Recovering From Purity Culture: Dismantle the Myths, Reject Shame-Based Sexuality, and Move Forward in Your Faith with Dr. Camden Morgante
Episode Notes
Today's episode is a fascinating conversation about the phenomenon of "purity culture." You've heard the phrase, but my guest today, licensed therapist and purity culture expert, Dr. Camden Morgante, is here to explain exactly what it was and how it created a culture of shame, fear, and coercion around sex, especially for women.
We explore the damaging myths purity culture perpetuated and the ways it continues to affect women and married couples, especially around issues of intimacy and self-worth. Dr. Camden shares essential insights on how to heal from these harmful messages and move forward in faith, while also offering practical advice for anyone struggling with shame-based sexuality.
Key Takeaways:
- What purity culture is and its lasting impact on Millennials and Gen X
- The 5 damaging myths, including the "gatekeeper," "damaged goods," & "flipped switch" myths
- The most important strategy for couples dealing with disappointment around sex
- The real meaning of intimacy beyond physical connection
- Dr. Camden’s practical advice for overcoming shame and reclaiming your faith
Resources:
- Recovering from Purity Culture: Dismantle the Myths, Reject Shame-Based Sexuality, and Move Forward in Your Faith by Dr. Camden Morgante
- The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
- drcamden.com
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 48: Loving Your Body as a Spiritual Practice, Why the Flesh Isn’t the Body, and 3 Heresies We Kind of Believe
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
- Turn back time on the appearance of your skin with Purity Woods’s Age-Defying Dream Cream. Purity Woods is currently offering 17% off sitewide but we have an additional 10% discount for our listeners for a total savings of 27%! Go to puritywoods.com/BESTOFYOU or enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout for an additional 10% off your first order.
- This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self.
- Go to AquaTru.com and enter code BESTOFYOU at checkout to get 20% OFF any AquaTru purifier!
- Go to thrivemarket.com/bestofyou for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift! Whether you're exploring distant lands or enjoying a staycation at home, Cozy Earth has your back.
- Visit cozyearth.com and unlock an exclusive 35% off with code BESTOFYOU.
Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so glad you're here this week. I'm so glad to be here with you. Many of you get my weekly email or you follow me on socials, and you know we've had a really rough couple of weeks here in Wyoming with some pretty intense wildfires.
So we have really appreciated your prayers for that. And I'm also mindful of all of you, especially in the Southeast, who are still reeling from the effects of both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. These are really devastating times. I'm so grateful for so many of you out there shining your light so brightly, even when the world can feel so dark, scary, and overwhelming.
Your courage, your hope, your prayers, your incredible acts of kindness, no matter how tiny, matter. They matter to God, they matter to the other people in your life, and they matter to the parts of your soul who need to see us fighting for the goodness and the beauty and the dignity of every human life and every part of God's creation. My prayers are with you as we continue to hold forth faith and hope and light in this world
Today we're diving into the first of a two-part series on the topic of sexuality. This is such an important topic. It's a topic I've been wanting to bring to the podcast, but I wanted to find the right experts to talk with us about such a nuanced topic, such a tender topic, a topic that is so deeply vulnerable for so many of us.
So many of us have been hurt in this area. So many of us are struggling in this area. So many of us are struggling to figure out how to have healthy conversations about sex and sexuality in our world, where there are so many toxic messages coming at us from every single angle, including some messages from within our own faith communities.
Here's the thing–in order to move forward into a healthier understanding of this beautiful gift of sexuality that God has given us to enjoy, sometimes we have to first look back and untangle the knots of the toxic messages we've received. That's where we're going to start in this series with today's episode.
Today's guest is a therapist and an expert, especially on the phenomena of purity culture, that so many of us grew up a part of. And she's here to help name the myths and toxic messages that so many of us internalized as millennials or Gen Xers, especially within the context of church culture.
Purity culture was so much more than a message about abstinence and purity. It actually shaped how we viewed ourselves, our relationships, and our sense of worth. And the problem, as you'll hear from my guest today, was that sex wasn't discussed in a way that allowed us to understand the nuances and the complexity and embrace our sexuality as a natural, integral part of how God designed us.
