EB 303: Our College Years: Dating Our Wives In Purity Culture

[Music] welcome to ear biscuits the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life and sex for a long time i’m rhett and i’m link this week at the round table of dim lighting we are continuing to press forward into our sexual experiences uh chronologically yeah we try to fit the sex into sex timber but we just have i mean we are just exploding bursting at the seams with so much sexual energy that it has to spill over into october so this is basically part two of the purity culture you know exploration specifically about college yeah so uh episode three last week we talked about high school experience this week let’s let’s get into the college thing because that’s when we really got into all of the systemization associated with purity culture it’s kind of here you’re going to think you’re hearing like i mean depending on your background i think you might think you’re listening to two aliens speak i don’t know i mean you may have already felt that way but it’s gonna get even weirder today yeah i mean we’ve we’ve lived it we’ve talked about it amongst friends over the years and we’ve alluded to especially when it came to uh dating an engagement with with our wives in the book of mythicality but we didn’t really talk about the the sex aspect of it so we’re gonna get into that today again i i i’m we’re starting to see the responses come in i’m excited that people are resonating with the fact that hey we’re just speaking honestly about our experience and that serves to remove some of the stigma but it’s it’s still a bit awkward right so i i’m not going to ask you to sing the theme song again thank you i didn’t want to it was really supposed to just be a one time i’ll give the disclaimer if you don’t want to hear your two internet dads uncles brothers cousins whatever you want to call us talk it specifically and probably explicitly about sex at times over the course of this conversation maybe this isn’t for you so i’m just i’m just putting that out there you don’t have to listen to this but we’re committed to exploring it honestly and but we are exploring it from two very specific and narrow perspectives so i guess you can you can call this the non-musical disclaimer that we are two straight white cis male dudes who did not have sex until we were married to our wives that we are still married to we’ve each only had sex with one woman for over 20 years yeah and uh all of the circumstances leading up to it that we’ll talk about today uh are are very specific to our experience and where and we acknowledge that there’s a myriad of experiences out there perspectives and uh even the way that people interact with purity culture there’s a as i said there’s this a broad spectrum of ways that you can be impacted by that right and some are really horrible some people might say it was positive and um we’re somewhere in the middle and i think we can we’ll explore that and because i’ve seen a few of the of the comments and people asking us to talk about specific things uh like are you guys going to address you know sexual abuse as an example i i want to be clear and say that we are speaking from our experience and our perspective so this is not comprehensive it’s not an exhaustive exploration of everything that we think about sex we’re not going to talk about sexual abuse because that’s not something that we personally have experienced and if we’re going to start talking about that we would bring someone in who has a perspective on that from experience and that’s not what this podcast is we just talk to each other so there may be some things that you want us to talk about and you want to get our opinion on but we just don’t want to be those you know two dudes with a podcast who are just giving their opinion about things that they have no business giving their opinion about we do that enough already so this is not about our opinion about things this is about our experience and even with what link said i’m sure that there may be some people who are a little bit offended by the fact that you said that you’re you’re trying to there’s some good and there’s some bad in your experience of being in the middle of this purity culture whereas there would be some people would be like it’s all bad it’s all unhealthy it’s all toxic and this was my experience and that is your experience and we validate that experience we acknowledge that experience right but i think that it’s it’s complex as we will explore uh how we got from point a to point b and some of the decisions that we made along the way that were based on the mindset that we had at the time we may not agree with that mindset anymore but we met we may be happy with the where we’re at now with the result and that’s not an endorsement of that way of thinking it’s just an illustration of the fact that this is a complex subject and we’re not giving our sort of like final opinions on it we’re just telling you the story so hopefully that helps to understand why there’s certain things that we may not address all together but we are opening up to questions in episode after next if we continue at the pace that we’re planning that now that we’ve adjusted and added an episode so hashtag your biscuits let us know anything that you want us to talk about related to sex that we might have only glanced at or didn’t talk about at all and we’ll choose the ones that we feel like we have at least a little something to say about hashtag or biscuits let us know but let’s get into this let’s keep going i know that i was kind of mapping out my high school relationship and how the physical aspect of of of that relationship started and ultimately defined so much of our relationship and so much of my spiritual experience and how i related to god to the point that we broke up and it was it was it was very heartbreaking scenario to break up just because i ch basically i chose my relationship with god over my relationship with my girlfriend at the time leading like at so we broke up this after my freshman year yeah of college uh over that summer and um that experience as you’ll see had a dramatic impact on the decisions i made in terms of who i was going to date next which ended up being Christy so i’ll get into all that but there is this whole year of being in college and entering into another level of purity culture so we can kind of talk about that first yeah i’ll get back to like my dating trajectory and yours and then i’ll talk about meeting Jessie at this moment and kind of at the peak of my purity but we’ve covered a little bit about you know you guys know if you’ve listened to the podcast before a deconstruction series and then a follow-up series like we were involved in campus crusade for christ very involved and so what our freshman year at nc state looked like is we went from these guys who were in this christian band who were being very serious about their faith and also there was a lot of accountability between the two of us meaning that we actually were involved in each other’s spiritual lives to kind of hold each other to the standards that we believe that we need to be held to and so there was this like camaraderie and it was it was our it was the two of us it was our other bandmates then when we get to college the band’s still happening but then we dive head first into campus crusade for christ and by the beginning of sophomore year we had like i’ll speak for myself i was leading a bible study i was um the i was leading the weekly meeting i was the emcee of the weekly meeting i was like this public christian right the crusade at the time and probably still now is one of the if not the largest student organization on campus at state it wasn’t that big at first when when we started but there was a few hundred students that would come every single week and it was like i was sort of setting myself up as like yeah and it became i’m a christian student same for me but very much involved in bible bible study involved in all the retreats that they would offer like our friend group was built within that context i had study partners from like my engineering courses but we i weren’t i wasn’t really friends with anybody outside of campus crusade like we were just so all in it’s kind of like going to class and study partners all that type of stuff was like a like a different world it’s kind of like work george versus home george from seinfeld uh and i was on stage like you were emceeing the meetings i was on stage singing worship songs and yeah and eventually helping lead the worship band so we were both very visible representations of what a campus crusader looked and acted like and we held ourselves to that stand and if you saw us on campus you most likely knew us through that like if you if you had come to crusader or you’re like you knew somebody like ourselves in a position where we we knew that there was like a higher level of accountability like people expected more from us kind of it kind of felt like if you go to church you you really hold your pastors or your priest or whatever the the spiritual authority in your life if if if if if you hadn’t want to have one you kind of hold them to this higher standard and we we welcomed that because it was just another way to really um channel our motivations to serve god so we didn’t do it for the reputation or to hold up the reputation but it helped to reinforce what we what we wanted to devote our lives to and that was serving god and and being devoted in in every way we could being being as real as possible and not dividing our lives and saying okay when it comes to when it comes to sex or purity and the word was thrown around a lot we wanted to be as serious as possible and we were i mean this is god we’re talking about and i will say uh integrity has always been a thing that is very important to us right it was when we were in college it was after college it is now like the whole idea of saying one thing publicly and being another thing in private has always been something that i have a huge problem with i know you do as well so it wasn’t just like oh these people see me i’ve got to act this way in public it was very serious and went all the way down to the core of our existence and so it wasn’t something that was just an outward external thing it was incredibly personal uh in an internal thing i wanted to kind of explore just for context some of the we talked a little bit in the last episode about some of the standards that we began to believe and some of the things that we were told in high school but when we got into crusade there was a whole nother level of things that got added on to this and there’s just a couple that i remember okay guidelines and sort of ideas and rules um these are in no particular order i remember being told don’t