Tanya Hale 00:00 

Oh hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 387, "The Spiritual Nature of Sexuality with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

Tanya Hale 00:23 

Hey, welcome to the podcast today, so glad to have you here with me. This is Tanya Hale with Intentional Living and I have a very special guest today. Today I'm honored to have with us Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife. So thank you, Jennifer, for spending some time with us today. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 00:38 

Thanks for having me. 

Tanya Hale 00:39 

We are going to be talking today about the spiritual nature of sexuality and the reason we're doing that with Dr. Jennifer is because she is an LDS relationship and sexuality coach and she has a PhD in counseling psychology. She's the author of a brand new book called "That We Might Have Joy: Desire, Divinity, and Intimate Love." And she's the creator of six online courses. I've taken some of those and I love those. They help individuals and couples to create happier lives and stronger intimate relationships and she also hosts two podcasts. She has one called Room for Two that my husband and I have been avid listeners for two years and we chat about them all the time and talk and say, "oh my gosh, did you hear what happened?" We're always talking about that. And then she has her other one that is Conversations with Dr. Jennifer and I've listened to that one for probably three years straight. I don't think I've missed an episode of either of those in all that time. I just love them and they really shape how I view the work that I do and the work that I do with my clients as well. And so the Conversations with Dr. Jennifer is just like this where, Jennifer, you go on to people's podcasts and they get interviewed because you are just such a wealth of knowledge and then you share those with your audience as well. So thank you so much for being here. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 02:04 

Yeah, my pleasure, really. 

Tanya Hale 02:05 

I would love to start today by chatting about your new book that you just had published called "That We Might Have Joy" with a subtitle of "Desire, Divinity and Intimate Love." And the reason I love this so much is because there's so much of this idea around our spirituality and our sexuality that that eluded me for years. I'm still working through it, let's be honest. But these ideas and so I wanted to just chat with you today about getting really clear on on what our spirituality is. Also getting really clear on what our sexuality is and then finding out how do those two marry up and and what comes. So I guess in just preface to that I loved how right off the bat on page two of the introduction of your book you talked about how oftentimes we were taught that our greatest calling was to be a Mother in Zion. I resonated with that so much and I took that very very seriously in my desire to be obedient. With that came a lot of checklists, came a lot of roles, came a lot of expectations. And I found that for me that really impacted my sexuality or my ability to step into my sexuality later on. Can we first of all just expand a little bit more on that concept for us, please? 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 03:26 

Yeah, for sure. So I think that many of us in our cultural and religious upbringings learned, women in particular, often learn this idea that being needless and wantless, being selfless, being very attuned to the needs of others, whether it's a husband's needs or a child's needs, is the way to be an ideal woman. And so to be the ideal woman and to be the most desirable, which matters, like I want to get married, I want someone to want me, then I need to sort of step away from my sexuality and my desires in general. And so to be the ideal woman and to be the... 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 04:25 

And so that is what many of my clients did in response to those messages. And then they moved into marriage and thought, wait a minute, like I have no access to this part of me. And, and I feel like I'm supposed to be sexual for his sake, for his needs. And that's not the muscle that helps us like sex, because that's more of a care energy. And caretaking for women is anti-erotic, right? That's more mother, is more maternal. And so a lot of us learned that we should relate to sexuality in kind of that maternal caretaking way, which absolutely works against  desire, sexual desire, and a sense of freedom in sex, which we want. So, you know, nobody had ill intention in doing that. It's just how many of us were taught and what we heard. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 05:26 

And then that kills sexual desire out of the gate. Like I've had so many clients who even primarily felt lots of desire and excitement. And then as soon as they got married, this sense of duty and obligation was there with it. And then it's just like their natural desire disappeared.And they're like, what's happening? Why? Why is it gone all of a sudden? 