Many of us as a result, experienced fear, shame, and disconnection from our bodies in ways that don't disappear with adulthood or even in the context of marriage. Many people are still grappling with the effects of not really being brought into the fullness of a healthy sexuality, and it can feel embarrassing or even shameful to ask questions about sex, even years into healthy marriages.
So what does it look like to reclaim a healthy, holistic view of sexuality? And how do we unlearn the shame and embrace both our faith and our sexuality in a way that's life-giving? To help us navigate these questions, I am honored to welcome Dr. Camden Morgante to the show.
Dr. Morgante is a licensed clinical psychologist and coach who specializes in helping people recover from the effects of purity culture. She's passionate about guiding individuals through the process of identifying harmful beliefs around sexuality and helping them build a healthier, more integrated understanding of sex. One that aligns both with their faith and their personal growth.
Dr. Morgante's personal experience as a millennial who grew up within the context of purity culture combined with her professional expertise makes her uniquely qualified to guide us through this topic. She's been featured in numerous publications and podcasts where she speaks on the intersection of faith, sexuality, and mental health.
Her compassionate, nuanced, thoughtful approach to the conversation acknowledges both some well-meaning intentions behind purity culture and the real harm it's caused. Dr. Morgante's work is grounded in the belief that sexuality is a core part of who we are as human beings and that God created us to embrace this part of ourselves fully and without shame.
She has a brand new book out this week. It's called Recovering from Purity Culture: Dismantle the Myths, Reject Shame-Based Sexuality, and Move Forward in Your Faith. It's such an incredibly rich and empowering deep dive into the nuances of how we think about sexuality. I am so thrilled to bring you my conversation today with Dr. Camden Morgante.
***
Hi, Dr. Camden. I am so thrilled to have you here today on the podcast. We've been following each other online for a little while and it's really fun to have this conversation with you about this new book you have coming out.
Dr. Camden: Yes. Thank you, Dr. Alison. I'm thrilled to be here and to see you again and connect with you again.
Alison Cook: You were so kind to do an Instagram live with me, I think it was about The Best of You. Is that right? Yeah. You've been great. I think it was a DM you sent me that said, it is so refreshing to see people talking about these topics who are still Christian. I see you as well, really fighting for your faith, even as you're trying to disentangle from some of the toxic messages that so many of us have gotten.
To that point, you've got this new book coming out all about purity culture. We've seen that phrase thrown around, but you're really an expert on it. You're a psychologist. You've studied this. Talk to us a little bit today as we're getting started. What is this thing, purity culture? We're naming something, and it's important to name things accurately. So we've got this name–purity culture. What do we mean by that? What are we actually trying to identify in that term?
Dr. Camden: Yeah. There's different ways people define it, but the way I define it in my book and in my work is that it was a largely evangelical movement that peaked in the 1990s to 2000s that attempted to persuade young people especially to avoid premarital sex using shame and fear as tools of control and coercion.
So I distinguish between the belief in waiting until marriage for sex, which I call a traditional Christian sexual ethic, I distinguish between that and purity culture. To me, those are two different things. What really separates those is that purity culture added the shame and fear and control.
It wasn't really a thoughtful choice that people could make, to wait for marriage to have sex. It was really coerced out of them with shame. And that's the distinction I make. Not many other books on purity culture make that same distinction.
Alison Cook: Yeah, I really appreciated that about your book. There's a lot of nuance in it. We're talking about a movement, and it's less about what was taught, although some folks might completely disagree with everything that they were taught, but I heard you saying in your book, a lot of it is about how it was taught–using coercion and fear. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Dr. Camden: Yeah, it was really the myths, the false promises and the messages that were used to try to persuade young people that has caused so much harm. Because again, it's different from holding that belief and holding that value for yourself.
It's about offering these false promises of what you'll get if you believe. It's about what I call “the myths of purity culture” that didn't come from the Bible, but yet were taught to us as if they were biblical truth. It peaked in the 1990s to 2000s, because that's really when millennials like myself were going through high school sex ed and youth group at church, and reading these books that were geared towards especially teen girls and purity and modesty and things like that.
