EB 304: Losing Our Virginity – feat. Our Wives

[Music] welcome to ear biscuits the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time i’m link and i’m this week at the round table of dim lighting we are entering into the home stretch of sex timber you caught us in the middle of sex uh kind of sex timber you’re walking in on well hopefully you’re not hopefully exactly hopefully you’ve been here the whole time we’ve been talking about sex yeah if you haven’t go back yeah start at the beginning you could listen to this on its own but really you need to go back to part one this is part four that uh what we thought we thought it was gonna be part three but part two just got so big and long that it turns sometimes i’m sorry i don’t don’t try so hard i’m not trying you’re trying to i’m not trying at all i’m not planning any of this it just comes out you’re kind of forcing it uh this is a very special episode because we are actually going to uh at some point if we can figure out the technical side of things we’re having a little issue with that but i think we will uh have Jessie and Christy join us via satellite it’s what it seems like we want to get rid of just uh just like a call because we’re talking about the well we’re going to talk about the first time that i had sex the first time you had sex uh which is all also the first time that our wives had sex yeah and i you know i’ll just go ahead and give the disclaimer shorter version of our normal disclaimer hey we’re just we’re talking about our experiences they’re actually very narrow experiences in the in the realm of people’s sexual development and so we just want to acknowledge that once again we’re two straight white cis dudes who’ve been married uh once and had sex only within the context of that marriage we are speaking from that perspective and we’re not representing anybody else’s perspective but we absolutely acknowledge that there are so many different experiences that listeners are bringing to this thing and especially when it comes to the topic of coming out of purity culture and assessing the impact that that had on us is not a blanket statement about the impact it had on anybody else but we are expanding that perspective a little bit today by having our wives be a part of the conversation um but yeah so we’ll talk about that first time and then we’re gonna get in some different questions with our wives uh everything from what was it like for them to be you know finally be able to be sexually active in the in the context of kind of coming up through this purity culture we’re going to talk a little bit about parenting as our views have changed over time i’m going to talk about what if we can get to it we’ll talk about you know how do you maintain a sexual relationship a vibrant sexual relationship after 22 decades of being 22 decades 20 to two decades uh 20 years of being married to the same person so 200 years we’ll uh we’ll get into that what it feels like to you because it’s as fresh as a newborn baby to me what why are you trying to speak for me man i’m just in i’m just kidding i’m just joking man um but yeah but let’s so before we bring the ladies in we are going to talk about our like what our perspective on it was for each of us that one night at the uh where was i did we stay at the same hotel like a year apart you got married a year before me but it was that hotel next to the airport no i didn’t i didn’t i don’t think it’s romantic to hear planes flying over i stayed at like a residence inn no my mine was uh the really nice hotel i mean i’m gonna say near the airport i just mean it’s on that side of town but it was like i think i stayed there because you were like oh the place that you should stay before you travel to mexico on your honeymoon is because you went to jamaica i went to mexico is this what is it i thought it was called a residence inn maybe it is i made residence there just for for one night one night i mean you i i since i went first maybe i should go first sure let’s hear it so yeah i managed to stay a virgin until my wedding night um as i chronicled last week we you know once christy and i got engaged we started making out we started we we then began a physical relationship and it was kind of like that aspect of our relationship caught up with all the other aspects of our relationship that have been developing at more of what some people might consider more of a normal pace but we had really cordoned off this area in the name of purity and in service to god and not making past mistakes that i had made to to just to wait because we were in true love and you know what true love does it waits um but it wasn’t it was an issue of integrity and i think that’s something that we will go back to and maybe all of you guys can speak to as well that like i’m still i’m proud of the fact that we waited until we were married to have sex because that’s what we that was those were our convictions at the time and we followed through with that but it was it was very very difficult and there was a lot of build up so just as much as and christy and her family was planning the wedding and like all the details of that i was i was along for the ride when it came to that and i was like yesing and yes ending all of that but i was thinking the reaction is really in the wedding night not the wedding day you know what i’m saying it’s like that’s what i’m really looking forward to and is it so built up that it’s going to go sideways well you know i have a way of there’s no having these expectations if it goes sideways that doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with you there’s all penises are normal penises go up some gum down some go left some go right and i would say what mine does but i don’t want to then seem like i’m being defensive if it’s well apparently it goes sideways and it it doesn’t matter so i’m not going to talk about it well let me get in there well let me just insert let me insert myself into this conversation because i because uh i i’ll give my perspective of where i was at in terms of the same thing okay yeah which is yes and just like you were i wasn’t even yes ending any of the wedding stuff i was just i was like carte blanche you make all the decisions that you want i don’t this is not my thing i mean i’m gonna be there and i’ll anything you want me to do anything you need me to do i will do but i’m not gonna come in and have an opinion about colors of things and the only initiative you took was shaving buzzing your hair yeah for some reason a few nights before but not my nether regions i didn’t trim that up i didn’t even think about that oh i did because i i had a i had a friend who was in the navy they don’t have to shave their cubes he learned a lot in the name it’s called a crew cut man they all have to get it no they don’t have to shave their pubes no but he said you should you should really trim everything up down there because i mean he said in his words it’s like you look down and everything’s more impressive i mean shadowed some people might need that but um so yeah i i i recall being i know that i learned that information before i got married so i think i put it into practice because it stuck with me i knew that Jessie had never seen a penis i mean so she was going to be i i you know all she had to compare it to was she was never dug up any porn in the forest she had never seen penis in sexual context she had never worked i think she’ll talk about baseball she’ll talk about that a little bit later but wow yeah but that was i i this is the only thing that i first of all it was kind of the only thing i was thinking about for most of my life up until that point and so it was we have been having that now as that year turned into that month turned into that week turned into that day i was just like the whole day the whole wedding day i was like i’m going to have sex at the end of this day i’m going to get to have sex it feels surreal to meet all these freaking people to think about it so much talk to all these people and smile at them yeah i mean to have them good to have sex though to have this wedding and the wedding was a big deal there were hundreds and hundreds of people at my wedding it was a it was a huge endeavor and i felt like the night before i just fell ill just i think was anxiety because i just wanted i i just felt everyone else’s expectations so i was very anxious about the wedding and then it my mind kept going to and then there’s this there’s tonight there’s tonight i’m so excited but now i’m i’m also nervous and really keyed up and it’s not that Christy and i hadn’t talked about it and we had been given books and the books got more specific as the time got closer and especially for Christy she remembers this that there were a couple of women who she respected in a spiritual sense like they were involved in their churches and they were they had a practice of giving certain books to um true love weights ladies who were about to get married there was one book called intended for pleasure which i think had a spiritual context but it was it was helpful and encouraging and it was also like filling in all the all the things you might have thought you knew but you didn’t know and how things were going to work and how to ease into it i remember Christy and i we were talking about i guess there’s a little bit of a pun intended but talking about like not putting too much pressure on ourselves but and also trying to foster communication all along the way and just easing into it like figuratively and i i guess literally as well i mean that was something that was kind of a concern it was like is this gonna hurt i mean we had these conversations because probably not for you because somebody’s she was told that that it may be the case for your first time it might hurt she’ll talk more about that but i just remember we were having these speculative conversations about this thing that was so built up in our minds and but we did have this runway of a physical relationship in it so it wasn’t like entirely flipping a switch another thing that i’ll wait for us to talk more about with Christy and Jessie but we were in kinston for the wedding we drove the hour and a half after the wedding reception back to raleigh so we could be close to the airport so like you said the next day we could get on the plane and we could go to jamaica man mon so we’re going to jamaica so i you know we i didn’t want to like stay at her parents house that night god forbid this is the night and i was concerned about how well-rested we were going to be turns out you get a a second wind whenever it’s you’re ready to have sex for the first time yeah yeah i mean it was like we took our time we each had things that we had decided we were going to wear we we made a