study the bible with a girl because and definitely don’t pray with a girl because studying the bible and praying are intimate things and if you do this like alone if like you just sit down with a girl and start reading the bible which believe it or not is probably something that could very well have happened uh it’ll be this killer day incredibly personal thing that then oh you should end up screwing each other yeah you know because you’ve like connected in this deep spiritual way um i always thought that was an odd thing but i was like okay and i i was also very apt to be like once i kind of assimilated into a group whatever these preachers and these guests because the way that it would work is we had guest speakers come in every single week local pastors local staff with other organizations sort of like christian almost always dudes almost always white dudes coming in to kind of give their perspective and kind of preach at you every single week and i was just like a sponge man taking it all in and they were like that was the predisposition it was like whatever they say i’m going to do because i want to get this right yeah that was definitely my mindset was i want to get this right this this matters more than anything and i want to demonstrate my devotion to jesus so just tell me what to do and i will do it tell me what not to do and i won’t do it i just want the system i want to know that i’m okay right so all you have to do is don’t masturbate that was a it was it was a big thing like of course don’t don’t look at porn don’t masturbate and i mean there was a bit of yeah but it was a conscious struggle and absolutely constant struggle and as when it came to dealing with women and also the advice for the women uh one thing was side hugs if you come from a christian culture you know about the side hug like you’re not supposed to hug a woman because you don’t want her breasts to come in contact with your chest which would be erotic and scandalous and so you there’s literally this culture i don’t know if it’s still happening but there’s a culture of side hugging which just became the the normal greeting for all the ladies oh i can side hug like the bread like the best of them but it totally makes sense when you’re there there is like you’re trying to remove off all physical aspects of any type of relationship and remain pure and i mean lust is something that happens in your heart it’s not something that happens with your hands or uh with parts of your body first so it goes that deeply so you’re trying to nip any nip any sort of listen i told you we’re still we’re 12 year old in the bud 12 year old boys i’m sorry we never talked about sex this is explicitly on the internet it says nip i’m going to go for it you’re nipping all this in the bud of your thought life and saying i mean talk about thought life for a second just as an aside and we’ll get back to the the side hug but there’s this principle of taking every thought captive so the principle was you can you can sin in your heart and in your mind by fixating or by lusting after someone who’s not your partner like your marriage partner and again anything you would do like like lust after somebody have a little fantasy uh look at a girl’s butt and say and appreciate it in a appreciate in a detailed way these are this is all sinful if you if you give into it but it kind of left you with this feeling of even when the thought pops into my head thoughts that as a matter of fact are completely normal and just i would say instinctive like just to notice someone and be attracted to to them physically there’s nothing that that’s just a natural occurrence that maybe the teaching wasn’t that’s wrong but the takeaway behind the teaching was i i start to feel dirty by having by experiencing what are actually natural impulses and instinctual occurrences and it was being contextualized those natural again this is inside baseball christian stuff but natural natural man is sinful man natural man is carnal man is according to the flesh right there is a there’s a distinction between the flesh and the spirit and so the flesh because of original sin because of the original sin of of adam were born with these carnal things so what yeah i’m not saying that there aren’t christians you would be like yes and you need to totally find natural to be and tamp it down but it’s confusing for somebody who’s raging with hormones and constantly like developing and again this is my experience i mean some people don’t have you know some people are attracted to the same sex some people attracted to both sexes some people aren’t attracted to other sexes or anybody right but for me i was like the default that i would return to no matter how spiritual i was being i was in the middle of leading a weekly meeting i was in the middle of leading a prayer i was in the middle of teaching a bible study i already explained how i felt felt about vaginas right and yes you did yeah and it those it would constantly return to my mind i mean i was a horny dude right and so it’s just like in the midst of these sort of sacred holy things you’re going back to this place you’re like ah this impure thought ah this impure thought and again like you said a totally natural thing but you begin to almost hate yourself because you’re dealing with it on such a regular basis it’s like the default mindset that you keep going back to and you’re being told that this is something that you should be taking every thought captive you should be resisting this in a way that you really can’t it’s like trying to hold back a river it’s tamping things down and there’s this pressure that builds so that then you have to start building these systems of protection so that there’s no one in your blast radius you know what i’m saying so i know what you’re saying so side hugs actually make sense when you’re com when you’re if the standard is to not have sex when you’re not coming to grips with i’m using all of these you said coming and grips i just i’m just i’ll try to stop with with your own desires and learning how to acknowledge them and engage with them in a healthy way that always involves consent of course when you involve somebody else but there’s an understanding of this is this is a natural part of who i am and i need to deal with it in a in a way that there’s a there’s a healthy way to deal with it that doesn’t revolve around a center of shame but that is that was not my experience my experience was this is wrong this is not this has to be acknowledged to god every single time it happens if i want to continue to have a relationship with god an active relationship with god i need to keep confessing and but what i’m saying is it it it brings you to a point where you have to say i can’t hug a girl straight on because i’m i am so pent up inside that i fixate on the fact that i’m having some some booby contact right and it actually is just not you know it’s so you put these boundaries in place where that’s not gonna happen versus okay there’s a healthy way to deal with what’s going on in your body and in your mind and how you interact with other people than just okay let’s let’s not then let’s just go a totally different direction that has nothing to do with it you can only side hug not like there is a healthy way to just hug somebody but let’s not have that conversation let’s have this let’s be as pure as possible what what uh what else there’s a couple more things on the list and also i think it leads into a conversation about what it said what it was kind of the narrative that was being painted about us by this whole thing yeah we’ll get into that one second i do want to take this is ironic i want to take the opportunity to draw your attention to the uh ouija board oh god this is hilarious on my shirt yeah if if old if college us would have would have seen current us promoting well it’s not a ouija board it’s the thing a ouija board controller on a t-shirt it’s the thing that you put on the ouija board for to collectively receive the messages from the demons or say it himself if you’re lucky um and uh we’re selling that shirt yeah we are feeding our families by selling a shirt with something that we would have been appalled at when we were in college in the time that we’re talking about today isn’t it life beautiful now i think it’s just cool and harmless yeah right yeah but maybe i’ll change my that during any mind yeah i think it’s just the collective mindset of the people together and they’re kind of just moving it around i mean scientifically i think that’s what’s happening you know what go to mythical.com buy this shirt rep your boys and get ready for the shirt burning ceremony let’s just put it down okay awesome yeah what else what about the purse straps yeah so there were these standards again as we established last time most of these standards ended up affecting the women more than the men right one was women were not supposed they were supposed to be very conscious of where their purse strap went and it could not go between the boobies okay because if it goes between the boobies it really emphasizes those boobies and those men are just gonna go [ _ ] a crazy babies and then also they had to be very conscious of where their seat belt if you get into a car with a man and you’re putting on your seatbelt don’t put the strap in between your boobies because one of those tips is going to pop up and be very visible i don’t know where you were supposed to put it because if you put it below it both of the boobies come up if you put it above it i think you’ll choke in an accident this is horrible advice we needed a five-point harness what we needed is a christian five-point harness for women that can there was like a built-in brazier that just covered the boobs kept everything in place nothing’s jiggling nobody’s stumbling a babysitter we could have sold that i wish i could go back in time and sell and upgrade five-point harness for women riding in cars with christians talking about christian women in baby seats but really what you’re that no i’m just telling you is that the heart it was it was the myth it was the the teaching was that men are animals the men are the animal babies like they’re the ones who need to be you know you you’ve got to make these decisions to protect them from themselves to keep them from stumbling is the phrase yeah that is in the bible i guess probably you you don’t want you don’t want to cause your christian brother to stumble so don’t put the strap in between your booba loobs so again so it became the women’s responsibility to protect the men from themselves but one thing i will say is if you start with a world view where people are basically bad people are basically evil people are basically carnal and sin i mean in sex outside of a heterosexual monogamous marriage is