The true love waits movement. And that's also why it's a culture and not a belief; a culture involves things like purity rings, making a “true love waits” pledge. Some people went to rallies, some people had purity balls. It's like this whole culture of books and speakers and conferences and sermons solely focused on this topic.
That's what it was built around. Our faith became entirely built on this concept of purity.
Alison Cook: Interesting. Okay. I'm Gen X, more raised in the eighties, college in the nineties. So it's really interesting to hear you make that distinction because I definitely had some of that. I remember being at a Christian conference in ‘88 and we all had to stand up and take the pledge to wait until we were married.
But I will say, a lot of that stuff you're describing, the books that started to come out around it, the movements, the culture, I think the era was a little bit more local. So there might be some slight differences, but definitely the seeds of it, I caught early on. I'll have conversations with my friends about, gosh, wouldn't it have been nice if we'd had some conversations about a whole-being sexuality?
Not “wait until you're married” and then you're expected (and you use this word in the book) to flip the switch. That's one of the myths.
Dr. Camden: Yeah, I would say my Gen X clients usually got these messages either later in high school or in college. Maybe from a college ministry or around the time that I Kissed Dating Goodbye was released. I think that was like ‘93 or so. So if they're in college around that time, it may have informed their choices to get married or who they married.
But the reason why I say it affected millennials specifically, is because abstinence-only sex ed was also a part of the public school curriculum when we were growing up. And we got it not in religious settings, but also in public school.
Also, it happened during more of those formative years, like the middle school and early high school years for us. It really shaped our understanding of our bodies and of sexuality and even of relationships in a different way than I see with Gen X or even Gen Z coming up, because they got some of it too.
Alison Cook: It hasn't been fantastic for a long time. And yes, it affects different generations differently. That makes sense to me. Tell me a little bit about in your practice, how do you see the residual effects on particularly women, but also on couples, on folks who not only missed a whole gap in their human development, but also got some of these toxic messages around sex.
And again, I want to be clear. We're not necessarily saying the toxic messages have to do with premarital abstinence. You talk about that in the book. It’s the way that was pushed, the way it was talked about. So how do you see the residual harm of some of those methods?
Dr. Camden: I'm a licensed psychologist, so I have a private practice where I see women and couples in my therapy practice. And then I also do coaching online, specifically for purity culture recovery. I see couples all over the country and women for that. And the ways that I see it mainly manifesting is causing problems in one's faith, sexuality, and relationships.
Those big three key areas. It causes a lot of faith struggles for a lot of people, faith doubts, periods of disillusionment, or feeling distrusting or distant from God. It causes problems in sexuality, and we can get into the specifics, but sexual pain, low sexual pleasure, low desire, difficulty connecting with their spouse once they're married, and flipping the switch.
And then problems in relationships, and that can be with others, like in a marriage, because there were very limited roles and stereotypes that purity culture used that can limit the ways that husband and wife interact in marriage. Also your relationship to yourself, your own mental health, your body image, and shame about your body and your sexuality. Those are the three main areas I see the effects showing up.
Alison Cook: Why do you think that is? What are some of these messages that are subtle and that people might not even realize? They've internalized these shaming messages. When you're doing work with folks, what are you trying to get to the root of?
Dr. Camden: Yeah, I'm trying to get to the root of what are your beliefs and where did those come from? And if you can identify who it was that taught you this or what book you read it in, where did it come from? That can help them start to disentangle it a little bit to see that this wasn't biblical. There were parts of it that were biblical, but a lot of it came from humans who are fallible.
We had good intentions for the most part. These people that taught us purity culture had good intentions, but there were a lot of unanticipated consequences that didn't show up until 10 or 20 years later that we couldn't have expected. So I'm trying to get to the root of that and see, yeah, your faith, your sexuality, and your relationships got so entangled with this and how do we find a healthy path forward?
Alison Cook: This gets to some of those myths you talk about. What are some of those myths that people have internalized that really wreak havoc on a healthy sexual and spiritual identity?