decision to not be in a hurry and to enjoy each other it was i don’t recall it being really awkward again because we had we had been physical in our engagement and it had really started ramping up like the the the intensity of desire so i mean i think i think we were a little bit nervous i think she was more nervous than i was but we just took it slow and then it was successful but and the eagle landed and i remember as the eagles landing oh gosh i just remember the the the predominant thought in my mind as the eagle was landing well what does the eagle landing mean um it’s actually happening we’re actually doing the old in and out okay we’re having sex okay thank you we’re having we’re having intercourse okay good understood okay do you understand so the eagle is really landing landing but it hasn’t landed completely right as it as it’s actually happening it’s like wow this is happening and then the the thought that i have was this is free this is free i don’t have to pay as opposed to all the prostitutes you have been with i don’t understand i never i think i was such a frugal individual who was so concerned about expenses and budgeting you’re such a weird man that whenever i was like how can something that is so amazing it felt so amazing and right you were saying i am free like i know you’re talking about like i am free like i feel so free no this this i am not paying for this this is that this is the best thing i’ve ever experienced that’s a man on a budget right there and you know what it doesn’t cost a dime yeah that is wonderful the most wonderful thing i’ve ever experienced i’m currently experiencing right now and there was and it didn’t cost anything interesting now you might say you didn’t say it did you i don’t think i said it out loud i might have said free but i was just like it was just like i was just like going yay you were making that or good god god bless you the sensual dolphin sounds no i wasn’t making any of those noises but yeah i remember that being my my first reaction and um i don’t i can’t recall if there was more than one session in the first night but i once we got to jamaica then it was like i just i definitely remember there being uh saddle soreness it was like at no cost i was like we gotta slow our roll a little bit because this is this is we’re experiencing some soreness you turned the faucet on much more her than me the sink wasn’t quite ready she was she was experiencing some soreness okay so for you it was free and that was and it sounded like you had it you you had a great time it was the contrast between it being the best thing ever and you typically for an experience that amazing and all-encompassing mind mind body and soul what i call the mon being engaged but you you typically have to uh you have to save up for something like that you gotta and i one would could argue that i did put it on layaway you’ve been saying there’s a couple ways to take that okay um so similar experience i guess you didn’t think that i definitely was not thinking that it was free uh but similar experience in that Jessie and i were always even before we got married a very communicative couple that communicated um a lot of things to each other so we were very comfortable with one another and so again there wasn’t an awkwardness in terms of like oh you’re gonna see me you’re gonna finally see me naked no awkwardness from or to either of the people in in the situation that can be that there’s there can be especially in evangelicalism but just in general in our culture there can be some like shame around your body and that kind of thing that wasn’t a concern that wasn’t something that that we had to deal with and we had read the same books and we had been to the same talks and we had had you know certain like spiritual mentors like kind of sit down and talk to us so yeah i knew that my disposition was going to want to move very quickly more quickly quickly than she wanted to and so going i’m going into it was like i’m going to take it super slow come to find out that i actually did not go that slow but in my mind compared to what i wanted to do it felt like an eternity right from her perspective which i think she’ll share it didn’t feel the same way okay um i was absolutely as i have made clear previously on this podcast obsessed with uh what i’ll now call the volvo and so i knew that uh more than just engaging in intercourse i wanted to engage in i’ll use the i’ll use the technical term connie lingus but you will giggle you will giggle the whole time i mean it’s a funny word it is a it’s a good word i don’t even know if i can say it um and so connie lingas so i was it doesn’t sound like a technical word it sounds like an urban dictionary term because it’s like it’s got it’s cunnie is part of it well i think funny lingus would be an urban dictionary that’s when you can’t stop laughing when you’re doing it oh man that doesn’t happen to me that’s cool though so i knew that that was going to be one of the key steps in the process because i mean honestly to this day it still kind of remains my favorite uh thing on the sexual menu okay i’m just gonna be honest with you and so i knew that i wanted that to happen but we had discussed that that was going to happen so now that she would have been like oh that’s weird why are you going to do that but um it’s the kind of thing you kind of want somebody to know that’s about to happen right and actually we we discussed it beforehand and the i mean there was enough apprehension in like how is this going to go and let’s let’s figure out how we want to step through this process and pace ourselves if we had done so much planning and pacing especially me and our dating relationship that this was just this was nothing new in conversations for us that i was i we decided to err on the side of you know what let’s let’s wait on oral sex until we get to jamaica let’s not put so much let’s not use those let’s not put like do the whole kitten caboodle in one night so we decided just to stretch it out but know that like that was something that we were going to definitely get into very soon but not the first night so that was awesome to me there was a stream and we were on the same page there was a strategy to it in my mind it was like okay well i know that there’s a lot of concern about the woman being ready for right penetration yeah and so i can get the thing that i’ve been waiting for my entire life and also accomplish the thing that these people are telling me is really important because i didn’t know anything about i looked at a lot of women’s bodies but i did not know anything actually about a woman’s body in sexual anatomy the books that we read did tell you how to know when a woman is ready and not so not to get ahead of yourself or get ahead of her that there’s there’s certain signs of yeah when she’s also ready so that it’s not um traumatic or you know more painful than it needs to be or painful at all and i will say again we we we’re speaking from what happened to us and like link said at the top like things turned out the way they turned out for us because of where we were at and what we believed at a certain particular time like going back and saying like what if you could go back would you do things differently it’s like well that’s that question doesn’t even make sense because if i go back as my current self i’m going to make different decisions but that in that in the place that i was and the perspective that i had i also agree that waiting until that night because we were both on the same page is what we both wanted and it was the consistency with our convictions and we were communicating the whole time it made that first night a very a beautiful thing right it made it a beautiful thing for me i’m not saying that was because we waited it was beautiful but it was a beautiful thing and we had waited so you didn’t pay for it it was free yeah did you think about it at the time but so but i think and and we’ll get the the you know the wives perspective on this you know i we move i moved to the next step in the process and of course we were we were using condoms at the time they weren’t i think both of us because that’s right we were in that place where we thought that birth control might cause an unintentional abortion or something it’s like we were in so deep at the time guys so they weren’t even on birth control so we were just using condoms um and so that was an interesting i was like i’ve never i’ve never even put one on do you know what i’m saying i think maybe i put one on in practice like the week before i was like i want to make sure i can like get this thing on oh one time when i i think i was 17 i went i i went to the tmart in anger and they had one of those machines in the bathroom that sold condoms and other sex toys uh for like four quarters they’ll give you a condom yeah and i so i was i bought one there and put it on just to see just to try it out i i just i was curious so that’s one thing that i did before you i wore a condom you wouldn’t bought a condom just for the hell of it yeah i i just wanted to see what that was like but i was like maybe this will help with cleanup well not to dwell on it too much because we’ve got other things to talk and then i left the bathroom and got some fried chicken but no i took it home but i will say i think that it was beautiful it was incredible from my perspective we’ll get Jessie’s perspective in a moment uh and then when we went to mexico that week something very interesting happened which i we can unpack a little bit but like i ended up having what i will refer to as performance issues okay we had a lot of sex multiple times a day but there were a couple of times where i was just like i don’t know really what’s going on here there’s this combination of finally getting the thing that you’ve built up in your entire life and it was incredible and it was beautiful but i there’s so many things attached to it so many things in my brain from the shame that i had attached to it from the porn that i had watched uh we may answer a question about that about porn and what our current view is on porn in the in the last episode but i think there was just this sense of like being completely overwhelmed with all these things that were happening that i think translated into oh i am here here we are in the middle of doing this and i’m losing my erection right and this which that could be scary yeah well and then create a vicious cycle and the interesting thing was is that you know here 20 years later as a man in his mid-40s like this is not an issue at all so it was not a physical thing it was a psychological thing sure just goes to show you how much yeah the mental component is at play in in sex play and i think that there was an element of because