always wrong that is the only context you see how the these standards get put on top of that to keep you from the sin right i’m not saying it’s right i’m just saying it’s logical if that’s where you start i don’t start there anymore so it all seems crazy to me and if you don’t have that standard as well it all seems crazy and the reality is is that because people are naturally sexually active and people going screw right it happens and because that’s the way people’s bodies work that doesn’t mean just let it all hang out and there’s no standards at all but i’m saying that when you tamp down to this degree you end up damaging people in ways that you end up finding out later in life exactly what that damage was you begin to you begin to wake up and realize oh that was very damaging what we were doing especially to those women especially to anyone who was struggling with anything except a very specific heterosexual attraction yeah the damage that was being done to all those people was just it wasn’t even on the radar we weren’t thinking about what we were doing we thought we’re keeping people from having sex outside of marriage and so this must be good but it was creating this for us it was just like you know we heard about pastors who would have standards like i don’t get on an elevator with a woman i do not ever let a woman into my office i would never have a woman in my office and close the door without somebody else and then you’re like and at the time you’re like this is good yes this guy understands that the standard he understands the standard and he’s making the good smart moves but there’s a whole bunch of stuff that’s wrapped up in that one of the things you’re doing is you’re saying that you can’t trust yourself that being alone with a woman in an elevator the only option or like like can you maybe we can just learn to control ourselves and also what about the woman she’s there too she has the ability to say yes or no she actually has a will of her own and you’re treating her like the whole every scenario is just set up like the woman is this object of desire and that all all that she can do is either increase your sexual attraction to her or increase the risk that you’re going to have around her and you are an animal and you’ve got to keep yourself in a cage whereas what if what would it be like to be like maybe i’ll try to ride on an elevator with a woman and see what happens you know maybe i can get to the seventh floor without you know making out with her come on think about what you’re saying about yourself we had this belief that you couldn’t be friends with we couldn’t be friends with a girl really i mean we had we grew up with friends who were girls but then like we kind of distanced ourselves over time and we especially if you dated somebody and then afterward and this is complicated maybe off topic but like you what we definitely had this belief that like you can never be friends with them afterwards like because there’s too much it’s everything is sexually charged right um and again i feel like it’s just not coming to grips with the reality of what was happening from a biological standpoint that it yeah it it got to this point very quickly and like a sponge i soaked it up because i wanted that system when it came to masturbation we didn’t want we as guys we would talk about it but you know i don’t know that the girls were talking about it i ne i did not believe that any girl masturbated or looked at porn or looked at porn we believe that they just did not do that and because it was the guys who had to be controlled and protected from themselves and so that that was kind of the message i got was that and girls aren’t into sex and that was the message that the women were getting as well by the way they were they so the ones that were masturbating which is probably all of them you know what were they feeling like at the time it’s like i don’t ever feel like anybody i mean the boys are talking about masturbation all the time they go to these conferences and they talk about porn and masturbation well i’m interested in those things too but i guess i’m weird because we’re not talking about it we’re just talking about purity rings right yeah the guys didn’t get a purity ring and the guys didn’t go to a dance with their mom and and promised to their mom at a dance that they weren’t going to have sex until they got married purity balls talk about balls and if you search purity culture just amongst podcasts i’ve listened to a number of podcasts and they’re most all women sharing their perspectives so it’s out there i encourage you to search that if you’re interested in that perspective and there is a talk about like guys kind of like getting together and joking about masturbating there was kind of this wink wink you know it’s like we know looking at porn is something you shouldn’t do but it happens and but i would say for me i was so dedicated that i i never let myself off the hook and we as a as a friend group within crew like we were very serious about given the circumstances that we’ve already described about holding each other accountable and being as as holy as possible we made a chart in our apartment and everybody’s name was on the left side and then there were star star star stickers no you you must have made this chart and you because i vaguely remember it and every time you masturbated you were supposed to put a star on the chart which is a little i mean there should have been like a thumbs down to confess to everybody that you did it we also had a rule that the bathroom doors would not be shut i do remember that so if you were dropping a deuce the door had to be cracked if you were taking a shower the door had to be cracked and anyone you invited any other roommate to just at any moment just kick that crack door open and make sure you weren’t bopping the bishop yanking the yankee you’ve got some interesting euphemisms i think it’s shaking hands with a pope shaking hands with it but you can bop the bishop but i didn’t because the bathroom door was open well i found a way i could always find a way were you actually like abiding by the rule i’m sure you you’re abiding by the rules of the show i mean i’d put a star out there but i didn’t want to put as many stars as i needed to so you were lying well we didn’t have enough stars and and here i was being totally forthright and because that’s the only way i could feel good is if i was if i remain pure and the thing about purity as a word is it’s it’s like a light switch you either are you aren’t you’re either pure or you’re not it’s it’s an all in game that’s that’s the problem with that word is that there’s no room for there’s no room for error or new nuance it’s not a spectrum you’ve either failed or you’ve succeeded well it’s like you’ve got a bucket or you’re tainted it’s like there’s no image there’s two buckets there’s the the purity bucket and then there’s the syn bucket and all sin is sent before god and disqualifying in the same way so if you have that sort of theological perspective what ends up happening a lot of time is once you do start sinning whether that’s masturbation looking at porn messing around with your girlfriend once you’re in the sim bucket there’s no it’s all it’s there’s no longer a matter of degree it’s like why am i going to stop doing this at this point because i’m in the sim bucket this is all sin i think that happens a lot of times because it’s not a question of is this healthy or like is there what is the net benefit of this behavior it’s just is it wrong or is it right and if it’s wrong you know masturbation from a spiritual standpoint is no more wrong or no less wrong than just having full sexual intercourse with your girlfriend now i know from a technical teaching standpoint we didn’t really no one really thought that because it’s crazy to think that but technically according to a theological viewpoint of sin there is no difference and so i exp i experienced like becoming impure every time that i would i would i would take an action like that well and the funny thing is is that we’re sitting here talking about girls not putting purse straps in between their boobs and not putting the seat belt on and wearing the right clothes not showing cleavage not wearing tight pants oh don’t wear the tight pants in the meantime i’m going to to my computer and looking at just straight up boobs without a seat belt there’s no seat belt no shirt no purse strap it’s just boobs just in the air it’s called porn you should look into it and the funny thing is is that it’s just it kind of demonstrates why did you do this uh we had a computer at home but it wasn’t hours i would i would find a corner facing away from the computer lab of course in the computer lab like in it i wouldn’t do it in a way that anybody could see it because that’s a weird situation i would be alone and i brought you jerk off in the corner i didn’t computer jerk off in the computer lab i looked at porn what kind of person do you think i am i would look at the porn and i would take that thought with me to a bathroom and then that’s where i would do the deed i’m not going to freaking do that like a public i’m not a creep a public restroom though because the ones at home we had to keep the door open uh okay so did you are you telling me you didn’t masturbate in college like i i don’t think you should be questioning me i think i should be questioning you are you telling me you didn’t masturbate in college i certainly did yes so what do you go into a tent somewhere in the woods i but i it it doesn’t take me terrifies me i would have loved to have had the uh gumption to look at porn in the computer lab but it terrified me to the point where i would never do that well well i don’t and you know what i may have done it and blocked it out of my mind but where else i didn’t have a computer where else would i get porn and again i it was i was trying really i’m talking i’m talking you had a realistic approach and you late at night there’s maybe one other person in there they’re on the other side of the thing i’m facing away i mean there’s a wall in a wall behind me i never got caught no one ever saw me do it so it wasn’t like i was in this situation where like i because again i want to be very clear people who like go to the library and like look at porn at the library where people can see them doing it that’s like basically sexual harassment right so i did i did not do this anyway this was a completely private affair but i just there was the only computer that i had and also i’m not i’m not judging you for it well it sounded like it i i just i’m just i was just giving you a hard time because i thought it was funny what i the reason why i didn’t do it was because of the judgment the wrath of god you know not the wrath of god but just