When two people begin a relationship, they often feel exciting, even overwhelming passion for each other. Yet for many couples, this passion declines when they get married. Sexuality starts to feel like a place of duty and work, rather than a place of life and joy. Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife has seen this story unfold with many couples — and has also helped it change direction. In this episode, she explains why we can lose our passion, or eros energy; what eros truly requires to thrive; and how we can cultivate life-long eros energy within marriage. At the heart of passionate, spiritual sexuality is a balance of two vital forces: freedom and moral integrity. Freedom makes sex a joyful place where we can be and expand our true selves. Moral integrity – when we also live up to our best selves – enables the genuine intimacy of knowing our partner and letting ourselves be known.Guests * Jennifer Finlayson-Fife is an LDS relationship and sexuality coach with a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology. She is the author of That We Might Have Joy: Desire, Divinity, and Intimate Love and the creator of six online courses that help individuals and couples create happier lives and stronger intimate relationships. She also hosts Room for Two, a popular sex and intimacy podcast, and is a regular guest on LDS-themed podcasts discussing relationships, faith, and sexuality. * Sofia Ashley is a certified intimacy coach and sex educator who supports women, parents and couples to reconnect with themselves and their relationships after children; navigating identity shifts, intimacy changes, low libido and the realities of life after kids with honesty and compassion. * Dan Purcell is a certified marriage and intimacy coach and the founder of Get Your Marriage On. He created Intimately Us, Just Between Us, and Spark'd -- mobile apps designed for couples to enjoy sexual intimacy. He hosts the Get Your Marriage On podcast and coaches couples privately and in small groups through his Next Level program. * Laurie Watson is a leading expert in couples therapy, sex therapy, and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Laurie specializes in working with couples stuck in cycles of emotional and sexual disconnection.ABOUT ARTICLE 13 Article 13 is a narrative podcast from Faith Matters that brings together cutting-edge research and spiritual wisdom to offer blueprints for a better world. American society is fractured across political and cultural lines. Healing will not happen quickly or easily, but will require a sustained commitment to peaceful discussion and the development of new, creative frameworks for finding common ground. Hosted by Zachary Davis and featuring deep-dives into vital social issues, extraordinary guests, and beautiful sound design, Article 13 aims to model the kind of hopeful, intelligent discourse our country needs—and to offer ways that each individual listener can start the healing, right where they are. Article 13 is produced by Maria Devlin McNair, Zachary Davis, Gavin Feller, Sam Clawson, and Music by Steve LaRosa. Art by Charlotte Alba. You can learn more about Article 13 here. We express our thanks to the Wheatley Institute for their support. UPCOMING EVENT TRANSCRIPT I. Introduction Finlayson-Fife: So basically the story is, Katie and Eric fall in love, feel lots of attraction, more than they even want to feel because they feel so alive and full of hope – and then she feels this kind of – upon getting married, just, the desire plummets, and it’s very confusing. This is Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, relaying a story she tells in her new book, That We Might Have Joy. What makes Katie and Eric’s story so important is that it’s actually a representation of many stories – ones Dr. Finlayson-Fife hears all the time in her work as a therapist and relationship and sexuality coach. Finlayson-Fife: And this is so many of my clients, like, ‘Why, when I could not keep my hands off him, do I feel no desire now?’ and so the story begins with, really, Katie and Eric coming for help, confused, because they’re coming in with a frequency problem, but what they really have is a desire and passion problem. There is this absence of this magnetic energy that made them feel so alive and so attracted and so hopeful, that now is turned into sort of duty, obligation, and a kind of deadness in the marriage. These are questions plenty of married people encounter at some point: how did I lose the high desire I had when I first met my spouse? Why doesn’t my desire match their desire? Is there anything I can do about it? Dr. Finlayson-Fife’s answer is that sexual desire is something you can nurture and grow within yourself – if you understand its real sources. Finlayson-Fife: But the question is basically, How do we make our marriage feel more alive? And I think this is what so many of us want, we want more of what put us into the marriage in the first place, and that is the experience of Eros. So Eros in Greek mythology is the life force, and it’s what makes us feel joy, it’s what makes us feel alive, it’s what expands our souls. Finlayson-Fife: Eros is this sense of like, ‘I belong to you and me at the same time, like I can feel the sense of communion with you, but I also feel connected to myself.’ That’s what we feel when we’re falling in love, is that who I am is accepted and valued and I can be with you. You generate sexual desire and passion as a couple by cultivating this sense of eros energy. And eros requires a balance of two forces: freedom and moral integrity. Finlayson-Fife: I think in the best, highest meaning, most beautiful form of sexuality, there’s both a freedom in it and a discipline in it. There’s like a moral anchor and also a freedom, and they both are working alongside each other. And when sexuality goes awry, it’s either overly free, as in there’s no morality in it, there’s no kind of anchor – or it’s suffocated by shoulds, and ‘you have to’, and rules, and fear. And I think either one of those are anti-spiritual positions, in my view, and they kill the rejuvenating aspect of sexuality. But there’s a spiritual wisdom in finding this middle ground that requires our development as people into becoming wiser, more loving beings, to find that balance of moral groundedness, but freedom and joy and pleasure, and they belong together. Welcome to Article 13 – a podcast creating blueprints for a better world. I’m your host, Zachary Davis. In this episode, we discuss how to sustain life-giving sexual connection in marriage. We dive into deep perspectives and practical strategies for cultivating moral integrity and freedom, to find that eros energy that will make your love feel alive. II. Freedom Eros energy One half of the eros energy equation is freedom, which is something all of us crave as human beings. Finlayson-Fife: The reality, I talk about this a lot in my courses, is that we want two things in life: we want to belong to another person, we want to feel connected and cared about, but we also want to belong to ourselves. And therein lies the struggle. And if being sexual makes us feel even more that we belong to ourselves, we feel a sense of acceptance, we feel a sense of freedom, we feel a sense of ease and aliveness, then we like sex. But if sex lacks that erotic – we may still want the pleasure or the control from having it, but our souls don’t want it. That lack of freedom was a big part of the problem for Katie and Eric. Once they were married, they felt like sex had become a duty rather than a freely chosen act – which suffocates eros energy. Finlayson-Fife: Eros is all about agency. Eros does not want to be controlled, constricted, demanded, it cannot handle that kind of pressure. But choice is what drives it, it’s what makes it feel like a place of freedom, because agency is at the foundation of it. We need a sense of freedom and agency around sexuality. So let’s look at some strategies for cultivating it. Sex and meaning The first strategy has to do with meaning. Sex between humans is never just physical. It’s laden with significance and meaning. And some meanings will cause desire to drop. This includes the meaning of “sex as obligation” – the sense that we no longer have freedom and choice around sex because it’s become a duty or expectation. This kind of meaning often gets activated by the contractual commitment of marriage, which is a big reason for the common drop in desire after marriage: Finlayson-Fife: When we’re dating, often sexual desire happens to us. When you have met someone who thinks you’re attractive and desirable and so on, that’s a very expansive meaning. But I think that what often happens then when you get married is all those meanings that created desire before have now gone away. It’s now very legal, it’s very predictable, it’s somewhat certain – now, often for women, it’s in the frame of obligation and should, and so all the things that made it so desirable are now not operating. This doesn’t mean that married couples can’t ever enjoy a great sexual relationship. On the contrary, says Dr. Finlayson-Fife, “the research shows that the group of adults that are having the best sex and the most frequent sex are married people.” The key takeaway is that, for married couples, the meanings that make sex pleasurable and desirable don’t happen automatically. The partners have to intentionally foster those meanings themselves. Finlayson-Fife: If you’re going to feel sexual desire as a married person, you need to create it, cultivate it, cultivate the meanings between you and your spouse that would make sex desirable for you. So how do you cultivate positive meanings around sex? The first step is to know what those meanings are for you. If something speaks to you in a romantic novel or film, figure out why that is. Reflect on good experiences with your partner and identify what made them so goo