Dr. Camden: Yeah, you mentioned the flip switch myth, so I can start with that one. This idea that as soon as you get married, you flip a switch and sex is going to be instantly pleasurable and easy, only if you wait for it…that really affects people's sexuality because they realize sex takes a lot more education than we were ever given.
It takes communication, it takes teamwork, it takes a compromise. There's a lot that goes into it. But it is not an overnight success. It takes work like any other skill in marriage. And it also affects people's faith because they were given this false promise and told that God promised them this.
So then when it doesn't happen, I see people have a lot of disappointment and that distrust in God, like, why did I wait, if this is what I'm getting? Where's my reward? And that's also very connected with the fairytale myth, which is if you wait, then you'll have a fairytale marriage. You'll find your spouse.
And for many people who are single much longer than they wanted to be, or who are in very unhappy, unhealthy, or even abusive marriages, and maybe go through a divorce or who are widowed, that promise does so much harm. That's really the myth that affected me the most, as I share in the book.
It affected my faith the most, because I thought, where's the reward I get for waiting? Why haven't I met my husband? Because I met him a little bit later than I expected to. I was single for almost all my twenties, which was very different in my cultural background and upbringing; in my religious community that was considered pretty unique, to be single throughout my twenties. So that was the myth that affected me the most and affected my faith.
Alison Cook: That's interesting. There's a promise of, if you do this for God, God will do this for you. And then when that doesn't happen, it's devastating. It makes a lot of sense. It's interesting when you talk about the myths you use this word, and I have a lot of feelings about this word, and I think the word gets misunderstood, but I actually think it's the right word in this context.
You use the word “deconstructing” for some of these myths, and what I want to say to the listener is that it is really important to understand this word in context. Bracket all the things you've heard about this word--because it gets so misused and so misunderstood. But honestly, I had to deconstruct some of the messages I got about sexuality from religious communities.
I also had to deconstruct messages I got from Hollywood movies about sex and love. And that's why I like the use of that word in this context and how you use it in the book, because you're really saying exactly what that word is.
We have to look at these messages and deconstruct them. We have to pick them apart and go, what is really at the root of that? That doesn't make sense. This isn't logical or theologically sound. For example, to your point, this idea that God rewards people–if you do X, Y will happen– isn't a biblical or theologically sound assumption.
Dr. Camden: Yeah, I use the word deconstruct because we're taking it apart and then seeing what part is biblical and true and good and beautiful and from God and consistent with our faith and values. And then what part was wrongly interpreted or handed to us by people with maybe good intentions, but it's not true.
I talk about deconstruction on this kind of spectrum of home repairs. Not everybody demolishes their house with a wrecking ball. And that's what we sometimes hear about deconstruction: that it's a wrecking ball to your faith or to your belief system.
But it can be a remodeling of seeing what parts of this house are still working and what parts aren't, what parts are no longer serving us well, or they need to be updated because they were good materials back in the seventies or eighties and they're not now. So you can deconstruct and still hold on to some parts of it too.
Another misconception is that when you deconstruct, you throw it all away, and you completely start over from scratch. But that's not what it's looked like for me. It's looked like a careful and methodical process of picking apart what is true and what's unbiblical, and still leaving a foundation of truth in there.
Alison Cook: I love that. I love that, Dr. Camden. And you really talk about that in the book. You actually say in the book, "what's interesting is that some critics of purity culture may say that my own beliefs represent purity culture 2.0, since I still hold on to an ethic of premarital sexual abstinence, but the belief itself is not what makes something purity culture."
I love this argument. It's how we believe what we believe and why we believe what we believe and what is underneath what we believe in. It’s how you're talking about it with your spouse, with your kids, with your friends, that you're bringing a whole body and your whole being into it.
And you're also not assuming that your own perspective is the perspective for all people at all times, in all places either. There's a humility. One of the things I really like about what you do in the book is you provide a framework. You talk about Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning and Fowler's phases of spiritual development.
It’s this idea that as we develop emotionally, as we develop more emotional maturity, as we develop cognitively, as we develop more cognitive maturity, we develop more critical thinking skills. We're also going to be developing in our moral reasoning, and we may arrive at the same conclusions, but the way we've reasoned through those hard issues looks very different.