Tanya Hale 05:47 

Yeah. Yeah. And I think for me, as the years have passed with me, and I'm now in a second marriage, I see that to really create this equal partnership that I was not able to even come close to in my first marriage. This time around, I'm finding out that my wants and needs, my sexual desires have to matter as much as my spouse's. And in that context of what I was taught, that being a mother is my greatest, I'm supposed to be the servant, I'm supposed to make sure everybody's taken care of first. My wants and needs did not matter previously. My sexual needs always came into this obligatory place, right? Then they matter as much as my spouse's. And I think it's such a valuable part of being able to create that equal partnership that we will never have a good relationship until we see each other as equals. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 06:36 

That's right. And men and women will always be different. And it doesn't mean that you are the same, but that who you are has equal importance in creating a marriage, right? That the yin and yang of who you each are compliments to each other, but you work together to create a relationship that is a reflection of both of you, that is desirable to both of you. And so in my dissertation research, I looked at the experiences of Latter-day Saint women, both premaritaly and in marriage around sexuality. And the majority of the women that I interviewed felt low desire, marriage felt that it was something... they didn't feel they belonged to it, that it was an expression of themselves. And so they weren't very happy in their sexual relationships, or in their marriages for that matter. A minority of the women, but nonetheless, a group of LDS women that actually felt like they instinctively valued their desires. That is to say that what they believed and wanted out of their lives, they took that seriously. And they looked for men that also took it seriously. And so they weren't, they operated collaboratively, like they took themselves seriously and were married to men that did the same. And so they instinctively created an intimate relationship that was a reflection of them as much as their husband. And so they liked sex, they liked being there, because they felt like it was something that really did bless their lives. And a place that they felt free to be themselves. There was no caretaking or sacrificing themselves, or taking care of their husbands at the expense of themselves, they weren't doing that. And therefore, they were happily married. 

Tanya Hale 08:37 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I love that because I think an erroneous idea that I think many of us grow up with is that that's our sexuality and our spirituality are on opposite ends of this. And if we have one, we can't have the other. And I love your work the last few years as I have really dug into it this this concept, but the deeper I step into my sense of self, the deeper that I come to know who God has created me to be. So more, I'm actually even capable of stepping into and even embracing my sexuality. And I love that concept. So what I would love to have you do, I would love to have you talk about the three levels, or the three stages of spirituality and also sexuality in your book. And I would love for you to kind of define what those three levels of spirituality are, because I think many of us get stuck. I think I got a lot of years in stage one, and maybe around my 30s or 40s, I moved into stage two. And it wasn't until after my divorce that I started to dabble a little bit even in stage three with my spirituality. And sexuality, same thing, right? So will you walk us through those three stages for both sexuality and sexuality? 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 09:54 

Sure. Yeah. And so, you know, let me just sort of preface with a couple things. One is that there's a lot of developmental theorists that are looking at how humans change over time, intellectually, you know, how they relate to faith, how they relate to morality, how their relationships change over time. And so this is drawing on a lot of those developmental theorists. And I, in my book, created these three stages because they capture what is most relevant to the work that I do and how I see people growing. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 10:28 

And here's the quick version of it, is that the more we are in stage three, the more intimate our relationships can be. So stage one, and the other thing I'd say is that we all start in stage one, we don't have a choice, but to start there, and we need it. There's nothing like, how to say, like, this is not a hierarchy, like the really good people are in stage three, we go through those stages. And at any moment we can regress, somebody cuts you off in traffic and you're in a stage one mind again. Okay. Right? That old and joyful and enjoying that how beautiful something is in a moment of calm, you may be in a stage three mind, right? So that is, we don't just live in one of these places. I wish that were true. It's what mind are we in? And then that shapes how we think about ourselves, our sexuality, divinity, and so on. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 11:27 

