Summary + Guest Bio:
On episode 19 of the She is Kindred podcast, Britt chats with award winning author, blogger, speaker, wife, and mom – Sheila Wray Gregoire. Sheila shares her story with equal parts humor and deep vulnerability on a subject that is often not discussed openly in Christian circles: Sex and Marriage. Together, they wade through the ways that we can build healthy sex lives while also navigating sexual dysfunction and inequality. She charges the Church to provide better education and encouragement for newlyweds as they explore what it means to have a thriving, enjoyable sex life together.
Sheila Wray Gregoire is a popular speaker, marriage blogger, and the author of eight books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex. She loves encouraging women in their relationships, both with God and with their husbands, children, and friends. Her passion is for marriage, and she and her husband Keith speak together at marriage outreaches and at FamilyLife Canada marriage conferences. Sheila believes in authenticity, and gives real solutions to the very real and messy problems women, and couples, can face. You can usually find her in Belleville, Ontario, where she’s constantly texting her two young adult daughters and knitting.
In this episode, Britt talks with Sheila Wray Gregoire about:
- The discrepancy between what the Church teaches on sex and the reality of our experiences
- The Great Sex Rescue published the first and largest survey of Evangelical women (20,000) on satisfaction regarding sex and marriage. It showed that popular Christian resources and books written on improving sex and marriages were doing more harm than good.
- Vaginismus: what it is and what predictors that have been found for it
- Britt shares her own personal story and the long journey to pain-free sex
- Strong sex life takes responsibility of both husband and wife.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- 00:30 https://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/ Marriage, Sex, Family, Faith
- 00:50 Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex
- 00:55 31 Days to Great Sex
- 03:00 The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended
- 47:15 Gift of Sex
- 47:20 The Great Sex Rescue, Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex
- 53:10 Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
- Follow @sheilagregoire and share this podcast!
Quotable:
“We’ve turned sex into male entitlement and female obligation, and that really increases the rate of sexual pain and primary vaginismus, which is really damaging. This is not the way God talks about sex. It is the furthest thing from the way that God talks about sex.” – Sheila Gregoire
“In Jesus’s ministry, He brought countercultural equality. Why wouldn’t it translate to sex and marriage? It’s not just about sexual function, it is also about sexual equality.” – Britt Smith
“Evangelical women suffer from this (sexual dysfunction, vaginismus) at least twice the rate of the general population. And that has been known for 50 years…This is our problem.” – Sheila Gregoire
“Sex is supposed to be this mutual, intimate knowing of one another, where you each matter. Where you are coming to the bedroom, and you’re bringing everything that you are. And you are sharing that with each other. If you put an obligation on that, what you are really saying is that I don’t want to know you, I want to use you.” – Sheila Gregoire
“We need to rethink the honeymoon. So it’s not like just wait until you’re married and you get to have sex. It’s once you are married, think of sex as a 3-fold journey.” – Sheila Gregoire
“In Jesus’s ministry, He brought countercultural equality. Why wouldn’t it translate to sex and marriage? It’s not just about sexual function, it is also about sexual equality.” – Britt Smith
“Look at Jesus. And think about what you know about God. God doesn’t want women used. And God created sex to be this passionate intimate thing. And if our depiction of sex is anything other than passionate and intimate, then we are completely missing the story.” – Sheila Gregoire
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