I've been listening to Jackie Pack's podcast, "Thanks for Sharing" for a while now. I have received surprising insights. She recently started a series of episodes about sexual health, which I found fascinating.
Here in Utah, there is a dominant "purity culture." Parents and youth leaders with good intentions promote this cultural context, but it can have both good and bad consequences. Often we think about sexual irresponsible sexual behavior and pornography addiction through a shame paradigm. We can easily forget that abuse and trauma can cause behavioral addition. Sometimes we misperceive the sexual messages given to us by our culture and seek what we need sexually from unhealthy sources.
Jackie Pack cuts through the noise of the media and offers sharp observations about what we're trying to achieve in our relationships and marriages. This process of healing often involves tough work with a trusted therapist in our area. We all need help making important discoveries about who we are, what our value systems are, and how we need to grow.
One point she made, that got me thinking, is about how we change as we grow. Becoming a new person year after year can make us a new person, not just to our self, but to our sexual partner. This fact adds novelty to our sex life. Constant certainty, which is essential in a marriage, can also lead us to seek excitement outside of our most trusted relationship.
Hearing from expert CSAT's (Certified Sex Addiction Therapists), who fully understand the implications of this culture on the clients they serve, has been very useful. If I lived in Davis County, I'd work with the therapists at Healing Paths, Inc. read more
