Brave Men S1E4: Nancy Houston - What About Sex?

This is Brave Men episode number four and I am about to talk openly with a sex therapist. That's right. You know probably what I'll do is I'll just ask her questions for a friend of mine. Isn't that what we often do? We got to push it off somewhere else and things we don't quite want to talk openly about but Nancy Houston is an author speaker. She's a licensed professional counselor and she's a certified sex therapist and we're going to talk about some real stuff here over the next few moments. Now Nancy and her husband Ron are good friends of ours. Judy and I like to say we have our own personal sex therapist. Ron's in construction. They're an incredible couple. They've been married for over 40 years. They've got four sons, six grandchildren and she's also director for John Townsend for his leadership program in New York City and the Dallas Fort Worth area. She has written a new book. We're very excited. We can't wait to see it. It comes out the first part of 2018. It's simply called love and sex. Pretty well says it. Judy said it's not sex and love. It's love and sex. Nancy has touched so many people's lives. She has a workbook and DVD series called a Marriage Revolution and she uses this and she talks to people about real things and she helps them heal relationally. She recovers their souls but it's all based on the word of God and biblical truth. So Judy and I are over here at her home at her in Ron's house to find out this. Here's my first question. Who is more messed up? Men or women? It's Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole. Wisdom and courage for the journey. Brave Men starts now. So Nancy thank you for being with us today. Oh I'm delighted to be here with you. It's called the podcast is called Brave Men. Wisdom encouraged for the journey. So let me ask you this question. Nancy you've been a family counselor. You work with people on different issues and particular sexual issues and dysfunction. So who's more messed up? Men or women? Oh you know I I think we all serve our equal time on that. They do say that females follow men sexually and that we're about 10 to 15 years behind men. So for example like oh 20, 30 years ago porn wasn't a really big issue for females but no it is. Wow. Because we're following in the footsteps of what men are doing. So we're equally messed up. Yeah we really are. I mean you know you just look through the Old Testament and you see how sexually messed up the saints are. I mean our sexual confusions and delusions and acting out aren't anything new. King David had some issues. He did. He did. As did Abraham and Judah and many of the others. I mean probably Joseph is the one we can look at who really exemplified sexual purity as far as we know. But you know Solomon with what 900 wives? Well you wonder what was going on there right? Well you don't wonder. You kind of know you just want to know how. I think from this man they're wondering. Yeah how did he how did we know he could afford it. Yeah. Yeah. But this is fascinating to me because now here we are in our world today. Right? Yeah. And it feels like we're dealing with some of the same things they dealt with back then 2,000, 3,000 years ago. Yeah. Wouldn't we have gotten better at some things? What is that? You know don't don't you wish that we would evolve in some ways that are really helpful. My concern is I think in some ways where things are escalating with the use of internet pornography is just literally changed our world and changed marriages and change what's happening to our children. Our children are being exposed at such young ages to adult sexuality and oftentimes violent adult sexuality. And it's having such an impact on what they think is normal and what they think is okay. Right. And boys you know 14, 15-year-old boys are asking girls to text them pictures of themselves naked and then these girls will do it because they think their job is to make boys happy. That's the whole way. Yeah. That they get approval affirmation. Yeah. So so we as people are we must be built in some way for affirmation and approval. Is that is that accurate? Well we really are and we're all sexual creatures. I mean we are born sexual creatures and you know we don't like to think about it but our 90-year-old grandmothers are sexual creatures. And so we're sexual in nature and yes God designed us for relationships and for sexual relating. I mean also we have to do us look at our anatomy and see how God designed us for human relational emotional sexual connections and relationships. It's just we have a hard time getting them in the right context. Why is why is it you know we talked about internet pornography? Why is it so addictive? What is that? Well for many reasons number one you know even people put things on Facebook and every time they get a like they get a dopamine hit to their brain. Oh okay so for instance Instagram or Facebook and we had a former congressman who texted people and every time he hits send you're saying something. Oh yeah we get that's why he got addicted to it. Right it hits our reward center. So you think about the power of the internet which things will hit our reward center there and really dopamine. And then human sexuality when you have human sexual contact or even even not human sexual contact but you've got pornographic contact and there's a sexual release it hits that dopamine reward center and our our brain likes that. Well then okay then why did God give us dopamine? Yeah just to mess us up when we're 14? Well not really I mean you might think that right I mean it's it's we we so misuse it but God created it so that husbands and wives would be sexual with each other so that there would be that release a dopamine which is a bonding hormone. The problem is people are bonding to images and they're bonding to their devices instead of right instead of bonding to like their spouse which is what God wanted or when a mother gives birth to an infant she is huge downloads of dopamine that God created so she would bond to this infants. Total connection. Yes even like you know how people love to smell the top of a baby's head is because there's some we get a dopamine release and there's bonding in a touchment. The sensory you know it's true my my daughter had her little baby in the grocery store. Yeah and it was a woman behind her in line and the woman just had to reach out and touch her baby my daughter's like that's my child. I know right but the woman is like she couldn't help