the the temporary rejection until i got up the gumption to confess and clear the air with god because i felt like i treated god very transactionally all right once i do anything wrong i have to confess it in order to clear the air and re-establish our active relationship and conversation i i believe that i couldn’t have a conversation with god until i confessed something that was standing in the way and that was so much the focus that was the main thing and i just didn’t want to do that i’d like to get into this this dovetails into the dating but is there anything else you want to hit before we get into my approach to that well no because i think it i mean the the last thing i’ll say is that we were continuing to because the thing i don’t wanna i i like we’re different people for the record i don’t think it’s creepy that you were looking at porn in the computer lab i think well i’m sure some people i think it’s funny but it was the only option hey i understand why the only thing that kept me from it was guilt it wasn’t anything else but i want to be clear about it and i want to be clear about the fact that i’m not saying i wasn’t guilty i’m not saying i wasn’t incredibly ashamed of doing it i’m just saying that my drive to look at it was something i could not control i honestly got to i could i like i could not it was there it was new it was evolving porn was evolving in crazy ways in the late 90s internet connections were evolving in crazy ways and it was moving from pictures to video like the world like today it’s like all access all the time whatever you want back then it was i was on like the i was like on the frontier in one sense you know of like finding this new stuff and it was irresistible overwhelming all-consuming and in spite of that strong sort of compulsion because i still was very serious about all this christian stuff i would say that over the course of a year in college you could count on one hand my right hand uh the number of times that i would look at porn in the computer lab so what i’m getting at is it was mostly it was a thought thing i didn’t need porn i count on my left hand by the way which is weird i needed more evidence that you’re left-handed but the uh i i all i needed was the thoughts and the place to do it you know so it was more of a thought life and a masturbation thing than it was a porn thing but i’m just giving you an example of it was so awe-consuming that i would take that it was still a risk i mean first of all i’m like logged into my like school account i don’t know if they’re tracking me i don’t know how this works i didn’t really care right i knew a bunch of other dudes were doing it too so um but just to to contextualize that so i was kind of at the height of my purity and there were some is still doing these things the only times i ever went without masturbating was two summer projects like i went on two extended like six week summer projects for a crusade where it’s like you’re just in this incredible spiritual environment and i went the whole time without jerking off and just felt like a king and it lasted about a week after that uh those are my two longest stints i mean you can look at the chart and tell what my longest stint was i don’t remember what it was but my chart was truthful you were the only one trust me yeah such a such a one such a rule follower but my experience experience in high school and freshman year of of dating and everything i talked about in the previous episode it again it was so it was so heartbreaking to break up on those terms and sent me into what i realized was a depression for most of well most of the first half of my sophomore year of uh college because we broke up over the summer and then i was just kind of the aftermath of that but i was determined and i was talking to my discipler and bible study leader and uh more than we were talking but i mean again we were put into place these systems and we were listening to all these speakers but i was i was talking to him as a mentor and just trying to figure out i don’t want to make the the mistakes that i made i want to embrace everything from us from a rules and systems standpoint to protect my heart from having that type of heartbreak again and i i did not want to be dating somebody or fall in love with somebody and then have to make a decision between them and god because i knew obviously the right answer is you have to choose god you know there was it was never a question in my mind so i did i just didn’t want to have to break up with my next girlfriend which i anticipated would be really serious because of the way i was looking at it um and so that was my mindset also i mean in approaching dating and and and thinking about it in terms of like finding a marriage partner my whole all of my dad’s stuff came up too like my my dad leaving my mom before i was around two years old and then just vowing to never make that mistake right um so i wa you know i i wanted to do everything right i desperately wanted to please god and be okay and i never read i kiss dating goodbye that book came out around this time maybe a few years earlier joshua harris now as he’s he’s not a christian anymore any and he’s taking the book out of print because of how it’s it reinforced purity culture but i know that a lot of the principles from it i ended up applying even though i didn’t same same deal i didn’t read it but we knew all the principles was like okay i get it i get it you know there were terms thrown around like you want to you want to guard your heart which i guess is what i’m describing from heartbreak and you want to protect whoever you’re dating you want to guard their heart too because you want to treat whoever you’re dating in a way that preserves them for whoever they’re they’re going to marry if it’s not you and you want to preserve yourself if it’s not them so the fall of sophomore year towards is when christy and i met and i wanted to start dating her and i so right from the beginning i was like all right i want to be very methodical and uh and slow paced about this i wanted to be very calculated our first date was by design a group date that was that was something that was a thing so your first date was a group date it was great when your bible study your mens again these were not co-ed bible studies intervarsity scandalous they would do that campus crusade would never do that so the men’s bible study would pick a women’s bible study and come up with like an elaborate way to ask them out on a group date that’s cute my bible study did that with some girls over at peace dates do take off the pressure of a date in a way it’s like do i really like you do i really want to have a one-on-one date of course with christy i certainly did we went out on our second date which was just the two of us and then was there an elevator involved there was you would have never done that yeah i don’t think there was an elevator but i was you know she started getting involved in campus crusade she came from a background of um she went she went to church her whole life but it wasn’t this like all-encompassing devout crusade level thing that when she got involved in crusade she didn’t know she didn’t know half of what she was getting into right about how devout we were and how devout i was but so when i would say you know what i want to i only want us to talk on the phone once a week we can kind of pick like a phone date and then maybe once a month we can go out on a date like early on in our relationship i was saying things like that because i i knew that like if this really started to pick up steam i was going to have to start making these decisions about a physical relationship and it was just really scary to to start to flirt with going back to to that battle that i had with my previous girlfriend i didn’t want to do that um and christy’s like the way she characterizes it now her perspective is like that was it was strange it was strange even within the like i never questioned it at the time i thought link’s a little odd but i know you so much better now than i did then which is the weird thing and so because i know myself that much better as well and it was like i i didn’t know why i i supported you deep down i supported it because it felt like your particular application of the system that we were all sort of subscribing to but it never like it never really registered with me just how strict of a system it was like seeing each other once a month yeah that’s what you’re gonna see each other for the first few months and then i think we started picking up steam you saw her at the weekly meeting every week but but a date was started out once a month and then only talking on the phone once a week and we didn’t we didn’t email each other and there was no text that didn’t happen exactly they didn’t have cell phones um and as we started getting more serious and i guess it got to the point where you might start to feel like a normal couple would say that they love each other is when i said i’m not i just want you to know that my my perspective on love and this was kind of something i invented this was not like a bible teaching but it was again i just wanted i wanted to take the most devout stance i could i told her i was like listen i’m not gonna tell anyone i’m dating that i love them until i know i want to be within the rest of my life so if you hear me say i love you it basically means will you marry me right and she was like this is this is strange she didn’t say that that’s in the book by the way yeah but what she said was he didn’t really come up with it what book i guess dating about oh it is see i never read the book but i took all the principles from it through advice i was getting i’m surprised i didn’t read the book but um christy was like there was also something appealing about someone who was so devoted to god and devoted to her purity as well as my own that’s what they were being the all the women that’s what they were being told this is the kind of guy you want yeah that’s what the women were being told in their breakout sessions and their conferences is that you want a man who is running towards the lord with passion so basically because he’s going to be he’s going to be the spiritual leader he’s going to be in charge of your spiritual life your children’s spiritual life the rest of your life you got to make this choice you got to get this right run towards god as hard as you can and then look to your left or right and see who’s running with you and that’s who you should be with yeah was another analogy but then kind of follow him a little bit and yeah and i so i wanted to do that we we didn’t hold hands or really touch in all of our all of our dating life we we knew we weren’t going to kiss well i think we talked about we might wait until we get married to