that was happening and me not understanding what was happening Jessie definitely not understanding what was happening that we can we can get her perspective on that in terms of did that make her feel rejected like what how is she processing that now i want to be clear that it wasn’t a persistent problem not because i’m ashamed of it just to be to be clear and it was something that kind of moved through relatively quickly but and it was i kind of isolated mostly to that that week and then that first year of marriage and then slowly kind of just went away and i think it just had to do with the fact that this thing that i had to crystallize in my mind as a certain thing then was happening on a regular basis and then i started realizing oh this isn’t this is everything that i thought it would be in terms of the physicality but there’s this other component to making love that is almost a service in a sense right there’s a there’s a service aspect to to caring about the other person yeah that can sometimes make sex seem like oh man i just kind of want to just have sex i don’t really want to make love right now do you know what i’m saying yeah and i think that that dynamic is something that i did not anticipate being a sticking point uh in our marriage but let’s let’s uh let’s take a short break and then we’re not virgins anymore and then on the internet and then get the get the wives on the line yeah go to mythical.com uh for all your sexual fantasy needs i mean just for your not actually none of that uh i can recommend other sites for that we got a backpack oh crap here it is right here oh you’ve had it on the whole time or just had it behind it’s been on my seat check out this mythical backpack it’s padded it’s got a laptop slot it’s got mythical written all over it including a mythical rubber logo right here which is nice it’s got an outer pocket and it’s got some really comfort first straps mythical.com put all your condoms in there i’m just trying to tie it in yeah we don’t sound like mythical condoms you don’t want a mythical condom you want a real one that works your boys on your backpack mythical.com [Music] okay so we’ve got our wives here with us hello ladies Jessie thank you for doing this how how do you feel about doing this Christy i have diarrhea okay all right well okay that’s not what we’re talking about today hey you know it’s uh if you if you want it this is a confessional podcast and that’s a great start does that does that and that’s really sexy i gotta say that how is that related i think Jessie i think Jessie does too right Jessie i woke up with diarrhea as well thank you oh my gosh so you guys are you guys are nervous you guys are feeling it feeling it feeling the nerves and talking about this stuff well i mean you’re totally easing us in to coming on the podcast right like the first time we come on the podcast all we have to do is talk about our sex lives yeah yeah no big deal easy no no biggie we wanted to rip the band-aid off well and here’s my thing i’m one of the most private people ever and somehow y’all have talked me into coming on this podcast to talk about my most intimate relationship with the internet and i don’t i don’t know how i feel about it how did that other than diarrhea but i i mean how did that happen because you did decide i’m not coercing you to do this that because if anybody’s going to talk about having sex with you it has to be me bingo Jessie what about you how did you how did you get comfortable enough to say yes to doing this um i mean the same it feels you know there’s there’s definitely been talk about Christy and i on the podcast and we’ve often talked about how we do have our own story um you know not just with deconstruction but with so many of these things um and if you know it’s been a conversation for a long time went about when we would be ready to come on if we wanted to come on what we wanted to share but i think knowing that y’all were going to be talking about sex it feels like we can’t in some ways not share um not that we were coerced you have our full consent to be here but yeah you guys are i’m not gonna do rhett’s song i’m not um it’s horrible anyway brave or talented i haven’t done it the first time um but you know christy and i are both the only people that you guys have individually had sex with and we are i’m glad you said individually thank you we are um also you know i am excited to get to share some of the woman’s perspective that’s something that is is you know is missing um just because of the nature of what your podcast is well that’s that’s i mean that’s exactly why we wanted you to be a part of it again it wasn’t necessarily well thought out because we would we told you a little bit you know not completely last minute but after we had made the decision to do sex symbol we were like ah like we’re talking all about our sex lives in our sex lives as they exist now and have for quite some time we kind of only exist with you yeah we put you between a rock and a hard place uh which might be a euphemism for our honeymoon night yeah uh so let’s get into that yeah because thanks for thanks for being willing to do this and i know that it’s it it it makes such an impact in people’s lives to hear again destigmatizing these type of conversations and it not just being our perspectives but yours as well means a lot to us so and we just so we just shared what our sort of perspective on finally getting to have sex was like as you can imagine what uh what we shared you were there um but we’d like to hear from y’all like growing up and kind of being raised in purity culture being such a part of it you know we were all about to go on staff a crusade like we were in it right and then to and all of us having waited until that first night like what was it like to finally be able to break you know whatever have sex essentially and christy why don’t you take this one first oh thank you yeah what do you remember about that night or or the build up to it well i mean i was i was definitely a lady in waiting um which means that that was a book i don’t remember who wrote it but that was a book that our bible study did that was basically right beside my bible and everything the checklist of the proverbs 31 woman um was something that i looked at a lot and i tried to be her and uh i i couldn’t i couldn’t be her um but i was i appreciated it was a high standard yeah it was very specific a little bit and it was all in relationship to the husband and the family as far as i can remember you know everything was contextualized and yeah like um at first like there were there were a lot of rules um around me as a woman i somehow believe that um you know that god didn’t want me to wear spaghetti straps or gods didn’t want me to wear a two-piece bathing suit anymore or um you know i i had to protect you from my body um so i had to cover my body and i didn’t want to cause you to you know use some evangelical christian words to stumble or to sin like that was that was my responsibility because you were the spiritual leader and i had to protect you from myself um you know so that was i liked the rules because it felt safe and as an enneagram six i really value security and safety um so there was there was a part of that that i was kind of comfortable with um and i you know you were like the first super christian that i ever dated so you know like super devout yeah super devout like you you didn’t want to hold my hand except for like in certain like at certain points or like maybe on on a on a random wednesday you would call me and want to hold my hand and for some like for some reason i thought that was okay and that was great because i contextualized it in spirituality which is what i which what i was taught so i think that you knew that my heart behind it i was in the right place and you were like but it was weird well it was kind of weird because i was like what is he attracted to me of course i of course i know he’s attracted to me but he’s just being really disciplined and really strong um and we’re gonna be rewarded for this on our honeymoon night and if we would have stayed that chaste like as chased as we were up until our engagement that we didn’t kiss or rarely hold hands or have a physical relationship i can only i mean i feel like our wedding night would have been it would have been it could have gone anyway it could have gone a lot of ways it didn’t go right so well i mean how do you feel if you fast forward to that night how do you how did you feel going into it what do you remember well i remember like i had two i had two ladies like the week before kind of sit down and talk to me about the wedding night um and so i kind of knew what was gonna happen i wasn’t really sure but like i was just gonna go with it but it it was really weird like i was excited but it was also just really really awkward because it was like some switch like you hear sometimes people like turn on turn them turn it off and on and switch right from nothing like we can’t do anything and all of a sudden we can do everything um so that was just kind of that was just kind of hard for me we had a ramp up i mean our physical relationship really got going once we got engaged and so then there was like that i mean you kind of you know well i mean i’ve i’ve spoken about the the gene jamming thanks for speaking about that and not telling me that you’re speaking about that i just did tell you that i did speak about it i mean so we had i mean there was no doubt that like the sparks were flying and that we were doing everything we could to not have intercourse until that night so it wasn’t i mean there was and we had talked about how we were going to approach it right that we were going to ease into pray like we prayed what we prayed yes we did didn’t we you forgot oh yes we played so we get you you’re supposed to pray well honey wedding night on the wedding night it was a wedding night okay we weren’t supposed to pray together before because it was too intimate that was the thing y’all were looking forward to is praying together we did didn’t we like we got to the room let me tell you what we did we we knelt down beside the bed and held hands and we prayed together you don’t remember this completely naked no i still had all my beautiful satin thingy that my mama bought me you we had you had on your lingerie and we got down on our knees and prayed yes babe we did that is awesome i love that you don’t remember that i i remember it now but i i’d forgotten that we did that and then what the satin thingy came off [Laughter] it didn’t come off enough and that that’s enough to share about that had you seen a wiener had you seen a winner i think it’s time for Jessie to take over now okay Jessie had you seen a wiener i know the answer to