So a stage one mind is very focused on safety and gratification. So it's very egocentric. It's very much about how does the world affect me?  And a young child can't help but be egocentric because they don't know yet how to think about other people's experience, how they impact other people. When we are in a stage one mind, we're more black and white. We tend to see ourselves and our group as good and others and their group as bad or less than. And we tend to think about spirituality or God in terms of reward and punishment. Like, so if I do the good things, I will get a reward. If I do bad things, I will be punished. And I remember like, for example, walking with my friend in high school and she was, we were both LDS, but she was not compliant. She was drinking and doing some things like that. And she knew that I was compliant. And so when we were walking one night in the dark, getting back to our car, she said, "I'm so glad I'm walking with you because I feel safer." And I was like, "wait, why? I can't beat anybody up." And she's like, "oh, because God will keep you safe." Okay. So that's a lot of people think that way. That's a stage one mindset. You are entitled to protection and I'm not because I've disobeyed. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 13:02 

And then around sexuality, we tend to think of sexuality in this stage as basically bad because it's connected to pleasure and indulgence and gratification. And inhibiting ourselves, denying pleasure, is good. That's how the that stage one mind tends to think. So of course, you know, sexuality and spirituality have no overlap in that stage one mind because either you're being indulgent or you're being good. And somebody in a stage one mind might repress sexuality entirely because of that belief, or they might sort of vacillate between indulgence and control. And so because of real task of stage one is learning how to not be so impulsive. Some people might move into later stages in other parts of their lives, but in sexuality still struggle in a kind of fear-based way, more driven by their sexual impulses still, not really yet able to manage, to feel like they're more the driver of their choices, right? 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 14:18 

In stage one, sexuality tends to lag behind. I think it does. And I think one of the reasons why it tends to is first of all, you know, managing the impulses of the body are harder, like, because you can't just swear or drink alcohol and live a good life. But you can't really say, "I'll never feel sexual feelings or never have a sexual relationship" if you're married or whatever, you know, you have to figure out a kind of moderation around pleasure, just as is true with food as well, that we can't just say "I'm never going to eat again," because I tend to struggle with moderation. You can't do that, right? If you're going to be joyful, you have to find a way to have a moderate relationship to the pleasures of the body. And so that's harder than just denying something entirely or you know, so that and because sexuality is so connected to our souls, actually, because it's so linked to our sense of self, I think it's just it can be more difficult to sort out our way with it. And so I think it does tend to lag, in my experience with people. 

Tanya Hale 15:34 

I think for me, if I look at my journey, like I struggled with the sexuality because there was so much fear-based teaching around sexuality as well when I was younger, and I had such a strong desire to just be obedient and to be good. But I saw them in opposition to each other. I couldn't reconcile in my brain how to be this really sexual person, but also be this really good, upstanding, righteous person. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 16:05 

Yeah, so many of us have learned that like, I mean, the female version of it is you're pure. And without sin, I remember learning things like if you're walking down in your wedding dress and every sexual sin, you have a big black mark on your wedding dress, you know, like the horror. And so you're like, "Oh, my gosh, I don't want to be seen as tainted." You know, I don't want the scarlet letter, you know, on me, I have to basically deny all of this. And so many of my clients just almost felt like even the feelings were interfering with their purity. And so it's really learning to disconnect from a fundamental part of being a human being. 

Tanya Hale 16:45 

Yeah, well, if we look at the Church's For Strength of the Youth pamphlet, it used to say don't even do anything that arouses these. 

Tanya Hale 16:54 

Right, right. Exactly. So, you know, it's definitely improved in the last few years, but yes, we've had a lot of that. And for men, I think there's often this idea, there's sexual addiction treatment programs that treat sexual feelings as Satan, as evil in and of itself, right? And that's a real problem to feel like this is the pathway to evil rather than this is to be human. To be human is to have pleasure, to have sexual feelings. That's not a problem. That's part of being human. The question is, how am I going to relate to these feelings in a way that is respectful of others and self-respecting, that is going to accrue to the life that I want to live, that is in line with what I believe is good and right? You know, those are the questions and learning how to do that takes time and is an imperfect process. 