kiss she uh we started dating that sophomore year by the next summer i went on a summer project for 10 maybe it was 11 weeks in santa cruz she was staying back home and i basically broke up with her because i said you know i want to devote i don’t want to have this long-distance relationship thing going on i want i want you to be able to devote yourself fully to god and not have to worry about me and i want to be able to do that in santa cruz too now i didn’t date any other girls and we still talk you dated god i dated god but we too and we still talked we wrote letters um to each other and i think we did hop on the phone some my granddad passed away in the middle of that and i came home she she met me you were gone you were also on my project like all of my close guy friends not masturbating at all were also uh gone and it was that was a very pivotal moment in our dating relationship even though we weren’t technically dating when she was there for me for the funeral and the you know dealing with the grief of losing my grandad and it really bonded us together and we were both seeing each other a devotion to god that was extremely attractive and it was there was so much alignment i came back from uh that summer and we dated more seriously so much so that by the next summer when she went on summer project without me to santa cruz same place even though there’s lots of places she could have gone um we didn’t break up in fact that was the summer when i was trying to figure out i want to do the right thing is she the right one god give me a sign and if not i’m just going to read all these books so i can write a dissertation on why we should be together the moment she got home from santa cruz that night is when even though i didn’t have a ring i got down on one knee in her parents yard and proposed and right after i proposed and she said yes and i explained why i didn’t have a ring but i promised i was going to get one that’s why you didn’t ever i was supposed to propose two weeks from now that was the agreement i had with your parents because they were going to keep this secret but i couldn’t keep the secret again so much pent up a lot of pressure pressure that she said yes i stood up and that was the first time we kissed how was it it was after we got engaged immediately tongue definitely tongue wow you went on not kissing not holding hands to tongues it’s like riding a bike i mean i and it all came back to me but even better this time but i wasn’t like pedaling i wasn’t straddling her but that did happen later which we’ll talk about when we talk about our engagement so yeah i mean throughout our whole dating i remember the first time we held hands it was just like an emotional it i mean i almost [ _ ] in my pants yeah it didn’t take much back then because yeah when you were dating for months and months and then like the we when we held hands on the beach that day it was like it was like sparks and it was like a in i mean it was like a flames it was it was amazingly hot and there’s that’s kind of cool well here’s the thing there’s an aspect of this that like i could imagine i had i don’t read romance novels my wife does uh i could imagine a romance novel that was basically based on this like these two people committed to this ideology and they’re super pure and then the moment they finally just let themselves hold hands like yeah there’s something beautiful about waiting and then experiencing that it makes that moment this electric moment now that does not mean that i’m not dismissing all the other [ __ ] that comes as a result of that way of thinking but you can’t argue with the fact that if you take two different perspectives one perspective is sex is just a biological thing it doesn’t mean anything as long as you have it protected you should have it with whoever you want whenever you want however you want that’s one end of the spectrum and the other end of the spectrum is this is the super sacred spiritual thing that has to be protected it should only happen with one person in the certain context for the rest of your life well in one of those scenarios the potential for the sexual experience or any sort of sexual contact or physical contact being electric and special and sort of like over-the-top overwhelming it’s going to be the end of the spectrum where they put it on this pedestal just that’s just the way it’s the delay delay gratification sort of uh psychological thing right so you basically lived that um i lived my own version of that which i’ll explain when you’re done with this i think i i’m gonna stop right here at engagement and let you bring you i want to bring you up to engagement too and then we can talk about what engagement was like because that was a whole year for me yep uh before we got married um so with you and Jessie so when you were on summer project in 1998 uh trying to date god and not date Christy i was trying to date god and not jerk off and successfully did so um i had never met Jessie but i got back from uh that summer project and i had broken up with my pretty serious girlfriend uh that i dated my fresh like freshman sophomore-ish year of pretty long relationship like freshman and half a sophomore and she was a christian as well she wasn’t in purity culture into this degree that i was but i was again i wasn’t good at it not masturbating and not looking at porn but i was really good at not doing stuff like drawing the line again at the waist with my girlfriend and so i was basically pretty pure in that regard right i had figured out some way to like manage myself in relationships yeah which often involves masturbating after dates um but i was not i am not uh i’m compared to you i’m not a systematic person compared to the general population yes compared to you no um but i was committed and i to this to the whole deal i was all in i knew i was going to do my best and not have sex before i got married i was buying into the principles of i guess dating about i don’t think i read the book i think i might have gone to like a talk where they like i don’t know i but i i bought into the principles to a degree understanding that the whole idea of like once the physical relationship starts it’s going to quickly move towards you know sex and like that only happens in marriage should like just don’t do that in fact don’t even date i i was like i kind of agree with that but i’m very much a broad strokes kind of guy so i’m like i get what you’re going for i think i can achieve it in my own way strokes so i meet Jessie and i just think that she’s wonderful and beautiful uh and of course it was a slightly different time she was a senior in high school at the time at the time okay so i basically was like well i’m not going to date her because because he’s in high school she’s full stop i’m not going to date somebody who’s in high school while i’m while i’m in college so but she’s going to be in college eventually and so i should at least maintain some level of friendship or contact um but basically the way i would sum up that that year of her like her senior year in high school was maintaining a friendship from from a distance and then like they’re in again our families were connected so it was kind of it was not a dating relationship meaning they went to this thing they went to the same church and and kind of knew each other and so there were like church events that i would kind of go home and i could talk to her and we would kind of like we would hang out a little bit these were essentially dates without calling them dates and there was zero physical contact n i didn’t even i didn’t open the door for her i didn’t do anything gentlemanly because i did not want to communicate that this was a dating relationship not just because of my commitment to purity but because it was like she’s in high school i don’t think i’m not gonna date somebody in high school i’ll be friends with this person yeah but like i said i knew that she was going to be in college the following year and so i go on my second summer project to slovakia i didn’t i didn’t masturbate in europe i mean give me some kind of credit here i mean i went to europe good job good job uh i uh i get back from from that time and i’m thinking to myself like okay she’s gonna be in college i’m in college i think that she’s amazing and great and beautiful and i want to basically begin a relationship with her um and what i ended up doing again we have been taught about like you know there are lots of acronyms in crew one was dtr which is defining the relationship oh yeah and a lot of times again because of there’s a very patriarchal under or if not overcurrent to the whole way the evangelical christianity works especially in the late 90s it was the guy’s job to say it was the guy’s job to do it this is what’s happening here yeah the guy had to define the relationship and basically it was almost like yeah you just assume the girl’s going to go along with this i don’t even know what the thought was but what i did is i got back from that knowing that i really liked her and what i told her was i really like you um i oh actually you know what i’m sorry i’m i’ll get my timeline confused i told her this before before before i went on summer project and this is this is how i managed the whole she’s in high school thing is i was basically like i like you i will let you know when i am ready for a relationship or something crazy like that i’m sure she loved that and here and here’s the thing about Jessie is that yes you came from a christian family and a church background and she was super committed super committed christian but she hadn’t really bought into the ikea’s dating goodbye and the purity culture thing yet oh mostly because she hadn’t gotten involved in like a group like crew yet and also she’s a little bit she has a rebellious streak if you start telling her too many things she’s going to be like oh let’s question this and she at the time was like offended by that as she should have been and be like what it’s your job to tell me when you’re ready for a relationship well i’ll tell you when i’m ready for a relationship but we maintain this sort of like friendly banter when i got back from uh summer project and i said i’m ready for my relationship she was like well that’s not how it works i’m not ready for the relationship now the fact is is that we were crazy about each other and she was ready for the relationship but she was bristling at the idea of the dude just comes back and just declares that he is available for the relationship and it automatically starts we waited a couple of weeks and then we were in a relationship but the funny thing that happened was is that and she’s going to be better at remembering the specific timeline and we do and they will be on the next episode i don’t know if we’ll discuss this