this because Rhett’s already said i was actually going to talk about whether or not i had seen a wiener i’m sorry read already we’re winning it link do you want me to start with how to do it no just start with i’m going to start start with where you want to start with answering the question thank you Jessie it’s just our vibe and our energy is so connected i knew you wanted to talk about it thank you Christy i love you yeah go for it um okay so i had definitely um gotten all the memos about sex being sex outside of marriage being bad um not something you wanted to do a lot of the same as Chris you know at my my body could make men stumble what i wore could make men stumble i mean i remember being at this christian camp and having like uh crying come to jesus moment over my two-piece bathing suit and like promising god that i would never wear a two-piece bathing suit again of course i wore a two-piece bathing suit again but like there was a lot of internal turmoil over my two-piece bathing suit a lot of pressure um you know not only was sex bad sexually adjacent things that could get you going were not ideal and i think Rhett talked about his standard was higher even than my standard was um in the beginning um and that that changed um but i think along with that idea you know i’m Christy said she’s an enneagram six i’m an enneagram two and my like instinctual subtype is one to one or the sexual subtype and so like that what that means is that like i am oriented to the world around my close relationships and like i wanna be close i want to be super connected like i’m a naturally very like touchy feely affectionate person and so i feel like i had been holding so much of that back for all these years and so i had this idea that like once i got married you know if sex outside of marriage was bad well sex inside of marriage was not only good it was like life-changing earth shattering world building like which is true right it was you know it was going to be this otherworldly like not just physical union but spiritual union the bible said so to become one flesh it’s like you cannot this was a code you know i struggle with codependency so this was like a biblically mandated like dream for a codependent person like i can actually totally merge with this person that i’m in love with um so was it so was it good and and i had never seen an adult penis i mean okay meaning you had seen like a baby penis you saw the nirvana everybody’s seen baby penises [Applause] so like i you know mine is adult just just so you know i mean i was only 22 or 23 but it was adult full grown um you know and an older woman had told me in trying to prepare me that um that the male genitalia looked like a man’s insides had grown up on the outside well like a hernia it’s not an inaccurate description and you were so ready to be connected to that oh gosh wow so i mean i with all of that like background all this like pressure all of i’m also an idealist so i had like you know sex was gonna be like the greatest thing and if you kiss the frog it’ll turn into a prince i would say you know it was anticlimactic not to be too on the nose well you mean you literally did not climax yes i did not i’ve never had an orgasm before i didn’t know my body i really know how to have an orgasm and also like i mean this had nothing to do with Rhett or me it just was like huh okay that was a lot of build up for something that was like fine but it’s okay because we’re going to get to try again anytime we want and it’s free great that’s what link said hold on Christy you don’t remember my my the thing that was going through my mind the first time we had sex i don’t know that was it this is amazing and it’s free okay you know i was i was just very frustrated he’s a strange man we all know that we’ve been i don’t i don’t yeah i don’t know what to say about that so okay so we heard what was going through Jessie’s mind i didn’t i don’t want to cut you off is there more that was going through your mind Jessie because i want to hear what was going through Christy’s mind in the act as well because you were like okay that’s that was it huh i mean i just think the the whole thing especially the first time you know i just it was it was fine it was just kind of it’s pretty good for me i was having the time of my life yeah you know probably sooner than i expected it to be i mean hey listen i admit that i admit that um yeah of course Christy what about you what what do you remember thinking as it was happening i i really don’t remember thinking a whole lot like just like the mechanics of like how like how is this gonna how do we do this um um i like we had three mechanics in the room yeah right they had wrenches very sexy yeah but it was like yeah it was everything you think of any aspect of it you’re like well i can imagine but i remember there was some trepidation because it was like is this gonna hurt yeah i mean like that part i don’t remember it really hurting just feeling like awkward um and then okay but this is supposed to feel good so like this is just something that we’re gonna have to work on like and we do like we get we get to do this whenever we want to as many times a day as we want to try and like we will get better at this and this is what i’ve been waiting for but there were no you don’t recall any sparks flying or any like what kind of i mean are you trying to get me to say something no i i i’m just saying that was my experience and that there’s a contrast there which is interesting well like i was excited about um i got my mom my mama let me go to the tanning bed um yeah yeah before i got married and that was like the only time that she let me go to the tanning bed so like i don’t know if y’all remember but like they had these little playboy bunny stickers stickers yeah and so i had really been working on my sticker placement and my and my tan and like i was excited to show you by tan oh i was excited to see it i remember there being like less tanned hearts i don’t remember a playboy bunny i think i put hearts in certain places and playboy bunnies and i was i was excited about being that tan and like you getting to see me super tan well all you know what you’re probably the only one who didn’t me and Jessie both went to the tanning bed before our wedding did you not go i’m sure i was tanned but i needed no bed well but to get how you gonna get your cheeks tan you can’t you could you wanna go out on the pool side somewhere yeah expose yourself this is lake we’re talking about well i didn’t wanna have burnt buns tan in bed um that’s right Jessie right that is not free it is not free so i think there’s a common theme here in that um you know frankly you know neither of you had an orgasm on your wedding night neither of you kind of understood necessarily what that was and what that would feel like it was something that thankfully we eventually uh came to figure out um and i will say i do want to give credit to like the men in like campus crusade who had talked to at least Rhett i’m assuming Link too and we were talking a little bit about this last night like that book intended for pleasure which i don’t think i read but y’all did read there was even though you know we were dealing with purity culture and all the ways that messed us up and and uh you know there is so much hurt and pain because of that however there was a lot of like discussion about the woman’s pleasure as well um in marriage of course it had to be within the context of marriage but that was something that was talked about with with at least Rhett was was talked with yeah yeah definitely me too but you guys were never encouraged i mean i know because we weren’t either to masturbate in order to understand yourself and so it’s like there was this dependence on absolutely being within marriage and waiting to have to figure all that out yeah so first of all first of all you did not give us anything on our three questions that we thought we might be talking about and there wasn’t anything about orgasm or masturbating on it so i think you’re trying to trick us into talking about this and i don’t appreciate it okay but yeah i could i but that was really really kind of a joke right was that kind of a joke i’m very happy to be here though i’m very happy to be here well she is smiling when she’s saying these things go ahead i think like something that i kind of wanted to say and like um you know there was like Jessie was saying there is a lot from purity culture that has been kind of you know traumatizing and scarring and just really hard that we’ve worked through um you know as adults and you know for me i i didn’t realize you know like i i kind of liked the rules there were a lot of things that i feel like i feel grateful for um our dating relationship and just how it was led and you know yeah there were frustrating things but i also felt safe um now was that an illusion of safety maybe i don’t know but um i felt safe and i didn’t really realize um that like a lot of the trauma or the shame um until like i would say just in like you know the last 10 or 15 years as i’ve like been going through my deconstruction of oh this is wait a minute this is actually part of purity culture and um you know so just now are you thinking of a specific example well i mean just like as a 43 year old woman like learning to you know love love my body and that it is okay to wear a tank top and like you know like i’m 43 and i still will think about oh well that i mean i can’t i can’t wear oh yes i can like it just it’s very ingrained um you know and like we have an 18 year old daughter and like i want her to be able to express herself and wear what she wants to wear and like you know Jessie and i talk about this a lot like we don’t want our own stuff or our own trauma to be projected on what we tell our kids and like what we what we say to our kids and it’s like oh i want lily to be free in all the ways that i wasn’t and wear what she wants to yeah i i do think we’re finding this we’re hoping to find this middle ground where there’s purity culture has its damaging elements but it’s it’s designed to it it creates fear and shame but it’s to protect you from things that like i don’t know i don’t if we’d have gone to the other extreme right we only know what we’ve been through right we don’t know what what could have befallen us there so obviously but we were on an extreme right and so there’s some negatives to it so i think it’s looking for that middle ground where we’re not projecting on our kids but we are trying to inform and protect them and i i mean i think that’s getting into the next question is parenting but i do want to clarify too because i i i want to be clear that i’m when you say middle ground i don’t think what you’re saying is that you’re trying