Tanya Hale 17:55 

It's a very, very important process for learning how to have joy in life because, you know, I talk about this in the book that the Italians, you know, really subscribe to the Epicurean philosophy that pleasure can be a pathway to spiritual wholeness, but not indulgence. The indulgence is to actually use pleasure to escape life rather than to really embrace the sensual pleasures of life to open us up to the beauty that God has given us. The beauty of intimate love, the beauty of the world that we live in, the beauty of, you know, carefully prepared food, right? That  there's so much pleasure that actually makes our sense of gratitude and aliveness and joyfulness expand that helps us to receive God's love, right? But if we're so afraid of pleasure, right, which many religious interpretations suggest that pleasure actually is anti-spiritual, then we're never able to receive those blessings. We're never able to take it in. And so, you know, LDS theology points to the goodness of the body, that in fact we need a body to increase our spiritual capacity and I think part of it is being able to receive goodness and light and knowledge through the body. We often see it as interfering with the spiritual, but it's actually the conduit to the spiritual. 

Tanya Hale 19:44 

The piece that you brought up in the book that I love was this natural man kind of idea many of us grew up with and I always associated so much of that natural man with my body. And, and I love that you kind of tease that out and you're like, No, it has way more to do with the ego you think and our ego that drives that and our body actually is, as you said, the conduit for that greater spirituality as we step into it. I love that that you brought it up. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 20:14 

Yes, yes. It's our egocentrism. And if you look at, you know, King Benjamin talking about natural man, he doesn't bring up sexuality at all, or pleasure. It brings up, you know, this kind of the refusal to yield to the spiritual, and that's the ego. The ego wants what it wants, it wants control, it wants self justification, and it won't sort of surrender to the good, to the spiritual, to what it's asking of us and from us. But it's not about the body. Now, we can, of course, relate to sexuality in a very egocentric way and undermine our spirituality. But it isn't the existence of sexuality, but rather how we relate to it. 

Tanya Hale 21:00 

Yeah. And I think as long as we stay in that space where we're afraid of our body, afraid of the pleasures of our body, that kind of keeps us hemmed into that stage one. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 21:12 

It does. And we become actually more likely to be compulsive around sexuality because whatever we're afraid of, the fear tends to run us around. And so what we can't sort of face and address, it tends to have control. And so the fear-based instruction, even if well intentioned, tends to work against our goals of spiritual peace and our capacity for intimate love. And so we certainly can teach our children and ourselves even caution around something as powerful as sex, but we don't want fear to be the primary motivator. Desire is a much better motivator, even around health, scaring people into you'll die if you keep it. That is not as motivating as giving people an understanding of a strong, capable, healthy body. That is a much better motivator for people to actually change their habits. And so we can offer cautions, but we want primarily to appeal to what we're hoping to create through our sexuality as the best motivator. 

Tanya Hale 22:26 

Yeah, I love that. So then moving into stage two, like, what's the next stage two? 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 22:34 

We become capable of stage two, which is different than saying we all move into stage two. We become capable of it around seven or eight. And that is to say that we've gotten, we're less impulsive. We're not just run around by our sensations and so on. We're more able to self regulate. You know, if you think about a child in preschool, their body, like they're, you know, lifting up their leg and they're sitting still in their chairs hard, you know, by the time you're seven or eight, you're more able to go along with what the expectations are and so on. And so in the social stage, we start to really download what is the language and morality and beliefs and structure of our group, whether it's our family, our religious group, our society. And we're really learning a way to understand ourselves in relationship to other people. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 23:23 

And so we in this stage are primarily driven by the desire to belong and we achieve belonging. So safety is a primary goal in the first stage. Belonging is the primary goal of this social stage. And the way we belong is we do what our group holds as ideal. And so we're very busy learning what is ideal in this group and how do I go along with it? How do I learn to be capable of it? And so we learn standards of around how to behave around sexuality. So if you're a Latter-day Saint, you learn the Law of Chastity. If you grow up in another religious tradition, you may learn different ideas about it, but you are learning a way to think about what is the right way to be sexual. And you're very driven in this stage by approval and the approval of others because your sense of self kind of belongs to other people still. It's like, I need you to feel good about me for me to feel good about me. I need you to accept me as a sexual being for me to feel okay about myself as a sexual being. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 24:33 

