Yeah, I love that you said that because it’s true. I’ve done some coaching for women who are the higher desire partner and it is, it’s such a weird, like you feel so weird and there isn’t, it feels like there’s even fewer people that you can talk to about that because, most of your friends are probably saying the opposite of what you’re saying. And yeah, I just, whatever it is, I just, all of you. Whatever it is, I promise you your sex life can be better, and I promise you’re not alone in the thing that you’re dealing with, and, it’s not the answer to all problems, but I find that this is just, it’s an important part of marriage, and so if that’s not working, it might be a symptom that other things aren’t working that we need to work on, but it’s not something I think that we should just ignore or put under the rug or go, Oh, that’s not that big of a deal.

It’s worth our attention. It’s worth our attention. And it is just part of the sacrament of marriage and. The world right now is so against men and good, healthy sexuality within marriage that I think a lot of us have just, I don’t know, been tricked into doing it wrong or not doing it or all sorts of things. And so I’m just so thankful that you created a safe place, like I will feel very comfortable telling my daughters to go and go through your course. And I do think it’s so great. Especially for engaged women to get that information even before day one and have those tools in a way that is really holy and healthy and in line with what we believe.

So I just thank you for being brave enough to do this work.

Sarah: You’re welcome. And thank you for encouraging me. No. secret, my business coach. And, it was you who helped me, get the courage and see a structure to developing this. So I’m really grateful for your nudges and assistance with that as well. Thanks so much.

Sterling: Yeah, I just, it’s, I really agree with the blue flame thing. I think God gives us these callings and no two of us want the same thing. And he gives us these tools and also courage like he gives us courage to do the things that he asks us to do. So we don’t need to be afraid about what he calls us to do because he meets us there and he gives us the tools right when they need it.

So tell us again about the nine intimacy skills. And what I’m going to do, you guys, is I’ll link it up in the show notes. So if you’re listening to this on a podcast app, you’ll be able to just click on the link and then I’ll also email it out because I send an email out every Wednesday with the podcast episode and I’ll put it in there too. And I have that. It’s so great. You cover a lot in a short amount of time. Thanks. Yeah. You can find it at canafeast.com. Like the wedding at Cana, the feast, the reception afterhttps://www.canafeast.com/MyDelight-9-Skills

Sterling: Yeah. I love that. And then, yeah, I’ll link it up so you guys can click that and what, so what are the nine skills that you go over? Not all nine, but maybe what are they about categories?

Sarah: I go, they’re nine skills for mind, body, and spirit. So you get three for your mind, your emotions, and your mental work. Three for your body. A lot of what we talked about with getting the rest and giving it enough time. And then I go into some specifics about how we want to stimulate the clitoris specifically and do it for at least 20, 30 minutes. And then yes, spiritual skills, prayer together incorporating this into your spirituality and seeing it through the lens of your Catholic faith.

Sterling: Yeah, I love that. So great. All right, you guys, this is your special intimacy episode.

And thank you, Sarah, for coming and doing this. I will make sure that they can find you in all the places that they can find you. And when is, so this is coming up, you’re opening up the spring cohort soon. So when is that open?

Sarah: That’s right. It’s timed for St. Valentine’s day. So doors open February 11th, which is the feast of our Lady of the Lords, I just realized so healing, which is what we look at and talk about. And then closed doors are open through midnight Pacific time on February 14th, Valentine’s day. slash Ash Wednesday. So it’s going to be part of your Lenten discipline, focusing on this area.

Sterling: Yeah, I love that. So if you want to join Sarah’s course and do it with her she does it in the fall and the spring and the, and this springtime one is opening up on February 11th. So go check that out. But, and then if they miss it, they’re listening to this later. You just do a wait list?

Sarah: Yeah.

Sterling: So you can still go to the website and just sign up for the wait list. And then you’ll get an email when it comes out in case you happen to be listening to this later.

Sarah: Exactly. Yeah. And if you download the nine skills guide, you are automatically put on the waitlist or you can go tocanafeast.com/MyDelight-9-Skills. And that will put you on the waitlist if we’re not actively registering at that time.

Sterling: Nice. Awesome. All right, you guys. We’re praying for you. For your marriage, for all marriages, for all these women that are coming up in this modern world to have a healthy and holy view of sex with your husband there’s so much healing that all of us need. And so let’s just remember to pray for each other because we just need it. We need to cover each other in that way and have hope. This is just a special and beautiful thing that God created and he will give us what we need. All right, Ms. Sarah, thank you for coming.

Sarah: Thank you so much. Such a joy to talk with you and God bless all of you ladies listening.

Sterling: All right, ladies, thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.