to arrive at a middle ground in your perspective on purity culture because i think that would come across as insensitive correct and also i don’t think that’s what you mean and we’ll talk about this as we get into talking about parenting what i would say is that we navigated a system that was set up to to get you to a place where you got to marriage without having sex and if you could navigate it it could work and and it worked for both of you and a lot of things fell into the right places right it would work and you could be safe and you could be happy but just statistically speaking it’s just a fact that in places that teach the abstinence-only education and that purity culture is sort of what the is with the cultural norm for teens like those there’s just there’s a lot more damage and destruction left in the wake of that mentality than there is situations like us like i almost there’s a part of me that almost feels like i i don’t i feel like we almost are misrepresenting things because we’re two really good cases of how this could turn out but when you look at statistics you know teen pregnancy and stds in mississippi are a lot higher than they are in washington state you know what i’m saying and there’s a lot more christians and a lot more purity culture in mississippi than there is in washington state what i’m saying is there’s got to be another way i agree what you’re saying and how you clarify what i’m saying there’s got to be another way to to protect our kids and educate our kids and give them standards for their own integrity yeah that they can then begin to live by right so i think the question and Jessie we’ll have you take this one first is as parents um how has the fact that our world view has shifted dramatically that we’re no we no longer consider ourselves christians or to have a christian ethic when it comes to sex but we’ve got kids and we gotta we gotta tell them something about sex right so how has our approach to parenting how is your approach to parenting and the way that you you talk about sex and think about sex in terms of parenting how has that changed as your world view has changed well i think i mean i want to start out by saying parenting is the hardest thing i’ve ever done and that’s not a reflection on my kids that’s just like it’s just the reality of it like trying to figure out you know and maybe a bit a large part of that is like is a change in perspective is knowing that you know coming to the conclusion that the way that i did it you know our dating story my beliefs they were a way they were not the way um and so you know i think it it does make you feel um kind of in some ways anchorless um and like okay what i had this framework i had this very black and white this very binary way of of seeing the world of teaching my children of and like sure it was you know as Christy said sure there were rules but it also was like very clear um and now i am things are not clear things are not black and white um which is one of the reasons you know i’ve been in a lot of therapy and i would never deign to give somebody parenting advice because i think parenting again it’s the hardest thing i’ve ever done it is every kid is different every parent is different every back story is different every town is different every you know i i just to try to say this one way is the best and this is gonna work for everybody and then there’s the question of well what does work mean you know what is what do you even mean by that i mean you look you say like okay our relationships worked well we’re still together i think you know i would say both of us have really healthy loving as far as as i know like we both feel happily committed to each other um but that may not be somebody else’s definition of working it i have kind of taken on like a harm reduction um model in parenting and it’s like i know i’m gonna do harm because i’m a human they’re humans how can i do the least amount of harm how can they which maybe sounds fatalistic but you know i just i i think the best thing i can do as a parent is to work on my own [ _ ] so that i don’t project it onto my kids so that i don’t believe that their journey has to look like mine so that i don’t try to have them fulfill unfulfilled dreams or meet some standard that i didn’t meet or a standard that i did meet um yeah i don’t know well you know one of the things that we’ve been talking about uh it me and you i know um is that man it would be easy not easy it would be easier and this may just be my perspective because i’m no longer in it it would be easier if i could just give the kids the blueprint and the framework i’m like this is what you’re supposed to do this is what you’re not supposed to do here it is it’s in this book it’s not really in this book but we’ve kind of added on and made it seem like it’s in this book and here it is take it and now i just i’ve given you all the information and do with it what you will it that from a parent standpoint that sort of one size fits all these are the rules for everybody is a much easier thing to do once you start saying actually maybe it’s different for different people and not everybody’s the same and everybody’s on a different point of the spectrum now it gets cloudy and it gets complicated you know one of the things that i’ve said you call call it the harm reduction model the way that i’ve kind of worked it out in my brain is that as opposed to approaching you know the way i think about sex and the way i think about parenting when it comes to sex and from a moral framework i think about it from a health framework right like what’s actually the healthiest thing because i know for a fact that our kids whether i in some some regards i think whether we had told them this or not whether we had given them a christian framework or not i don’t necessarily think they would be abiding by it but the fact is is that they don’t have the same ideological framework that we had coming up that kept us so in lock step with each other and committed to these principles and so to put those expectations on them to behave in the same way that we did would be a ludicrous expectation that would do so much damage to our relationship but like link said but there are realities about the nature of sex right there’s consequences to sex like sex is you know very pleasurable but sex is also the primary means by which we procreate so pregnancy that’s an option stis that that can happen emotional entanglement is something that can happen there’s there’s a lot of different things that are just realities about sexual relationships right so i think the the model that go ahead well no i mean i was just gonna say you know i think one one other element that you know in thinking about those things of course open communication trying to work on my own shame about sex so that i don’t project that shame onto my kids and they have shame um you know having a other adults in their life that they can talk to whether that’s a therapist or like a younger an aunt or an uncle or whoever that like you know they’re not going to want to tell me everything um sometimes they’ll tell me more than i want to know but just having you know i think one thing that we miss out a lot in in the way that we live now is that we don’t have the community aspect that we have at other times where you have these other people that you trust that your kids trust that they can you know talk about these things too and like one other thing i want to say i just want to clarify like in saying i felt anchorless um you know i think that has negative connotations for sure and yet the more stuff the more of my own stuff i work out the more i feel it as like a freedom and an openness like one thing i’ve said to red is like i feel like i’m kind of in an open field in my mind in a way that like i hadn’t been in the past um and so and the more in in parenting one thing we talk a lot about in therapy with my parenting is like the tighter i grip on to an idea or a standard or whatever it is usually the worse things go and the more i release and the more i trust and the more i i’m not talking about being naive i’m not talking about letting your kids do whatever they want i’m just talking about like a a um kind of positioned towards my children of like they are their own beautiful souls um whose life and journey and destiny all of it is going to look different than mine and like what can i do to help them become to help them know that they are gonna mess up they are gonna not um not always live up to their own standards whatever those may be um you know in the same way the more that i model that in my own life i think the more that frees them up to be able to do that as well Christy where’s your head at when it comes to this conversation let’s let’s get in on it i mean i i agree with a lot of the things that um Jessie has shared and yeah i mean i i think like love and acceptance and communication um you know have just been like i mean my therapist we were just talking about it yesterday she was just like your family y’all talk so much to each other and like um yet they’re still humans individual humans on their own path run in their own race that have their own opinions and will make their own decisions and i am not very good at opening my hands and just watching it happen um because you know it’s there there is so much of it that’s beautiful um when you do see this this human like grow up into like this adult and like it’s it’s kind of cool like to see the woman that Lily has become and like um watching Lincoln become a man and like just kind of watching them figure out life um you know because they don’t of course they don’t want to talk to their parents about sex but i just want it to be something that we can talk about openly like why does it have to be so weird to talk about sex like i think that’s my fault i think i’m the reason well we can just make everything everything i was gonna say we can just say that really about everything because you make everything awkward um right so it kind of brings everything up to a weirdness that is usually reserved for just sex talk i bring everything to sex talk weird so then sex talk weird this is camouflaged i mean when we first but yeah it’s destigmatizing the word sex like in the house in my house growing up and in my family you just didn’t use the word or you whispered it and like on the way i was dropping land off lando off at school this morning he was like i was talking about getting the technical stuff set up for you to join she was like he was like what is she what is mom doing it’s like oh we’re doing you know where we’re having the series about sex and he’s like oh you don’t have to talk to me about that i’m like but we do want there’s nothing wrong with talking about sex and