but Jessie and Christy are joining us for the next episode i remember distinctly what happened was as i’m trying to be this professional christian dude uh and i’m really really trying hard to be pure in both appearance and in the way i’m conducting this relationship and so there was still no physical contact i think there was a couple of hand-holding things that had happened but literally just like a hand-holding you know i didn’t have like the specific standard that you did i’m going to wait to hold hands but i was like i’m gonna play this by ear but i know i’m not anywhere near kissing her at this point and i was over at her house after church and there was a bunch of there’s other people at her house and like i could tell that something was wrong with her and like we kind of go into this room together just the two of us in a room can you believe that i was willing to do that we even shut the door she seemed upset i said what is wrong and she was kind of articulating that like you’re not acting like you’re not acting like you’re interested in me like you’re not sending any signals that you’re interested in me like you obviously want to hang out with me we have great conversation we make each other laugh we’re obviously into each other intellectually and i believe physically but there’s no indication of that you’re not doing anything and and so she was sitting next to me and i was like what do you need and i put my hand on her you grabbed her forearm her forearm okay um and she said more of that she liked the forearm touching huh um and so at that point yeah it was i mean yeah the the keeping physical out of it and not explaining why is extremely confusing but let me tell you what happened when she said more of that all the standards went out the window and she ended up what i i kind of just grabbed her and she crawled up and sat in my lap where i’m sitting down on the floor of this room she’s sitting on my lap and we just embraced i didn’t kiss her which is freaking weird but i just kissed her and we just held each other you just said you kissed her i didn’t kiss her okay i did not kiss her i didn’t kiss her which is weird yes to like just embrace somebody and just like hold them and like feel what it feels like to be physically connected to another human that you’re physically attracted to which is totally normal um yeah but it was like electric it was intoxicating it was over the top and that was the beginning of us like kind of officially being in a relationship now and then you started yeah i mean if you hadn’t you started explaining why you’re not kissing her well i yeah i think she already knew but she thought it was kind of weird to be like why are you drawing the line at this place and like it’s like let’s just you know i don’t or did you kiss so that was in the fall and it wasn’t until like we basically had this relationship that was just like lots of hand like and you can make hand holding super intense oh yeah there’s there’s ten fingers you know yeah in this lots of configurations like you could do this you could do the interlocking you can just do the open palm and just grab like that you could do the little pinky square technique christy and i have this this is correct index finger and that’s that’s how we hold hands to this day it’s like we invented that but yeah so there’s like a savorine there’s like a meditative nature to i i think there’s a form of sexual yoga where you deny yourself and like there is i think we knew someone involved i think we were kind of in like inventing the christian hand-holding version of that uh quite possibly that continued for several months actually went all the way from the fall to i remember there was for valentine’s day now the previous year there had been a valentine’s day banquet uh at her dad’s like office like in upstairs in his office in fukuoka there’s like the nice sort of like banquet area yeah grace community had a valentine’s day banquet and i didn’t want to go to her with it because she was in high school and it was weird but like all of our families wanted us to go like my family her family my everybody thought that we should go to this thing together but i was afraid to ask her because i thought it was weird this is back in time by the way but i’m going back to her senior year in high school and then what ends up happening is like the night before i’m like hey you want to go to the valentine’s day bakewell because i felt like kind of pressured and i wanted to go but i didn’t want to make it seem like a big deal i’m trying to navigate this weird world where i’m trying not to be in a relationship and also really want to be in one she said she’s i think she yeah she said yes and we went but it was weird and she was kind of mad at me so a year later during valentine’s day i had this idea to basically redo the valentine’s day banquet just for us and you know my mom and her mom basically created like this meal and like made it look like it was a banquet and we’d like both dressed up and we just set up there and ate a meal together and then we like we had music and we started dancing and it was and during that dance you had you had clothes on sex no i was like i’m i’m kissing her man i mean i’m not this is stupid this is stupid that joshua’s stuff is stupid so this was your first kiss and i kissed her and uh we kissed for a long time you know how it is like when you haven’t kissed somebody and you’ve been holding yourself back like you kissed your like lips are raw you know and it was intense it was awesome and it basically that was the beginning of us just kissing a lot kissing a lot i don’t think you talked to me about it that much because it just made me mad that like somehow you were okay with this but i couldn’t i could i had set my standard and now and made my commitments to myself and explain those to christy and like gotten her on board with it that then it was like i can’t go back on my own standards then i become a a hypocrite but it was it was and so and it was an expression of our per and i was jealous are different personalities interacting with the same ideology and system yes i was going to navigate in a way that kept me from the thing that i was like what is the thing that we’re really trying to keep ourselves from i’m going to wiener out of the vagina i’m going to keep that oh and again i’m like i’m not going below the waist i kind of still had that standard and also i didn’t we didn’t end up i didn’t even mess with the boobies i was like that was a little i was more righteous there was just a lot of kissing that happened and the but then the lust that’s happening in your head and heart i guess is something that’s grounds for confession do you recall having a similar experience to me in how you took all of this back to god in like prayer life or journal life i did i in terms i completely separated the two i thought that what was happening in my thought life and the sort of like continuing to masturbate that was sinful and that was like me letting god down i felt zero guilt about making out with Jessie yeah because i was like i i was like this is natural this is normal and i’m and like we’re actually controlling ourselves really really well yeah and i didn’t think kissing was wrong i just didn’t want to get myself back into a situation where then we had to break up yeah yeah um but so once we got engaged and we kissed i don’t i’ll have to ask Christy i don’t know if if we knew well i told her that i loved her and then she knew i was that this was the proposal because i followed through on that yeah when i got down on one knee i had this i had this speech i said i love you and then i hit one knee so before i hit the knee she knew what was happening because i because i said i loved her yeah i can’t remember if she expected us to make out but i i bet you we talked about that too no i don’t think we did because it was a total it was a total surprise that i was gonna propose to her and me and her parents um so i’ll have to ask her but most likely our first kiss was like yours spontaneous spontaneous expression of exaltation it was it it was amazing and again there’s a lot there you can and many christian couples know this kissing can go a long way like like if you have made this commitment to not do anything else but kiss like you can explore the depths of kissing and it can be kind of a beautiful thing and but it is frustrating but i you know there was a couple of factors and i think this applies to both of us is that uh we were not at the same school i mean Christy was close by but like Jessie was at carolina i was at state Christy wasn’t meredith you were still yeah we had to we had to have dates in order to meet up i was busy i was doing stuff all the time so were you so was Jessie so i would go and see her on the weekends we’d have like a date we like we would date like we would hang out like friday we’d hang out again saturday like we would and then a lot of times we would go back home and kind of hang out at uh her parents house on sunday but but you’re saying that from a physical relationship limited opportunity tempered it it made it where it’s like oh i feel like we can get through this and i was i mean once once february rolled around and i was making out with her i was like i’m i know that i’m going to marry this girl and she probably thinks that as well but she’s a freaking freshman in college i’m a what was i junior at the time yeah but fast forward for me i went on the the um second summer project well i get confused oh no when i went on this i’m very confused because i think when i came back no it wasn’t it was when did you get engaged it was this start with that i got engaged after her freshman year so basically like we’re making out in february and then in um whenever it was i don’t remember when was no she went i stayed at home she went to summer project between her freshman and sophomore year she came out to l.a and was on summer project when she got back from summer project i’d got in the ring i’d gotten i talked to her dad i asked her to marry me right she said yes and we were engaged for her sophomore year in in college and then we got married before her junior year in college so we had a short engagement and that in that entire well now so that’s i’ve caught up to the point of view your engagement was half as long as mine once chrissy and i started you’re engaged for more than a year uh yeah she got back well it was the end of summer we got engaged and then when we graduated that was our senior year when we graduated we got engaged we got married at the end of on may 27th so that’s one year yeah and so we were engaged for one year as well oh okay well that’s a that’s a long time when now you’ve you’ve lit the fuse which is starting to make out that leads to the atomic bomb