It leads to more, again, humility, a more robust, whole body, you use the word “empowered”, being. Talk to me a little bit about that. I thought that was a really helpful reframing.
Dr. Camden: Yeah, as we develop cognitively with the ability to have abstract thought, critical thought, instead of concrete black and white thinking, that goes hand in hand with our spiritual and our moral development too, because we're thinking about things in more nuanced ways.
We're thinking about the gray areas. We're thinking about complexity. My goal for the book was really to help people think of how to think differently, and give some tools and some frameworks for doing that without telling them what to believe. I really wanted to give people the tools to try to figure that out for themselves because we didn't get that in purity culture.
We were told what to believe, what to do, what not to do. It was handed to us, and that didn't allow us as teenagers or young adults to apply the critical thinking that's necessary in order to make these really complex moral decisions about sexuality. And, like you said, to have a holistic and integrated sexuality, which I think is what the Bible supports.
Alison Cook: That's so good. And the book is filled with tools. One of the things I really like about what you do in the book is you say very clearly, look, I'm going to give you a wide list of tools, list of resources. I don't necessarily even agree with all of these lists of resources, but I believe in reading widely.
And I thought that was an example of what you're trying to teach. Listen, We don't have to be so threatened. We can listen to numerous perspectives and arrive at our own sexual ethic, at our own moral reasoning that's biblically informed. There was this phrase I used to love in graduate school.
One of my professors would always say, there are a lot of issues out there about which reasonable people can reasonably disagree. You're not trying in the book to tell people, as you said, what to believe. You're trying to say, listen, here's a bunch of different ideas about this. It's complicated. It's hard. Let's engage in it. Let's not be afraid of it.
And that's going to lead to this more wholehearted, more holistic way. I am curious toward this end. I know listeners are going to be thinking, okay, this is great. This is great for me. And I'm already married. I've figured it out. Oh my gosh, this is a lot of work and it's hard, but I'm already living this ethic, so how do I talk about it with my kids?
Dr. Camden: Yeah, that was the last chapter of the book because that's pivoting to, where do we go from here? And I will have some clients that will say, like, why do I even need to rethink my sexual ethic? Because as you said I'm married, I'm monogamous with my spouse. This doesn't really matter anymore, what I believe.
But I argue that it really does because doing the work to think through it yourself and arrive at a place where you feel confident and you feel like it's congruent with your theology and your faith and your values is empowering. So that's the first reason to do it. The second would be to teach your kids, because we have to know what our values are in order to communicate those to our kids.
At the same time, knowing that they're going to have autonomy to make their own decisions one day and arrive at their own conclusions to their own thought process and respecting their critical thinking and their journey in this.
But I want to teach my kids my beliefs and my values about sexuality. I also want to equip them with some critical thinking skills for them to think through how to apply this in their own life and the unique challenges that they're going to face in our changing world with media and all that kind of stuff.
Alison Cook: So what are some examples of how you might engage those conversations with your kids or how you might teach or how you might coach some of your clients through those conversations?
Dr. Camden: Yeah, we start with basic things, because I really think this can start from birth. Sex-ed is not a one and done talk, and that's how it was for me. Many of us growing up may have had this big talk, with our same-sex parent. I was sent to read a book and “come back if you have any questions”.
But it's really an ongoing conversation that starts when they're young, talking about their bodies and non-shaming ways, using correct names for body parts, modeling consent, empowering them to be able to say no if they don't want hugs and kisses and and things like that. So it starts really young with those kinds of concepts.
And then as they get older, infusing conversations with your family's values, making this part of your everyday conversation of when things come up. Ask your kids questions when something happens on TV, on a show. What do you think about that? Here's what we might think about this, or here's what we think the Bible says about this.
Why do you think that is? I think those open-ended questions can really help foster some of that critical thinking.
Alison Cook: Oh, that's really good, to actually use the media instead of turning it off. We don't watch this. This is bad. Instead saying, okay, this is interesting. What do you think about this? Because in that conversation, you're also”deconstructing” some of the cultural messages or the media messages about sexuality. You're having those conversations with your kids and together normalizing and demystifying. We need to talk about this.