it. Yeah I want to touch and everyone wants to do that and same with when a man a woman goes skinned skin there's a dopamine release and you know that can be really really meant for good but that can also work for evil. So so somebody could actually become addicted to touch. Yeah and it wouldn't matter who it is. Well in some ways it's like you know sometimes we wonder well why is that female staying without abusive male and it's probably because their relationship is sexual and so they say whoever a female having an orgasm with she's attached him for the next three weeks and so go back on that this is this is science. Yeah this is not no this is the first John three chapter three right so tell me that again. Well so we wonder why a female would stay an abusive relationship with a male. Well it's oftentimes because their relationship is probably sexual in nature and neuroscience teaches us that whoever a female has an orgasm with she is attached to she is bonded to with him for the next three weeks so she'll overlook some of the abuse and the battering and the verbal abuse and emotional abuse because she's attached to him and the same things true for men I mean there are men who are in abusive relationships. Yeah but if the relationship has a sexual component then there's a bonding and attachment and so that so that dopamine is that when when Judy walks in the room and I see her and something jumps in me is that what? Oh sure yeah because I like that. You guys said yeah and it's wonderful and beautiful and God wants to give you those love drugs to help a couple stay married for life. Wow you know it's meant to be for good it's meant to help us with our enemy has used it falsely for you. Yeah and it's meant to help us with our irritations and annoyances of just doing married life together right it's come like oil that God's provided. Yeah I would say that you know I thank God that my wife has extra dopamine. Yeah so she's been able to put up with me. Well you know it's true and and actually females do men have really some more of nori preneffron which is called the male like the male faithfulness hormones it's meant to help men stay faithful to one woman one woman. Okay so so in other words if a man's hooked on dopamine it in actuality it almost stifles the faithfulness drug. Well what happens when I'm seeing in so many myriages now is that men get very addicted to the false images that pornography provide. And so they get very attached to that it becomes very addictive they start planning their lives around when can I get my next hit because it is more powerful than crack cocaine and then they actually stop making love to their wives because they're no longer receiving their dopamine hits from this intimate love relationship. Wow. They're receiving it from these false these images. Yeah false images. And and then they become very attached here and they start neglecting this relationship and she can feel very unloved and very unwanted and very cared for. Even even though he might be saying the right things. Yeah. Acting the right way. Yeah. Bringing home his paycheck. You know all the things we think as men we're supposed to do. Right. They're actually still disconnected in an unseen place. Well what important does to a person's brain is it damages that prefrontal cortex. And so it damages the relational courting centers of our brain. I think that's why we're seeing fewer and fewer young men get married because porn is meeting this need and it's damaging their prefrontal cortex. Wow. And it damages our relational brain and what I'm concerned about is then how does it then affect our relationship with God? How does it affect our relationship with other human beings? Because you know God at the very beginning said it's not good for mankind to be alone. We are relational creatures and I think what the enemy has done is he's brought in this great deception and it's harming all of our human interactions and relationships and we're not having we're not creating the family of God the way God wants us to have. So you know you deal with counseling and counsel people like this and walk through all of these things. It's normal people. Yeah. Yeah. We're not talking about somebody that's just off. No. So these are it's us. It's us. I see wonderful, highly functioning people who are church members, pastors, elders, business leaders, contributors to the world we live in. But their marriages are really hurting and really struggling and the the the main denominator I keep seeing over and over and over is the influence of pornography. Really? Yeah. And all of this and all of this is always at a center point. You know it just is and but beneath the pornography and pornography is still fruit. You know it's not the root and the really the roots of our sexual dysfunction go back to family dysfunction family of originally dysfunction. It goes back to personal traumas like I cannot tell you how frequently people have been sexually abused as children and then we see the sexual acting out in adulthood and it's destructive but they haven't worked through down into the roots they focus on the fruits like I'm gonna pray harder. I'm gonna read my Bible more. I'm gonna get a buddy to hold me accountable and I'm like oh I do that as men. Yeah right and I'm like that's great but that's not gonna heal the roots. We got to dig in deeper and figure out what traumatized you. What happened to you? Were you ever touched inappropriately as a child? What was that like for you? Let's talk about that. I think what we need to do is create much safer Christian communities where we can have honesty and transparency and we're not gonna tell each other buddy you just need to try harder. You need to suck it up. You need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you need to get your act together. That just isn't helping men. You know Christianity for the last few hundred years has been very if you will transactional. Yeah you're right. Based on the atonement if you do this Jesus did this so now you do this so now you're good. Yeah. Whereas I believe we're in an age and I believe what what I see happening Nancy and I pray this happens through what we do with brave men and with Christian men's network the Global Father's Initiative is the incarnation of Christ. In other words the living out of the actual presence of God in our lives. Yeah. Because then it's not just a transaction. Hey you're good. It's let's walk this out. We all have stumbles and perfections. How do we walk it out? So