of sexual intercourse that is an analogy that i set in a talk to younger college students about why i decided not to kiss because it made it so hard to just not go all the way way too much you’re in a makeout session i mean and then christy and i really discovered that it was like we had so much pent up uh attraction and physical hopes for each other that you know once we started making out over the course of our engagement i knew that we weren’t going to have sex like we just cannot have sex even though it’s just isn’t it just a formality no i cannot we cannot i cannot allow myself to have those thoughts like i want to prove to her that i’m the man that she needs to marry like i got to stay strong but i mean once you start making out then you know your bodies have a way of aligning and even if you’re fully clothed your bodies have a way of wanting to make sex happen even if you’re not willing to take your clothes off you know what i’m saying i’m talking about a little gene grinding yep you’re talking about dry humping i’m talking about dry humping and you’ve got to be you got to be strategic about what clothes you wear on a date if you think that’s going to happen don’t wear grace weapons but that’s premeditated you know you want to wear something dark i should i mean but i was thinking i need to wear like a a suit of armor yeah right like what am i going gonna do here underwear made made out of kevlar and um it was tough i mean we would so we we would like okay we’re gonna only we’re only gonna go out on dates in public we’re not going to come back to my apartment and lay down on my bed and make out anymore there’s lots of laying down and making out that’s trouble don’t get horizontal these are all things that like your parents would like put rules if you were dating somebody in like high school maybe middle school but like so like it i was just having a lot of that experience and we were developing rules ourselves like okay let’s just have a picnic out here in the middle of this park there’s no way we’ll start humping each other here in this park will we well yes there is in the broad freaking daylight it was it was crazy man well i mean it was so difficult there was oh man we we should have eloped well i remember one time it was talking about being horizontal we were at Jessie’s uh parents place down at the beach and her granddad papa main rest in peace was there and he uh kind of came in to the to the basement where we were and we were lying down on the couch watching a movie together with a blanket over us and again as i’ll explain i was we stayed pretty pure i’ll tell you exactly how pure we stayed in a second but at that time all we’re doing is just basically like laying down together and making out and there might be some incidental boob contact but there’s no like unbuttoning the shirt and stuff it was just like i was being freaking good man because i was like listen i’ve got a lifetime of sex just around the corner when we get married in june and so i’m just gonna respect her respect myself and get through this yeah but papa comes in he’s like uh what are you all doing and Jessie was like we’re we’re we’re we’re um oh i set the story up wrong it was the morning and we were down there laying down together in the morning okay and then he comes in and you can see the look on his face and Jessie says papa we weren’t down here all night and he was like it doesn’t take all night and just shuts the door and walks out yeah it could happen it could happen in a second especially when you’re especially at that age really geared up yeah geared up to go but this is the interesting thing about about you and Christy because you have been so good you have been so much better than me like yeah but better being more pure Jessie and i’ve been making out and then during the engagement we made out i think there was a dry humping session that ended in the usual way it’s much better for the man let’s just be honest um and there was some incidental maybe some maybe some purposeful intentional boob contact at some point i can’t really remember but we basically did not get into any uh let’s say heavy petting situations and there was really no actual sexual contact until our wedding night which we’ll talk about next time but you guys my impression from you was that you were like the dry hump kings king and queen like the the dry humping became [Music] became sort of the go-to for y’all it was it was never anything that we we just embraced and said this is something that we’re gonna do and this is okay it was always something that just ended up happening and then it was like oh god it’s like what just can’t keep happening but more let’s put more rules in place how that happened how bad did you feel i didn’t that was chafing i mean it was like again you got to be wearing the right stuff yeah right i mean lots can go wrong you probably injure yourself like it’s not record let me just say we do not recommend i have dry humping i do it’s horrible it really is horrible it’s it is stupid wow it’s actually pretty amazing i mean the only thing you’re doing if you’re if you’re wearing like i mean i hadn’t played soccer in many years but i’d but i did find my old umbrella shoes yeah um bros might as well not even be there that’s that’s if you’re going to be um slogan good for soccer also for dry humping good for soccer great for dry humping um i was i’m i’m sure i was confessing that to god because it was just it was a lack of self-control but it was just you were gonna get married we’re gonna yeah it was just let’s get let’s just get it let’s just get there let’s just get to marriage let’s get it let’s get it over with let’s get on with it this is torturous i mean i remember lying there alone in the weeks leading up to my wedding night and again i’ve already stated on the record that the best reason for me believing in the existence of god is the vagina which yes i know the vulva thank you for correcting me those of you who did i’m speaking colloquially colloquially i can’t say the word um but i’m lying there in bed thinking about the fact that i’m going to get to experience this stuff that i’ve been thinking about my entire life yeah which first of all is just one of the things that i you know i’ve since thought about is just how much like pressure that puts on Jessie to be like because again i had not i had not communicated with um candor the level of struggle and the level of intensity and the level of desire that wasn’t even something that i really got into until after our deconstruction to be honest with you because i just didn’t think that her mind was ready to understand just how my mind worked i was i was still ashamed yeah i mean yeah i mean and i think it bears talking about for a second that like all of the teaching to split sessions with guys being taught one thing and like talking about the intricacies of how not to masturbate and then whatever the girls talked about in terms of like protecting their heart and protect and like being a lady and waiting they had their own book that was just about them being these spiritual princesses i didn’t read the book i know Christy did we’re just thinking about that lady and waiting yes she’s waiting and also like keeping guys from sin in the meantime but there was this disconnect but where got girls got this impression that guys were animals but that if they could rise above that they could be spiritual powerhouses and leaders um but it was i think it was taught as a dichotomy you can either be in the flesh or you can be in the spirit and you want a guy who is so devoted to god that he’s that he’s not he’s not addicted to porn or he’s not this and he’s not that and all these things that you know i guess my point is they i think women could get this impression that guys are either really holy or really base but we’re actually we can actually be both at the same time and a lot of that stuff that that it’s like you got to protect them from themselves because they’re animals and they they need to shed that skin so to speak it leaves this impression that like a lot of thing a lot of these natural desires that that men have and by the way women don’t have them question mark meaning as a woman you shouldn’t have them you’re speaking from the ideology not from from the ideology it it leaves you it leaves women in a place in this environment where they might think that guys you know they’re either dogs or they’re or they’ve risen above it but there’s not something where they’re actually this is a natural part of who people are men and women everybody sexuality and desire and pleasure these are not bad things that are innately wrong and but the whole but it’s like holding guys to this high standard that like you can’t you can’t it doesn’t give us as guys permission to acknowledge that not only do we have struggles but we have we have desires and and we have sensations and we have things are happening that are okay for us you know what i’m trying to say i do i like you felt like you couldn’t talk about certain things until after your deconstruction about like level of desire because it was associated with sin and it took and it takes a lot of time to deconstruct that too that like the desire and sexuality is still deconstructed yeah yeah and and me too yeah what i’m what i’m saying like if you admit to a little something to your partner if you’ve both been very holy it’s like this extreme shock it’s an extreme shock right and i think that we had been taught that like the assumption for all the guys is that of course you’re being tempted to look at porn of course you’re being tempted to masturbate because those are the natural desires of a man the women were not getting those talks because the assumption in baked into the ideology is that the sexual desire is really not coming from the woman she’s not she doesn’t want it as much you know and so i don’t think that’s true i’m just saying that that’s kind of what was baked into it that’s why they weren’t talking about masturbation well what’s true is you cannot make a blanket statement about that period well christians at least where we come from that’s what you did you put everybody into a room and said you’re all this way and we’re going to talk to you as if you’re one unit yeah and just ignore any sort of complicating things that don’t fit this binary but what i’m really getting to is the fact that it sets up the wedding night yes to be this thing where a consummation a culmination well specifically the man is doing something to the woman do you know what i’m saying like this man has all this pent up stuff it isn’t that the woman doesn’t have desire but it’s just like the man finally gets to do sex to the woman i’m not saying i was thinking that specifically or and i definitely wasn’t stating that and