Dr. Camden: I think those natural opportunities that arise are the best time to talk about it. When a new baby is born in the family, that's a time to talk about how the baby gets out and maybe how it got in there. With my little kids, that's what I would talk about.
How do you make decisions about when you know you're in love or when you feel safe with someone? What does that feel like? Those are some of the more nuanced questions I might have with older children and teenagers. Yeah. Looking for those opportunities every day, I think, rather than making it that “one and done” talk.
Alison Cook: Yeah. That's great. That's super practical. What do you say to folks who are really struggling with the disappointment, whether spiritual disappointment or disappointment in marriage, who are finding themselves like, man, this is not what I thought it was going to be? How do you talk with folks through some of those challenges?
Dr. Camden: The heartbreaking clients I work with are those that waited until they were married to have sex and maybe even waited to kiss until their wedding day because they thought that was the holiest choice. They courted instead of dated and they got married young and now they've been married 20 years and their sex life has never been enjoyable. It causes a lot of disconnection between them because they can't seem to make it work.
And they've got guilt and shame and then maybe some resentment too. And it's heartbreaking because they'll say, we did everything right. We followed all the rules. Why has it turned out this way? And I really make space to validate those feelings of disappointment without spiritually bypassing them. You've taught me that term of like, saying something like, everything works out for the good, or trust God.
But no, really allowing you to grieve that. When I work with couples, I'm really big on, this is not a mere you-problem. This is an us-problem. And this is something that is outside of ourselves. It's a third thing outside of the two of us that we can unite together to fight against.
And we can recognize that you didn't cause these problems. These are problems outside of ourselves that we had very little control or choice over, and we can have empathy for ourselves and each other because of that.
Alison Cook: I love that. That's really non-shaming. Let's come together in this, which also then leads to greater intimacy, which is truly what leads to healthier sexuality. It’s that ability to connect with each other through the pain of that.
Dr. Camden: Yeah, I hope by not seeing each other as adversaries, but as we're on the same team together and we're grieving together on how this problem has affected us and the pain that it's caused us over all these years. I hope by doing that, that they can feel closer and connected to each other.
And my definition of intimacy is anything that makes you feel close and connected to your spouse or your partner or another person. Often intimacy gets very narrowly defined as sex or physicality. The emphasis gets so put on that, like we're not having sex enough or we need to have more sex or I have low sex drive, when really it's more holistic.
Are you feeling emotionally connected? Are you socially connecting, having fun together and doing activities together? Are you spiritually connected through praying together, serving at your church together? And then are you intellectually connected, talking about your thoughts and feelings and reading books together or whatever it looks like for that couple?
There's so much more to intimacy than sex. When we focus on those other areas, couples will naturally feel closer. And sometimes that has an effect on their sexual desire and their connection.
Alison Cook: What would you say to the listener who, especially as a woman, wants so much to be a good wife and has internalized a lot of messages and feels a lot of guilt and shame for that part of her marriage? What words of encouragement or wisdom would you have for her?
Dr. Camden: I believe shame is not from God. God does not use shame as a tool to try to get us to change. I really differentiate in the book between guilt and shame, and I know you've talked about that too. We all borrow from Brene Brown with that too, of guilt as “I've done something wrong” and shame as “I am wrong”.
Women have a lot of both, but especially shame about their sexuality. Something about my sexuality is wrong or bad, or I'm not measuring up as a wife. If we can separate those two and really eliminate the shame part, and then examine the guilt part, are you acting in alignment with your values and beliefs?
If so, then the guilt is also not justified. That's one of the tools I use to help people to deal with their shame, and helping women feel that they're allowed to say no to sex. They're allowed to not always feel like they have to give their husband sex because again, it's not a give and take, it's a sharing.
We're sharing this experience together. We're sharing intimacy in our bodies together. But that was a very prominent teaching in purity culture and really broader than just Christian culture, this idea that men need sex and women have to be available and serve their husband's needs.
I want to empower couples to feel like they can say no in a gracious way and that they can navigate that together without resentment and bitterness towards each other and without guilt and shame.
