We’ve gotten over 175 new subscribers to Relationship 101 in the last week! Welcome to everyone who recently subscribed!
I’m Jeremiah. My partner, Julia, and I host the podcast Sexvangelicals: The sex education the church didn’t want you to have. Julia writes the podcast episodes. And I write the Substack articles.
We are both licensed psychotherapists in Massachusetts (soon to be expanding to other states). We are also certified sex therapists through the American Association for Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT).
Our primary professional interest is working with folks who grew up in Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal spaces (EMPish is the shorthand we use) and have chosen to leave. The in-group vernacular is “exvangelical”, courtesy of Blake Chastain, author of the Substack
.Most people in Evangelical spaces learn especially terrible messages about sexuality, mostly centered around the word “Don’t”. Don’t have sex before you get married. Don’t be gay. Don’t have desires. Et cetera.
And most people in Evangelical spaces learn that once you get married (to someone of the opposite gender, of course), the sex that God sanctions you to have upon receiving the marriage certificate is life changing and mind-blowing. A light switch flips the sexual repression away. Never mind that you’ve never had sex before and that your physiological impulses have been shamed away. You’ll figure it out as you go along.
It’s especially helpful if you perform sexuality along gender-prescribed roles. Men, go ahead and initiate to your heart’s content; after all, the more sex you have, the better your relationship is. Women, it’s your God-given duty to receive (his penis, of course). Be thankful and celebrate that your husband wants to have sex with his most valuable possession, you!
…
You can see how this might not end well.
Tens of thousands of couples (if not more) experience anxiety, vulvodynia (constriction and pain in the vaginal walls), erectile issues, and conflict over differing levels of sexual desire. For many relationships, including each of our first marriages, the pressures around sexuality are too much to overcome.
Out of our own story, Julia and I are dedicated to helping couples who grew up in religious spaces develop the communication skills and sexual health resources that the church didn’t (and still don’t, as we read in Project 2025) want us to have. Our podcast and our Substack describe what these communication skills involve.
We would love for you to share Relationship 101 with your friends and family members who have been negatively impacted by religious messaging.
Quick note. As we explain in our article “What is Purity Culture”, thanks to the Article V Abstinence Only Until Marriage Act, if you’re under the age of 50, you likely experienced religious messaging in your public school, regardless of whether you or not you attended church.
As we say on Sexvangelicals, “You don’t have to have grown up in the church to have been fucked over by the church.”
This week on our podcast, Julia and I talk about the myth that quantity of sex equals quality of sex.
After all, if quantity of sex equals quality of sex, that puts a ton of pressure on the sexual experience, which leads to crippling anxiety, avoidance, and dread. Julia describes her relationship with sex in the early years of her marriage:
“I didn't enjoy sex, at minimum, and it was certainly not anything that felt like an expression of love or intimacy. So when I would read things like The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller, or basically any other Christian book, nothing that I read made sense to my lived experience.”
Pressure and performativity add stress to any sexual relationship, but the stress is uniquely existential for folks who grew up in religious spaces, as I stated:
“If you learned that sex was the primary and most important way to communicate affection to your spouse, and also to communicate affection to God, any decrease in sexual behavior would come with a degree of religious or moral failing, both internal kind of processing of that, and also probably from the larger religious community.”
In this episode, we introduce the idea of compulsory sexuality, which is the assumption that sex (and by sex, we mean intercourse) is an expected part of a partnership, and it happens in specific ways based on heteronormative standards.
We pose the following question:
What would happen if we assumed asexuality rather than sexuality with all of the subsequent assumptions that come with it?
Let’s get some of the politics of the term “asexual” out of the way.
helps us out on his Substack, The Sociologist Speaks:“Two truths can exist at once: 1) The idea that asexuality is impermanent/health related is often used to harm asexual people. 2) Asexuality can be acquired/temporary for some people. It can also be linked to a health for some people. Those experiences exist.”
I don’t want to delve too much further into asexuality as an independent concept today, although if you’re interested, we highly encourage you to read ACE: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen.
Julia and I hold asexuality in comparison to compulsory sexuality (the assumption of sexuality), and in doing so, muse three different potentials for relationships:
Assuming asexuality allows for the natural waxing and waning of sexuality and desire. Each of us have higher and lower sexual desire at any given point based on a number of factors: mood, energy levels, cycle, grief, motivation, self-confidence. If we assume asexuality, a sexual experience becomes much more of a choice—I’m having sex because I want to have sex, instead of meeting an obligation.
Assuming asexuality gives a wider array of options for the purpose of a relationship. After all, a long-term relationship can have numerous functions: parental, administrative, emotional support, financial, play, BDSM. Assuming asexuality gives a couple more breathing room to define a purpose for a relationship structure based on the needs and preferences of the two people at any given point of their life. Perhaps sexual engagement will be one of the purposes, but it also doesn’t prioritize sexuality over the other possible functions of a relationship.
Assuming asexuality creates more separation and individuality in relationships. Let’s actually start with the opposite. Assuming that a relationship is going to be sexual also assumes a decent amount of closeness and merging together. Which is perfectly normal in the early stages (the first two years on average) of a relationship, when neurologically speaking, your physiologies crave connection and bonding. In longer term relationships, however, desire is created by the ability of each person to maintain their own level of individuality and separateness.
On Thursday, we’ll continue to debunk the myth that quantity equals quality by discussing the concept of otherness, the recognition and celebration that you and your partner are different. Practicing otherness, and managing the anxiety that comes from your partner being different from you, are paramount for building desire and eroticism in long-term relationships.
Please subscribe to Relationship 101, and donate so that Julia and I can continue to write about the relational and sexual health the church (and many other sources) didn’t want you to have!
Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah and Julia
Thanks for the shout out! In case you're interested, I've written a bit about the intersection of asexuality and purity culture on Substack (https://cantonwiner.substack.com/p/interview-asexuality-and-purity-culture) and on Twitter (https://twitter.com/CantonWiner/status/1593270207145017344). Hoping to have some peer-reviewed publications about this coming out soon.