we want to talk about it openly because it’s not something that needs to be whispered about so i’m telling him that at that moment that’s like the instinct to be to to to flee from the word and the concepts at as an 11 year old is something that hey we just want to gently push back on and not and not whisper about well i think and make that one decision the fundamental differences that i see between the way that we thought about sex you know 20 years ago and the way we think about it now is that i was in a place as a conservative evangelical where i had been sort of misled and lied to like things were mischaracterized but all in the name of protecting you right so it’s like we’re going to lie or we’re going to come up with things that are not true about the way condoms work and the way aids the hiv can get through the condom and christy can speak to that i mean christy what did you what’s one of the things that you heard that kept you from having sex in high school well um that my my favorite grandmother that was already in heaven was watching me the cloud of witnesses yeah and is she was she in the center well i don’t i mean did that stop she got married well that’s she’s like that’s what i’m gonna say it’s like i mean i guess she’s still watching me she’s clapping oh she’s clapping oh christy she’s happy but the idea that we had to be told things that weren’t true to protect us from something and it was rigid it was one size fits all i think the biggest difference for me at this point is like the more truth that i can dispense into this situation the more things i can say the more my kid can know about this the more because listen like i said there’s it’s not saying that like oh sex is free sex is free and have it have it with anybody anytime you want there are no consequences it’s been completely it’s not a sacred thing it’s just a physical act i don’t believe that i think it’s a beautiful thing i think it’s a sacred thing i think there are big deep consequences to it i think it’s something that should be taken seriously but i think i don’t have to make that up i think that’s just that’s an evidence-based approach based on the consequences of this act and the the nature of the way humans are emotionally so it’s more of a it’s it’s more trusting listen this is difficult difficult to do trusting your children right and saying i’m going to give you all the information i’m going to do my best to model the things that i think that you should do because i know my modeling is going to be much more effective than my talking to you um and then hoping for the best versus just trying to protect them and give them some some rigid rules that i know they’re not gonna follow does that make sense well and i mean i think that we all want a formula for parenting i know i do i would love to have a formula that you do this this and this and it spits out this kind of kid who then is going to fulfill all of my dreams about how i was gonna parent and how a kid was gonna be or do or whatever and that just it doesn’t exist it wouldn’t be good for us if it did exist you know i think the most the most growth i’ve had to see in my own life has been through like struggling through some of these parenting questions and continuing continuing to struggle through them yeah i think um and coming out of our experience and now ushering our kids through their own experiences that are so different than ours we can’t it’s hard we cannot speak from our experience as much yeah so we have we’re learning so much at the same time and just tr i i think trying to foster a trust with our kids where we can have difficult conversations and where we’re not the the end-all be-all bringing the the authority to every point of view in every issue but we’re tr but there’s things that we’re having to figure out together yeah and it is particularly challenging uh yeah and i i was gonna say like you know between me and Jessie and then like our girlfriend thread like we like i’m keeping this list of things that they didn’t tell you at a baby shower yeah yeah and you know because when when you’re pregnant you know you decide to have kids and you become pregnant and then you go to this baby shower and let’s talk about the stroller and the car seat and the diapers and all these things that that you know you you’re bringing in a newborn and a human and it’s just like when do we get to talk about like raising teenagers and like sex well right when you’re in the middle of it and you’re screwing it all up and you don’t know what you’re doing yeah yeah but i mean that yeah but the other i mean but the on the other foot what do you say on the other hand on the other foot either one um [Laughter] you also but that like that book doesn’t that it doesn’t exist it’s like what Jessie’s saying it’s like that formula isn’t there like because each kid is different and each parent is different and like you just have to figure it out yeah and we want to go ahead and move on to the last question just because i know people want to hear us talk about maintaining a vibrant sexual relationship after 21 years of marriage 21 years of sex so Christy let us have it um well let’s see um i uh i don’t know what i want to say right now hold on i i okay go ahead can can you start yeah i i mean one of the things that i i think before we got married and it’s a thought that comes up a lot for me is that sex is not a thermostat it’s a thermometer and i think that still rings true is that it’s you can’t have sex in order to make to manipulate your relationship into a better place but your sex life more often than not can be a good indicator of how well your relationship how how well you feel connected in in the other areas of your relationship i don’t i want to reserve the right to say that’s not a blanket statement and that they there is an interplay both ways but um you know there’s i guess it at the risk of it being the sexist remark to say that sex begins in the kitchen i don’t i don’t know if i like that specifically but the general principle of our physical intimacy is first of all insects is paired with an emotional intimacy that then is fueled by our relationship in all other areas and so if things if we’re going through a difficult time with each other it’s like you know that that makes sex more difficult or if we’re going through a difficult time together about other things it makes sex more difficult but um and over the course of 20 years we’ve we’ve weathered so many things that have built uh and strengthened our love for each other we’ve lived multiple lives together and miraculously remained together um and i think that is reflected in our sex life that it’s a it’s a priority for us and right but but that that means that sometimes it needs to be scheduled so that we will follow through with it so these are some of the things i’m thinking you pick up on any of that you want okay i got you i got you um yeah i i think like priority is the word that i needed to hear to get me started thank you for that little verbal foreplay there [Laughter] i think like i do believe that our sexual relationship is um sacred and that’s why i don’t i don’t know it’s just like to take care of it just like i would any other aspect of our relationship and um i think the two of us separately learning as much about like being on our own journey and learning what we have about ourselves individually um has made it aware like we’re like closer now than we’ve ever been and um dealing like we dealt a lot with like i think about the in sickness and health like we’ve we’ve dealt a lot with like my sicknesses and being on different medications that like take my sex drive away and like oh well we can’t be on that medication because this is really important to us so let’s switch medications and um you know just really taking time to i understand and appreciate what you need you understand and appreciate what i need like we take a lot of trips together because i have anxiety and i need to get out of my house in order to really focus and like i feel like some of our best sex is when we’re on trips oh oh yeah you know it’s like you take me we take each other to like these beautiful places and like i am really able to be present and um because at home you’ve got like is there a kid that’s going to try to come through the door and our lock doesn’t quite work because if it fully works then we’re locked in well but now it’s like saka and jasper like saka and jasper it’s not even the kids anymore it’s the animals but but i made a i made a point i was like listen dogs pets are not going to ever be a reason that we’re not going to have sex barbara we had this conversation goes into her crate she’s just like instinctual they kind of know she like looks kind of shameful and just kind of just goes into a crate and daddy are doing that thing again and and you know what if if it it’s a big enough bed if the dog’s gonna stay on the bed the dog’s gonna stay on the other side of the bed but the dog is not i don’t like that like it is an unacceptable reason like this is something that we agreed on right it’s like yeah yeah totally because you can find yourself having there’s so many circumstances that keep you from not not being ready or it not being the right time the proverbial headache of it all but it’s so much more than that when you’ve got so much life that you’re living that you have to say and you get exhausted so it’s like at 9 30 one of us is asleep nine o’clock maybe one of us is asleep so it’s like okay gotta get started let’s do day sex but then when are the kids not gonna be around i mean i also think that like creativity in like locations and like being willing to wait i mean you could have sex in other places than like your bed and i’m not talking about like going on trips but i’m talking about get creative the stairs one time we locked ourselves in the garage because the garage locked in such a way that like no one could get in there that was fun because we had a mattress in there that we were storing oh yeah the old one it wasn’t that old it was covered Jessie Jessie give us your perspective on this i mean i i want to say that like i do feel like you know our sex life is better than it’s ever been and it’s something that continues to like continues to get better and better and you know i learned something about you a few weeks ago that i had a second penis that um just let her talk that i decided to finally review i actually want to know what you she learned if she’s willing to share i’m not gonna no i’m not gonna tell you what i learned oh come on people can benefit the i think you know in the same way that like you can get into negative communication patterns in your marriage like it’s very easy to get into patterns like with how you have sex or