Episode #36: Partnership Building: How Purity Culture Teaches You to Turn Away from Yourself, with Luke and Lauren from Flourish Therapy
We are continuing our summer series called Partnership Building, where we discuss how sexual health is relational health, and relational health is sexual health.
We’re talking about seven principles of healthy relationships, according to relationship experts John and Julie Gottman. In the first four episodes of this series, we’ve discussed two foundations of healthy relationships: curiosity and admiration/appreciation.
In the next two episodes, we’ll talk about the third principle of healthy relationships (according to the Gottman’s): turning toward each other.
And we have amazing guests, Luke and Lauren Smallcomb from the brilliant podcast Filled to Flourish. Luke and Lauren are the founders of Flourish Therapy. They live in Chiang Mai, Thailand with their kids and 3 cuddly dogs. Luke and Lauren talk with us about:
An Unquestioned System (6:00): Luke describes, “The church wasn't to be questioned. You're gonna be the best Christian. You're going to be faithful. My goodness, my identity was dependent on how well I performed.” Luke, like many people who grow up in this environment, based his self-worth on his performance and dedication to the Church, and this hurts people's ability to discover who they are outside of the Church.
The Unforgivable Sin (14:00): Jeremiah asks: “What were some of the dominant messages that you both learned about relationships, gender and sexuality under the umbrella of purity culture?” Luke responds: “I think the screaming one is you have sex before marriage. Your marriage is gonna be punished. It's like an unforgivable sin. Sexual impurity is just unforgivable. It's going to follow you the rest of your life. The people who have sex before marriage have no self-control. They're living disobedient lives.” `
Eroticism (20:00): Jeremiah explains, “I would argue that one of the most dangerous parts of purity culture is around eroticism. So eroticism is according to Jack Morin, is attraction plus obstacles. It's the obstacles and the overcoming of the obstacles that create sexual energy. Purity culture creates a huge obstacle. You are a sinner if you have sex before you get married, and so one part of your brain is kind of accessing that and kind of dampening down, but there's this yin-yang effect that happens. The more that that part of you is ldampening down your sexuality, that's actually creating and building erotic energy, particularly when you're with a person that you're attracted to. And so purity culture sets up this really horrific double bind for, for daters around how to navigate sexuality.”
Lack of Freedom (25:00): Lauren shares, “There's this path that you must find and you, if you don't find it, you're out of God's will and the only way to be safe is to be in God's will. And so I constantly had this inner turmoil that only my journal ever heard about of am I supposed to be with this guy?” She talks about how the church's ideas lead to her and Luke breaking up because she did not feel like she had enough time for God because of her dating relationship. Jeremiah reflects, “And what I'm hearing you describe what I'm hearing both of you describe and probably a lot of purity culture survivors describe is that by turning towards God, I'm actually turning away from myself. I'm actually turning away from my partner.”
Falling Back on Gender Roles (34:00): Luke describes the immense efforts he instilled into not being a male sexual monster. The results? “There was so much shame and still a lot of self-loathing of my sexuality. Like I had a hard time accepting that I'm a sexual being. I didn't know what lusting was. I didn't know what the perversion was. I just knew I couldn't trust my sexuality.” It’s important to note the ways that men practice gatekeeping as well; Luke talks about how falling into the“gatekeeper of sexuality” stems from the idea that men are lustful and perverse inherently, and that is why they did not even kiss before their wedding. With adequate sex education, this all could have been avoided, but the Church reinforces these gender norms for people to fall back into when they do not know what their feelings mean.
Good and Bad (49:00): Lauren summarizes their dating relationship. “I had learned that I was good and he had learned that he was bad, so we went into those roles so seamlessly and reinforced them over and over because that was literally what we were set up for. I didn't want that power that gave me. I wanted to feel equal with my partner and not havethe pressure and the heavy burden to make him feel good or righteous.”
Luke and Lauren will talk more with us next week about how to turn toward each other when your systems of origin begin to turn away from you. You won’t want to miss it!
Let’s heal together!