And so we're busy earning a self. And we think of God as less somebody who's offering punishments or blessings and more of a friend, more of someone who cares about us, who cares about what we're going through. We're more able to be in conversation with God and see God as somebody who is validating us, may be disappointed, may be disapproving at times, but wants what's best for us. So it's more of a more trust in a God that loves us and cares about us. And our understanding of God is so much a reflection of where we are in our development, but it can also be helpful for us, to feel like in stage one that God will disapprove and things might not be as good for me if I don't learn how to do this, on some level can be helpful to us because it's the way we can process information. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 25:38 

But again, too much fear, then we get stuck there. So if we move into stage two, we trust God to kind of care about us in this process. And we can feel that there's some overlap between spirituality and sexuality in this stage when we're compliant with what the standards are of our group. So if it's like "wait until marriage to have sex," you can in your relationship, in your marriage, feel a sense of peace and even a sense of ease in that you are living according to the expectations and standards of your group. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 26:18 

But because we're so validation dependent in this stage, we are still a little bit on guard, like the level at which we can really let a spouse know us, how deeply we can know them is challenged by our need to be seen as good, to be seen as necessary or needed. Like we do a lot of I need you or I need to be needed by you in this stage to earn a self in the other's eyes. And so that limits how much intimacy and open heartedness we are able to offer in our sexual relationship. So it can be good and even a desirable part of the marriage, but may be limited in how open-hearted and open-minded it is, how much we let our minds be known sexually, or even know our own minds. 

Tanya Hale 27:18 

So if I'm understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like our sense of self is very, very tied into these stages. And the more I grow my sense of self, the more I have the capacity to experience stage two. But stage two still is pretty reflective sense of self, right? I'm still looking for that validation still. Other people's approval in order for me to really feel in alignment with me and feel like I've, I'm just yes, thanks. And, of course, other people validating me is great, but I don't need it to know that I'm a good person. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 27:52 

Yeah, yes, that's right. So yeah, so stage, I want to make sure I follow that. But yes, stage two, you don't need it as much as you do in stage one. But in stage two, yes, you're still pretty dependent on other people to tell you who you are. And so we create our relationships in that dependency. And most people get married in that stage of dependency. I need you, you need me, we're going to fulfill roles for each other, you know, and it's totally okay that a lot of people get married, we don't really have a choice but to get married there. That's usually where most of us are. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 28:26 

But the issue of validation starts to crumble in marriage because, and we think, "oh, something's going terribly wrong," but it's actually setting us up to move into stage three, it is pushing us to grow out of our validation dependency, and to grow into a more solid self, which makes intimacy and love more possible than it was in stage two. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 28:52 

Now, in stage two, you're going to feel like I love you and you love me and it's true, I matter to you, you matter to me, you are very important to my sense of self. And I value having you in my life. That's how a stage two person thinks about it. I don't want to hurt our relationship. And how you feel about me really impacts how I feel about myself. But the problem is when we get married, we tend to be drawn to people that are different than us. That's the basis of our attraction, often is that the mystery and the difference in that person. And at first, when we have, we're falling in love, and we have lots of dopamine, it just feels amazing to have this person that's so mysterious and compelling to approve of us and tell us, you know, you light me up and turn me on. That's just like, that feels amazing. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 29:45 

But of course, then once we get married, and we start trying to work out a life, then there was differences feel so disruptive, like, why are you doing life the wrong way? Why do you want the wrong things, you know, and it's very invalidating. And then it really disrupts what you were dependent upon, and what you thought the marriage was going to give you, which is this validation of who you are. So that disruption allows us or encourages us, invites us, even though many of us choose resentment instead, to grow into the third stage, which is to be somebody who's more able to hold on to herself, hold on to a self knowledge that's not so dependent on other people, validating approving it, seeing it the same way, and still love and let herself be known in that stage or himself for that matter, right. So it's less driven by approval and more by integrity, less by needing others to tell you it's okay, and more by needing to know in your own heart and conscience, that your choices are good and worthy. And, you know, it's not that we're disregarding the authority that brought us to this point, we're not throwing away our values. But we are determining who we are within them. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 31:15 

So stage two is this is what mom wants me to believe. Stage three is this is what I believe. Stage two is this is what that who dad wants me to be. Stage three is this is who I want to be. Stage two is like more letter of the law. Stage three is more spirit of the law. It's like I've internalized the value and I have to determine what it means in this context, but it's not driven so much by proving to others you're good. It's being good.