Alison Cook: Yeah. You talk about in the book, the need for embodiment. In many ways, the purity culture messages around sex were very disembodied. Talk a little bit about how we can regain that sense of embodiment as an avenue for healthier sexuality.
Dr. Camden: That's an area I'm still working on, too. Hilary McBride has taught me a lot about embodiment, and I quote her in the book. That's very much still in process for me, is getting my mind and body integrated and aligned and really paying attention to my body. But I offer some suggestions in the book of ways that people can embrace and enjoy sensuality and being connected to their body and their senses, even if they are single or choosing to be abstinent.
You can still affirm your sexuality and recognize your desires. That doesn't mean you have to act on them. We can experience pleasure and express gratitude to God for that pleasure, that he made our bodies with the capacity for all sorts of pleasure. I'm not talking about sexual pleasure, but the pleasure of good tasting food or pleasant smells or sights in nature and things like that.
So really getting in touch with your five senses helps with that embodiment, and checking in with your body. That's a practice I'm trying to work on, of checking in with how my body feels and what information it’s giving me about my emotions or about my mental state or about my needs. Does this mean I need to eat? Does this mean I need to rest? Our body gives us such good information and many times we've been taught to ignore it.
Alison Cook: . Yeah. That's such a great thread that you pulled. And I agree. It's hard for most of us women. We have struggled with that embodiment piece. There's definitely the purity culture messages that I got as well, held in tension with what it’s supposed to look like in a Hollywood movie.
And I don't always feel like I’m in a Hollywood movie. Sex is not always like a Hollywood movie. Again, it seems so important to honor the bodies God gave us in a non-shaming way.
I love how you're describing the ability to teach couples to look at this as something they're in together, as opposed to against each other. I think playfulness can be so helpful with that, finding the humor in these bodies that God gave us and the play that leads to that intimacy you're describing.
It isn't Hollywood glam, and passion isn't always part of it. Sometimes, it's laughing together. It's enjoying each other, and even laughing at the absurdity of it all at times.
Dr. Camden: Yeah, it doesn't have to look like a movie set all the time. This is real life, and real bodies, and kids, and jobs, and the house, and physical health, and lots of life that we deal with. But I had a client the other day tell me, when she went through premarital counseling, the pastor told her she was supposed to be a tigress in bed.
That planted the seed of “I'm not good enough”. That planted the shame of I'm not a tigress. I don't feel that uninhibited and constant sexual desire, whatever the tigress means. She felt a lot of shame about that. And it was like, your husband married you for you.
If he is a good and healthy and loving and godly man, he accepts you for who you are and your body for how it is. And he loves you for that. You can feel safe to share that experience with him.
Alison Cook: Yeah. I love that. I love that. I think it's such important work that you're doing. You're really naming it and you're really helping people reframe it and arrive at a healthier, better place, which is how God wanted it. I'd love to circle back to the rest of these myths. What are some of these other myths that you keep encountering with folks?
Dr. Camden: Yeah, another one is the damaged goods myth, and that's the one that causes the most shame. Because for people who do have premarital sex, for people who are sexually abused and didn't choose that, they are called damaged goods. They are told they have less to offer their future spouse.
And that's so damaging and so not biblical. God doesn't look at us and see a damaged rose. He looks at us and sees his beloved children, his beloved image bearers. He offers us forgiveness. He offers us restoration and wholeness. I think that myth is probably the most damaging.
The gatekeepers myth is really pitting women and men against each other and creating this sense where women are the gatekeepers of sexuality. That they have to be the ones to set boundaries before marriage and constantly monitor how far we are going. But then after marriage they always have to be sexually available and meet their husband's needs.
That's the one I see causing the most problems in a marriage, in a relationship, but also sexually, because it's hard for women to turn that off and to really be in their bodies, to be embodied, and to enjoy the sexual experience with their spouse.
Then the last one, the spiritual barometer myth, where we are better Christians and our spirituality is measured by our virginity prior to marriage. That affects my clients in that sometimes they get married and they think, am I no longer pure because now I've had sex? Does this mean I'm dirty? And it still feels wrong and dirty.