let me ask you this and just a couple more things I want to hit. Yeah. I want to hit two things in particular. What are some of the key issues? Mostly men that listen to this podcast. What are what do men need to know that women would want them to know? And then secondly how do we solve these things in our faith in Christ? You know women are really interesting creatures. They don't do well when the man they love is hiding from them. They don't do well with secrets and hiding and he doesn't let her know him. And that was the first reaction of Adam when he's sent. He hit. He did. So men by nature hide. Yes by nature. And I think men are at very young ages are taught how to do that. They're told get over it, stop acting like a girl. Suck it up, let it go. And I'm like that is so destructive because we never see Jesus living that way. Like when Jesus was sad he we wept. When he lost his friend Lazarus, he wept. Yeah. When he was angry, he was raising from the dead too. So that was pretty cool. Right. But yet we have to ponder. He was emotional. He was. He stopped to mourn before he traveled to go do the healing. So I think what men really need to know is that we need to provide safe contacts for men to come out of hiding. For them to stop doing their false pretending like I'm okay. I've got it together. So what a woman wants. Yeah. Is for a man to be authentic. Yeah. If you will. I mean that's a maybe that's a two kind of. Well I just I just had a woman here in my office and her husband has had relationships. He slept with prostitutes. He's been a massage parlour. He's been to strip clubs. He's had a he knows how to fares. And she's like I finally tell him be completely honest with me. I can handle everything. I can't handle the lying in the secrets. And like she she actually wants to be on his side. But oftentimes men won't let their woman in on his side. Now I want to say this in the right context. Not all women are safe. Not all wives are safe. And so if you're in a relationship with an unsafe woman, that's not really a safe place to share your heart. But if you but if you are in a relationship with a pretty safe woman, I mean we all have our moments, right? But she loves you and she's for you. Then you've got to find a way to open up your heart and let her in. And the more you let her in, the more she can be on your team. And the more you can face a hard things together. Okay. How does how do we do that is man? How do we how do we find this faith and vulnerability? And then still you said something in our conference last year. You said it's tough being a man because at any particular moment you have to be you have to perform. And you know men feel this pressure. How do we become vulnerable? And yet we're still like strong. Yeah. And then we're you know it's it's how do we how do we do that in our faith? How do we do that within that context? Well number one I my empathy goes out to you man because I think that is sort of a catch 22, right? And like sometimes women can shame in and they're like see that's why I can't be safe and I have to stay she wants me on my white horse and I can't come off it and be real because I feel too much shame. And then she shames me. And that's really unfortunate. I think we have to learn how to stop shaming ourselves and stop shaming each other. And just acknowledge hey we're all human beings. I mean God wrote books of the Bible like Hosanna Isaiah where he talks about basically. I mean if I can just be really blunt. Yeah. Like we're all sort of horrors but we're his beloved bride. Yeah. Right. I mean I know that that's pretty blunt but I mean we all have these human struggles. And I think God is saying it's okay son like I love you. I'm not ashamed of you. I accept you. I want to help you with your struggles. I want to put you around other safe men and people who love you no matter what. So shame is a big issue. Yeah it's a huge issue. It's a huge issue. And we see men in the Bible. We see men in our own lives. We see it in our own lives. How that can be something that tweaks us so that we don't respond properly. So God the Father says to us as he said about his son before his son had ever done anything. Right. He's baptized. Hasn't done a miracle. Hasn't walked around. Hasn't preached the kingdom. He has taken care of his mom. Has taken care of his family. And yet he hasn't quote unquote done the Messiah's stuff. And yet God the Father says this is my kid. This is my son. I am proud of him. So if you will within our faith, within the context of our faith, finding Father God as a father who embraces us loves us does not put shame on us that when when Paul wrote there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ, Nancy, we should actually receive that as men. And when we can receive that and embrace it, then we begin to be honest with ourselves. When we're honest with ourselves, then we can be honest with our spouse who goes around us. Would that be accurate? Yeah and I think we just have to be really honest with ourselves that we live in a very performance driven world. In the church, sexuality for men, I mean the commercials we see it's all performance driven. Yeah. Penography, it's all performance driven. Yeah. You know, and so much of our world is performance driven. And yes, we are meant to be able to perform in our jobs and in our roles. But yet at the heart of being human, it's like we are left completely apart from any of our performances. That's beautiful. Right. And I want to thank you for being with us today. Nancy, you've got a new book coming out. I do. Right. Yes. It's titled Love It. The title is Love and Sex. Love and Sex. Yes. There we go. I want to see those two put back together instead of separated. Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. And you've also been speaking at Christmas Network at our Lions Roar conferences. And so if we wanted to find you on a website, where would we find that? Nancy Houston dot net. Nancy Houston, just like the city, Nancy Houston dot net. Yes. And we can also access the materials, the tools you're putting more tools on there all the time to help us become those people we desire to be. Yeah. Free of the shame. Yeah. Free of the guilt. Yeah. And free to love each other in our marriages. Thank you Nancy for being with us. You're welcome Paul. Good to see you. Good to see you. You've just experienced Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Global Fatherhood Initiative. Connect with Paul like Brave Men dot men. That's Brave Men dot men.