 Tanya Hale 31:50 

Mm-hmm. So leaning more away from the expectations of others, walking away from the checklists. All the things and really interpreting, you know, so like for me with my spirituality, I used to think, well, read scriptures every day, say the prayers every day, go to church on Sunday. I had this checklist and I really thought for many years that if I just did this checklist, yes, that I would have it and in the last several years, I've come to a place where I'm like, "Oh, like, like that's helpful at some level, but at another level, it's absolutely not helpful at all because what I'm going for is not checking boxes, but a connection with God." And I don't get the connection by just checking boxes. I mean, they can assist me. They can provide avenues to create that connection, but it's not the checking of the box that does it. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 32:44 

It's like the structure is valuable for creating the capacity. We often need structure and constraint to build capacity, but what Christ often taught against was don't confuse the structure for what it is that we're actually trying to create and become. Don't use the checking of the boxes to say you're good. What is it to actually be good in this moment? And it's a hard lesson for us. I mean, our egos love structure and rules or defying them and saying, "I don't need rules," which is also immature because it's more just rejecting of convention. So we often do defiance or compliance in stage two, where stage three is self-authoring. It's like, I'm going to sort out and do what I believe is actually good and right. And it requires more tolerance of invalidation. It's okay to be liked and received well, but our choices aren't being driven by that desire. We aren't doing things in order to be liked. We're doing what is actually loving and fair, even if it doesn't turn into approval. And with a teenager, you'll quickly learn the importance of that because often you have to do what a teenager doesn't like in order to be loving to that teenager in order to do what's actually in their interest. 

Tanya Hale 34:14 

Or an adult child. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 34:15 

Or an adult child. But we're in a marriage, you know, because a lot of times if we need our spouse to be happy with us, we won't bring up things that need to be brought up. Yeah, differences and to bring up conflict. You know, some people think, "oh, conflict in marriage is a bad thing." I would say contempt in marriage is a bad thing. But conflict is about two honest people working out a life. And it can, you know, if you don't bring contempt to it, that conflict can be refining and help you forge something stronger. 

Tanya Hale 34:48 

And isn't it actually that conflict and that disconnect sometimes that actually can help us engage to that stage three? 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 34:58 

That's right, it is, exactly. 

Tanya Hale 35:01 

It requires that piece of us that sets aside our ego and says, help me see this from your point of view, help me understand where I may be wrong in this. And also being willing to put my stuff out there on the table. Okay, like look at this and. We may not accept it, but I'm willing to put it out there for the sake of the relationship. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 35:24 

100%. So that's what we tend to hate in our relationships. I don't want to reveal the part of me that you don't like. I don't want to know the part of you that I don't like. Therefore, I don't want an intimate relationship. I mean, we say we want an intimate relationship, but most of us aren't so sure because it means sacrificing approval, taking the risk of having to actually find disapproval, or that what you want is different enough from me that maybe I have to figure out what it means to be good in this marriage when I love you and you want something different than I do. How do I be true to me and also true to you? And so it's in conflict, although we don't like to think it is, that we actually grow a marriage. We want it to be, "I love you," "no, I love you." And instead, it's when we're bumping up against the differences that asks us, what does it mean to love here? And can we be truthful enough with each other to sort out our way? And that's our egos don't like it, but that's actually a measure of faith. And then I'm willing to believe in the two of us enough, believe in love enough to be honest and sort out with you, what does it mean to love here? 