how you or this person’s going to do this then i’m going to do this and whatever and so continuing to like talk to talk about things continuing to um ask hard questions continuing to be like vulnerable i mean that’s the thing i think i sometimes i think i have more of a problem of like over sharing just in general but i think in our marriage to be able like to continue i mean having growing sexually with your partner is a constant um kind of willingness to be vulnerable and to maybe be embarrassed um but to know that like it’s worth it um to try new things to try new places to try new whatever you know one of my favorite favorite people who talks about sex is astaire perel she has a great podcast can i wreck another podcast on your podcast is that yeah is that a bad thing to do yeah it’s better than this one but you know where should we begin um is her podcast where she talks to couples um about what’s going on in their life what’s going on in the relationship and often you know their sex is involved and she has done a lot of research and on human sexuality eroticism and so one of the things she says is love enjoys knowing everything about you and desire needs mystery um and so i think you know it’s hard to do when you have been married for 20 years so continuing to find new ways to to have mystery you know rhett’s really great at accents would you like to see my second wee-wee ah cookie monster loving cookie how about that yeah nibble nibble cookie cookie yeah you don’t know the half of it you know i think not like knowing that it’s important not often it takes one person one partner being willing to like put something out there you’re maybe gonna be embarrassed about it but it’s gonna be worth it um and you know we have so much fear and shame around sex and like there’s so much potential for it to be incredible and i think the more vulnerable and open and real and creative you can be um the better it is but there ain’t nothing wrong with a quickie every now and again just to like absolutely i mean as long as you’re using the cookie monster accent but i mean even that you know that’s something we talk about like okay what’s our ratio of quickies to like love making what what is like the good the golden ratio of that um and again it’s just like the combination of like being willing to be open and vulnerable but then also figuring out the ways to discover your partner anew and to find mystery well we could continue talking to y’all for hours um but we actually can’t right and i know people would want that but um so listen thank you for coming on here and being vulnerable like you said this is the the the first time you’ve been on the pike the podcast and you’re talking about these jumping in the deep end this is the best way yeah this is the best way just rip the band-aid off get right into it i know that a lot of people out there will appreciate your perspective and so i’m glad you’re able to give a little bit of the other side of the coin it’s a needed perspective and you’re in in very needed in uh just our lives we need you yeah each individually the labia to our [ _ ] and balls oh lord okay well thank you for having us this is just wonderful it was really beautiful uh love you baby you’re gonna go uh what what’s the word when you talk about what just happened debrief thank you that’s the one yeah i’m gonna change my shirt because of my armpits wet all right all right started out with diarrhea ended with armpit sweat we’ll see see you tonight keep it real all right [Music] okay so the girls have gone back to whatever they need to be doing today and we are left in basking in the afterglow of having them on ear biscuits talking about that was wonderful it was thrilling and i know that everyone is just going to wish that they were on every single week or maybe in place of us maybe i feel a little threatened um you know and i think they did so well i think um i mean obviously each one of those the the thing is that each one of those questions could have been its own episode and also i mean each one of those questions could be its own podcast with multiple episodes yeah like exploring one of those things and i’m sure those exist but so we you know i think that we kind of scratched the surface on a few of those things but i do think that getting their perspective uh illuminated these issues in a big way i we did want to just take before we wrap up link’s going to kick off the story which i think it ties in perfectly with the last question which is what do you do to keep things spicy yeah 20 years into your marriage let’s leave let’s leave them with this the story of the first time we bought vibrators yeah how about that heck yes hell yes damn yes get dirty you don’t have to emphasize it that much um yeah well female orgasms are very important yeah and let’s just say that i think we we did establish that those are uh a a regular okay let me i’ll go as far as to say um there’s a book that i haven’t read that’s called she comes first and it and i don’t i don’t have to read it to know that i abide by this particular philosophy yeah so uh once it’s a guarantee for us but it’s not for them like you talk about yeah they talk about the first time once we figure it out once we figured out what how to how the orgasm could be achieved that became something that was now it is the priority and it is something that happens every time now maybe there are some quickie situations every once in a while in which it’s very clear that Jessie has made she said i’m making an exception right now that this isn’t about me this is about you and that’s and that’s an understanding but that’s a rare exception so i would say that the gold standard the gold standard is to both have an orgasm which means her having it first and then hey sometimes you can you can work this you get the timing right sometimes just together which is exhilarating back let’s see you and i were traveling the mid-south region working with crew and we were speaking on campuses for context that was our job we’re listen we’re on staff a campus crusade for christ an uh interdenominational christian organization working full-time for them so this is this is when we’re talking to students about sex we’re still in it we weren’t talking about sex we were still in it we were talking about evangelism yeah how to share your faith with your friends on campus and we weren’t but we weren’t prudes about it yeah i i just you know well the story is going to show though yeah yeah yeah right yeah i’m just given the context for we were in charleston south carolina and we had taken a circuit to get there so we had been gone for i don’t remember how long but it had been a while and we had made arrangements hey Christy and Jessie you guys drive down and meet us in charleston because it’s a romantic city we can hang out number one travel destination in the nation we’ll take it for some reason extra days great but i mean come on i find that hard to believe it’s been like i mean like shrimp and grits is good ten years in a row quite human like travel in leisure magazine or something some big publication charleston’s the place to be don’t go at the hot times unless you want to create a hot time so we knew that Christy and Jessie were coming into town that night and we had each gotten a nicer hotel room than we would normally stay in this is how i remember it we had decided that day we were walking around town and we were like let’s go to a sex toy shop let’s go to an adult store and buy something get some to spice up paraphernalia what’s going to happen tonight because we’ve been away from our wives i think this has probably been this was in the first couple of years of marriage still he’s still on staff it was early yeah so we go in we go into this place and it i mean it was it wasn’t an adam and eve but it’s like one of those a little more charleston i remember it was like what there was a gentle breeze blowing through it i don’t know why it was there was a porch there was a porch there was a swing set there was shrimp and grits uh you gotta you know you gotta grind those grits you know you just gotta grind those grits um it was a little awkward perusing this shop with you and what we didn’t want to do is look at pornographic images on the packaging but there’s we’re still a little scared of that so we didn’t you know we felt like that was wrong so we were trying to we were avoiding that but i don’t know which one of us found it but one of and because i think we kind of split up we were both perusing a little bit but one of us found a vibrator that was neon green and it didn’t have a naked chick or a naked dude on the packaging it actually had a doctor’s it was like it was branded by like some sex doctor a gynecologist and so it kind of had more of a clinical beginner dildo type vibe now that you’re talking about it now okay do you still have this you guys collect everything you still have this vibrator no we don’t at a certain point we just we’ve upgraded it we used it we we vibrated it into oblivion but it was about this long yeah well how long is that for the listeners uh i’m saying that’s uh four and a half to five inches right and it wasn’t shaped like a penis it was it’s like a worm it had like a grip christy and i call it the green worm we called it that because it might have been what the name on the package was if we haven’t made it completely obvious ret and i both bought the same vibrator well two of them we didn’t share it you didn’t like clean it up in fedex monday wednesday fridays it’s the neal night with green we weren’t making any money in those days we probably should have split it it it was a battery-powered um silicon undulated um landscape of pleasure and yeah we called it the green worm you bought the same one we didn’t tell our wives that we were doing this or that we bought the same one or that we bought it initially of course the course there’s many times in life where one of us has done the research on an item yeah well the best tv is this one okay well that’s what i’ll get the same tv we literally the first tv we got as married couples was the same tv from circuit city same tv same vibrator keep it in the family but you didn’t call it the green worm i don’t think i i mean but i did refer to it affectionately because it became something that was uh we felt very affectionate towards and we felt very affectionate because of it well at times i felt jealous of it here is the thing that we also bought do you remember we bought something else well i don’t but i’m gonna remember when you tell me sex masks i thought it’ll be a good idea to buy like it’s like a sleep mask i didn’t buy one of these you didn’t buy one i don’t know what you’re talking about a blindfold man a mask a very comfy mask that