as we’ll talk about i mean the wedding night and the our sexual relationship in marriage just don’t give it away you don’t give it away but what i’m getting at is the fact that like all the stuff that had been put on into my brain going into this situation was like i’m finally getting to do this thing that i’ve been freaking thinking about all my life and it was so strong and so intense that it gets to a place where almost unintentionally i’m expecting Jessie to serve this particular role of being the person that i get to have sex with does that make sense which puts this incredible pressure on someone versus it being this like this is our relationship being consummated and this is us both kind of having our desires fulfilled which we’ll talk all about that in the next episode but going in with this idea that like i got this overwhelming desire that i finally get to unleash on this woman like it’s kind of a sick way to think about it do you know what i’m saying and it wasn’t a conscious thing it was the subconscious all the stuff that had been put on me that i was bringing into that situation i think that it is a reason why you know we joke out here like how old are you guys how old are your kids you got a kid going off to college what at your age is that it was like we were on the north carolina timeline really we’re talking about this like specifically it’s i mean it is it’s not just a a bible belt evangelical thing but it very much was that as well you know this this pent-up desire accelerates uh getting married it just does because you you get to a point where you just you gotta you gotta unload man it’s what it it that drive was not by any means the only drive to get married but it it became it was a factor if you’re if you’re a christian if you’re evangelical christian and you subscribe to the idea that sex can only be had in the context of marriage then and you want sex the person you’re gonna want marriage but the person that you are dating when you graduate from college there is a very very high statistic statistically speaking chance that you’re going to marry that person because of circumstance now we got lucky we got real lucky some of our close friends got real lucky still they married the right people they’re in great marriages but a lot of people because it’s so circumstantial get into that marriage and then realize that oh we got into this marriage because of all the circumstances that were driving us to get married not because i knew what i wanted in a person do you know what i’m saying like and so yeah that’s what says we just one thing this little treacherous dodge that ball oh hell yeah we did another thing is were there other people in our in our friend group or in the movement that were more devout than we were i believe that there were i did we didn’t we weren’t close with them but i believe they were certainly out there there were people in all across the purity movement there are definitely people who didn’t have any physical contact before they got married and you know we’re gonna tell our story of uh losing our virginity which is not a thing but we’re gonna tell the story of that not a thing of first time we had sex on our wedding night we’re going to bring our wives in we’re going to let them call in we’re going to let them we’re going to we’re going to lead them we’re going to calling in we’re going to invite Christy and Jessie to call and and and weigh in on that topic and some other topics um we got to figure out exactly what those are but i don’t and i don’t want to give too much away about that but the fact that like we did we did have a physical relationship that kind of ramped up into it had an impact on our experience a positive impact on our experience and i’ve heard enough stories and i did that people who were just like completely locked off like virtual chastity belt everywhere like no physical contact until marriage and it’s like there i mean it could really blow up in your face well on your wedding night again i’m not speaking from experience but i’m speaking from anecdotal evidence here uh there it is not uncommon it is not uncommon for uh people in sort of a purity movement who actually are closeted gay and they don’t that are or they don’t even know that they’re gay who see the purity movement and the way that it’s approached and then not having to have physical contact with this person of the opposite sex who you are quote unquote supposed to marry yeah as a as a sort of a salvation and they also see that person as a potentially salvation out of this thing that they’re kind of that is really tamped down and then or it may just become it may be false confirmation that they’re super straight and that they’re super pure right yeah what i’m getting at is there is a phenomenon that is not uncommon for someone who is actually gay and he’s either not dealt with it and not realized it yet because it’s been so suppressed because of the culture that they’re in in in like a really conservative culture that they get into they there’s there’s a salvation in a purity obsessed relationship because they’re like i’m actually not attracted to this person but i’m confusing that with just the ability to remain pure and then having no physical contact because of quote unquote being pure they get married and then very quickly realize oh i’m actually gay and then those marriages of course either you know they fall apart or yeah so it’s like again i’ve seen that happen quite a bit actually and so it’s um just one of the pitfalls of being like we’re not going to have there’s no physical relationship at all up until the point of marriage well you you’re highlighting i mean it you could describe our stories in this episode as stunted development sexually i mean yeah i could see how you might have that perspective um just not understanding yourself and what like if if you were never given permission whether you’re a guy or girl or whatever to to masturbate then you’re and and you never did then you really there’s a whole world of yourself that you do not understand that then you don’t and and that’s that’s disempowering when you don’t when you when you’re not in control of your of your of your own body and your own pleasure that when you don’t have that autonomy and you don’t have that understanding it’s a it’s a it’s a it’s an aspect of personal development that could be could be stunted and then you’re playing catch-up you know it’s it’s different than being a late bloomer than being a totally suppressing um a natural beautiful aspect of being human yeah and it can have extremely damaging ripple effects in in your relationships and and again i think the the thing that may get missed as we as we talk about this just because it’s not our experience is that um as you’ll see while there is baggage and there are things that we’ve dealt with and there are these negative repercussions in large part we dodged a lot of the pitfalls of purity culture that’s not an endorsement of it again if you subscribe to thinking of this way then you could use us and our particular cases as a support for your argument we’re not here we’re not we’re that’s not what we’re doing we’re telling our story but i think that specifically with what you’re talking about right now with this whole not getting comfortable with your own body again is something that the burden falls so heavily on the women in the christian world or the conservative evangelical christian world because and again this may have changed somewhat i haven’t been in that world for a long time now so i don’t know what they’re talking to college students about in crew for instance it’s been 20 years since they were doing it for us more than 20 years so but at the time what was happening is talk we’re not talking about masturbation we’re not talking about porn with women and so you’ve got a bunch of women who their view of their own sexual empowerment and understanding their own body they bring it into the marriage and they’re coming into the marriage with this thought of like oh my job is to serve and pleasure my husband the husband is coming into the marriage thinking my job i’m the one who’s really sex obsessed and you know and even the books that are written about it and the talks that are given it’s just like it sets up this dichotomy where the men are the ones who are really horny want to have sex and then women are the ones who let the men have sex when they want to when they’re not tired or whatever and talk about stunting think about all the women we were obviously stunted but think about the women who have been stunted in not being able or being free to explore their own sexuality and for and and which is is you know i think even more complex for a woman than it is for a man in some ways but yet it’s like you i mean you said one of the first things you said in episode one was you just out of context just said female orgasm but we’ll talk about female orgasms in the next episode but i think that that oh we may even have one but i think that that’s the perfect example of like you know okay you know spoiler alert there was one orgasm on my wedding night and it wasn’t a female one [Laughter] all right you want to come back next episode well there was more than one actually but they were all from me [Laughter] yeah we’re gonna i think i’m looking forward to the next conversation in the meantime uh you got a wreck for him i do again a completely out of context left turn wreck um i have discovered recently that my favorite type of fiction is near-term post-apocalyptic fiction that follows one protagonist who usually has a dog uh a big fan of a book called the dog stars um i can’t remember who wrote that peter something but that’s not what i’m recommending so it doesn’t matter i found come on you got it okay you can’t double it up the dog’s against the rules but the one that i’m really recommending and when i it’s funny because i realized that i like this genre and then i found a book called a boy and his dog at the end of the world and i was like this is got it all there you go this has got it all i mean it’s about a boy with a dog and this is the end of the world it’s a it’s by uh what’s his name ca fletcher he actually wrote this as well ca fletcher there’s charlie fletcher this is like a prolific writer screenwriter know nothing about him i just know that i really like uh this book and titles are very explanatory at least this one is a boy and his dog at the end of the world if you’re into you know the stuff that i’m listening to it um yeah i’m a listener how’s the narration it’s good it’s good good all right it’s good it’s good air biscuits if you have any sex questions go ahead and let us have it for episode after next to watch more ear biscuits click 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