Or I feel like I've lost this part of my identity. Virginity became so much a part of your identity, your purpose, your worth. And I also don't think that's biblical, because our purpose and worth and identity is found in Christ and what he's done for us and our relationship with him and following and serving him.
It's not about this narrow definition of purity as virginity, it's about serving God with our minds, heart, bodies, and souls.
Alison Cook: I love that you're naming that. Those are really helpful namings for people listening who are suffering with residual shame. And I'm curious as we close, Dr. Camden, you talked a little bit about your own journey through your twenties, carrying some of these messages. What would you say to that younger single you now, with all that you know now? What would you want her to know? What would you say to her?
Dr. Camden: Yeah, I have a different vantage point now because I am married and I have two children and I feel very blessed. I no longer see it as an if-then, because I followed the rules, then I'm blessed. I see these blessings as God's grace to me, this unmerited gift.
I wrote my dissertation on grace and couples, and that really made an impact on my faith and being able to reconceptualize that these are all gifts of God that I didn't earn. I didn't perform to get them, and so I think I would go back and tell myself, this is God's grace. Whether you're single, whether you're married, whether you have children or not, whether life hasn't turned out the way you expected, or whether you feel like you're living your best life–this is God's grace to you, and really trusting him in that.
Alison Cook: Yeah, there's no hierarchy of grace, whether you're single, whether you're divorced, whether you're married, whether you're struggling. God's grace is right there for you. He loves you. I know what you're saying. For so many of us, there was this hierarchy, and there still is, to a large degree.
It flies in the face of the gospel. I love that you would be able to give her that message now, that she's not trying to earn something from God.
Dr. Camden: And with that, I want to be sensitive to, if you're in a state where you've been through abuse or a really traumatic divorce or something where you think, how is this God's grace? I don't mean to say that God caused that or that God will work it for good, any of those kinds of things. I mean it to say that even so, God's grace is with you. God's grace is available to you. He loves and sees you. And he's with you in your pain, too. I really believe that he sees our pain. He's with us in it and through it.
Alison Cook: Yeah. I know what you're saying. It's a subtle distinction. I think about my own single years, where there was so much turmoil. I was also married into my 30s. And it's not to say that this is God's grace. It's to say, whatever your circumstances, God is there with you. There is a subtle shift there; even if the circumstances are really hard and I don't want this set of circumstances it's not that I've done something wrong to be in this situation.
Nor is it that I can do something to earn something different. Sometimes we find ourselves in hard situations, whether married, single, sexually active, not sexually active. Sometimes things are hard.
Dr. Camden: And that doesn't mean God's punishing you. I think there was this sense that this must be God's punishment that we're struggling in our sex life, because we did have premarital sex or something like that. And I don't believe we serve a God that arbitrarily punishes us and causes that suffering to happen.
I think the world is hard, life can be really hard, and hard things happen. Suffering is there, but He's with us even in the midst of it.
Alison Cook: That's right. And sex is complicated and hard to figure out and that has nothing to do with God's punishment. I love that you've written the book. It's such a helpful resource. I think there's a lot of people who've been hurt by this, but don't know how to rethink their sexual ethic and what they really believe and what they want to claim and what they want to reclaim.
And you're really giving people tools to do that for themselves and also to do that as they parent kids and move into healthy relationships. It's such a great resource. Tell people where they can find you, where they can find your work, the book, all the things.
Dr. Camden: Okay. Yeah. My book is Recovering from Purity Culture. It's available on October 15th. You can find it wherever books are sold. And my name is Camden Morgante. You can find me on my website, drcamden.com, and on all the social medias @DrCamden.
Alison Cook: Thank you. It's been a wonderful conversation. Super grateful for your work and thanks for giving us your time
Dr. Camden: And I'm thankful for your work too, Dr. Alison, because even though you don't use the word deconstruction, you've really helped us to see that some of these teachings need to be deconstructed. Like turn the other cheek–you've taught me about that one. You've helped us see, what does God really mean by that? How can we have a healthy spirituality and healthy emotional life?
Alison Cook: Thank you. I've appreciated your encouragement along the way. Pick up a copy of Recovering from Purity Culture anywhere books are sold. Thank you again.