you that might be a sleep mask i have one now for sleeping no there’s sex no i have a sex blindfold oh we don’t have one now really we should get one so my idea was i’m gonna buy this and then and this is this is what i this is christy calling me right now hey can i call you back we’re still recording the podcast talking about vibrators okay love you she just said okay so my plan was well they show up that night we don’t tell them that we’ve got vibrators we don’t tell them anything and then the thing that i did was oh it’s like you know she’s coming into town this is well that’s really you’re at a hotel you haven’t seen each other for a while you’re weary from the road and then i was like so the way i did it was i said hey i got you something and she opened up this little bag and it just had the mask in it and i was like why don’t you just put the mask on and then we started having some fun with the mask on and then i introduced the green worm into things and it was like this may be a little too much juice fest the mask came off and it was like what the what the crap is this and then but it was like okay so then we we uh it was just an exploration in figuring out oh what is this how do we how do we incorporate this and it wasn’t something that we immediately knew how to do but it was fun well figuring it out but it but the mask wasn’t really a great move i definitely didn’t use the mask but i use the green worm quite a lot and then subsequent worms of different sizes and shapes now one of the things that i think for context is that Jessie and Christy which they didn’t talk about but Jessie and Christy had never had their own vibrator right like it’s it’s it’s more commonplace especially in like secular circles but also just more commonplace today that like no sexual urge was validated for them and it was even i mean you heard their stories yeah there was a lot more placed on them than us but there was a very interesting combination of factors that i think based on our stories kind of played itself out in both of our marriages and i’m grateful for this and that is yes we were in this place that kind of suppressed and attached shame but the nature of our relationships and the nature of our communication and also the general openness towards sexual experience and sexual exploration is it a pretty high level amongst within both relationships and there wasn’t too much damage to remove us from having fun experiencing those things so you get this combination of i’ve never seen a vibrator yeah speaking from my wife’s perspective i’ve never seen one of these i’ve never experienced one of these but but not coupled with and i also think it might be gross and wrong and weird and awkward and i don’t want to do it right i’ve never seen this but holy [ __ ] when you turn that thing on new things start happening things yeah things that i’m sorry i’m i’m i’m just gonna be honest with you i’m pretty good right with my tongue but i can’t move it that fast try eating a couple of batteries first and so the uh eat a couple of batteries i do not do not take medical advice uh from this podcast yeah so we discovered hey this is a tool that we can use within the context of our love making and it was something that we would you and i would talk we would encourage each other it’s like you know unabashed passion for ex you know enjoying each other’s our wives bodies and them enjoying us was something that we encouraged each other it wasn’t a one-upmanship but it was sometimes it might have been a little close to that in terms of like we would share things that like hey how are you using this thing what are you doing what’s your technique what speed are you on we would uh don’t get too fast because you don’t want to be you don’t want them to forget about you we would encourage but we would encourage each other to experiment with our wives and have fun obviously talking about them and not blindsiding them well you literally put her in a blindfold yeah but i didn’t do that it was very playful and it was kind of a prankish kind of a thing that like she was on board with that but and as you look back over the course of our marriage again this is just i haven’t thought a lot about this until we started talking about it but you might be tempted to think that oh so you guys had some weird views on sex and there was some weirdness and awkwardness and then you deconstructed and then you like turned on all of a sudden there was a switch that was flipped and your sexual lives became totally different right i would say the progression of my sexual exploration and experience with Jessie uh has has progressed geometrically over time not exponentially i mean i’m not a superhero right there’s been a geometric progression over time of our sex life getting better and the things that we try expanding and like us experiencing each other in different ways and the communication has always been very in lockstep and very vibrant and there’s been a lot of it and the deconstruction didn’t solve a problem in that area right uh and it didn’t necessarily intere it also very very clear about this it didn’t introduce new problems in that area i think if anything i think it maybe did give us you know expanded our minds in a couple of different areas but i i not necessarily i don’t necessarily think that it was exclusively because of the deconstruction and i think that we it’s just an observation that we were if we had never deconstructed we were still evangelical christians our sex life was still vibrant because what i’m trying you know i i don’t agree with purity culture i obviously don’t agree with evangelical christianity i don’t think that is true but i don’t want to also then try to make an argument that people because you’re in an evangelical relationship in evangelical marriage that you’re not you don’t have a you by default don’t have a great sex life no i actually don’t think so you might have some specific things that you might have to overcome and navigate but that’s just not the case i think that this the sexual relationship in in the context of a partnership marriage a relationship whatever you want to call it is something that’s very dependent on the communication climate and the sort of the boundaries and the standards between those two individuals and there was just a sexual compatibility that we kind of got lucky with because we didn’t know that there was going to be the level of sexual compatibility that we each have with our wives but we had a strong indication because it did for me an engagement it did ramp up and i feel like that really helped set us up for success on our wedding night that it wasn’t like going from cold turkey flipping a switch because i don’t know what that would have felt like and i i’ve heard the horror stories from other people who years into marriage still aren’t able to be into it i definitely aren’t talking about it talking about i just feel like the community and that’s the number one thing for me is the communication because in every relationship and every aspect of every relationship communication is key and it just plays right into the like the moment in the same way that you can have some sort of weird conflict that’s going on and there’s resentment building and you’re not addressing it right you know let’s just say you’re in one of those relationships where one of the one of the people has halitosis we talk about this all the time right and it’s just like okay are you going to become a person that just is in a relationship with someone who has halitosis and everyone knows it are you going to become the person that says hey you have halitosis and we need to address it and i’m sorry that it hurts your feelings and makes you feel awkward in this one conversation but together as a team we can cure your problem it’s not going to be that hard actually we just have to actually be on the same team we have to recognize the problem if you let that kind of like we’re not talking about this because it’s awkward if you let that happen with sex you could go a decade yeah without experiencing this incredible sexual experience and again this may not be for everybody one of the things that uh i didn’t even know was a thing until you know my adult life was asexuality right there’s some people who are you know don’t experience sexual uh attraction and so if there’s a huge spectrum but i’m saying that if you are in a relationship and you are sexually attracted to each other but yet there’s a huge block in between you and you’re not having a satisfied sexual relationship and it’s not because listen there are physical things there’s people who are in accidents or suffer from uh some sort of complication or a disease where you can’t have sex right or maybe you get old and it’s just less of a priority or whatever there’s but i’m saying that if you’re physically capable you’re in a relationship where you’re attracted and you’re you don’t feel fulfilled and you’re not talking about it the first step is talk about it it isn’t just like hey i’m gonna put the blindfold on and bring in the green worm you can do that no don’t do that but how about just having a conversation about it and that i know it’s difficult but if you if somebody thinks that it’s going great but they haven’t sex is going great but they haven’t really talked about it and explored it with their partner then it could be that it’s just going great for them you know i think that’s something we learned in at first it’s like that was not my recollection of our wedding night yeah right uh that she would have said it that way well i have since yeah she’s told me that many times since then i knew that she was not as satisfied as i was okay let’s leave it at that i’m not gonna give a wreck i i gave Jessie my rec in the middle of this thing with the braille uh podcast yeah where do we begin where do we begin so next week uh now first of all i don’t want to make any promises but there’s still a lot left to talk about maybe we’ll bring back sex timber next year who knows i don’t know but what we are definitely going to do is next week is the finale episode of sex timber where we’re going to answer all the questions that have built up and hashtag your biscuits so we put a prompt out on uh twitter in a couple of places so respond to that or just ask your question with hashtag earbiscuits we want to know what it is that you want to know and we’re going to answer it talk at you next week to watch more ear biscuits click on the playlist on the right to watch the previous episode of your biscuits click on the playlist to the left and don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe if you prefer to listen to this podcast it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms thanks for being your mythical best