Tanya Hale 36:44 

I think that honesty piece is really challenging as I look back at my previous 24 year marriage that ended in divorce. There was, I used to pride myself very much on honesty. And then I heard someone talk once about, about how if I didn't set boundaries, if I didn't say what I wanted, if I didn't put my wants and needs on the table, but I was not being honest. And I was like, wait a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I always thought that I was like lying. Yes. And when I realized that, oh, wait, me not showing up as me me just trying to acquiesce to keep the peace. That is not honest. And that will never create intimacy necessary to create that equal partnership. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 37:25 

That's right. No, 100%. And I agree with you. It's a kind of a shocking idea. Like, wait a minute, I'm the good one who's going along, calling me a dishonest, but it isn't honest. And it's actually also strangely, our attempt at control, like it's not controlling in the way we think of it. But it is a way of trying to keep the other person seeing us in a certain way, seeing ourselves in a certain way. We're trying to kind of get away from what's real, so that we don't have to kind of live in the uncertainty of facing what's real and dealing with what's real. 

Tanya Hale 38:02 

And it absolutely allowed me to stay in the one-up place that said, "see, I'm so much better than you because I don't have all of these flaws that I see," right? 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 38:10 

I know, I know. Yeah, we love that stuff, yes. 

Tanya Hale 38:12 

I loved it at the time, but I couldn't because though it fed my ego, it was so dissatisfying and it was so empty and there was always this place in me that was like, I don't know what's going on here. I don't know what's wrong. I cannot figure this out and I think that this piece of really being able to step into honesty and start engaging more with this stage three capacity is what really made it impossible for me to have more of the kind of relationship that I wanted back then. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 38:46 

Yes, exactly. Yep. 

Tanya Hale 38:49 

So how do these all start melding together, then this spirituality and the sexuality? 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 38:57 

So, you know, what happens is in stage three, when you're up against those differences, the self-authoring part is what happens, you know, and that is, I have to use my agency to determine who I'm going to be in this marriage, in this relationship. And that's really kind of the Adam and Eve moment of I have to engage in a creative process of determining what does it mean to love this person while not betraying myself, being true to both of us. And as we start to do that as a couple, we start to become a couple, we start to actually create a marriage, a relationship where I can be honest, I can be myself, and love you, and vice versa. Like it starts to forge a place of both, you know, we constrict through being in the marriage, but we start to create a place of deeper freedom. And so we start to experience like I can, if you have two people that are doing this, and if you don't have that, it's a different question, but if you and your spouse are dealing more with what's real, you're trying to bring your best selves to that question, you're trying to be better and to reach across to one another, you start to experience a sense of I can be myself here, and be with you, I can lie next to you and feel gratitude and freedom because you know me, and you love me, and we have something real together. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 40:31 

And that that can be expressed through our sexuality in a way that makes sex more desirable because sex is so connected to our souls. We don't want to feel that we're betraying ourselves to be sexual, when we feel we can be ourselves and feel the freedom of that, then sex can feel like this, my spouse loves me and knows me, I can be myself here, he or she accepts me as I am. That is so deeply meaningful to us, like that I can be fully known and fully loved and offer the same in return is to touch the beauty of what you've created as a couple. It's to know it and to feel it on a body, visceral level, and that's to just know beauty in your couplehood, it's to touch something greater than yourselves together. And it's not about mind-blowing sex necessarily, it could be bad, but it doesn't require that level of passion per se, but it does require a high level of authenticity, a high level of we really choose each other, we really like each other. And that a sense of kind of in a state of arousal, we often lose track of the world around us and feel a deeper sense of just you and me together. And there's something deeply anchoring about that. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 42:05 

And spiritual, I think spirituality in stage three is a deepened trust in God and goodness, a deepened ability to tolerate a world in which we don't just check the boxes and get what we want, but we're able to trust in goodness and the creation of goodness in a dark world, in a fallen world. And to take in the gifts that are there for us, to trust in God's love, to trust in the beauty of the world we're in, of love that's available to us, we're able to receive it at a deeper level and that it grants us a kind of serenity and a peace that our souls really need, a reassurance that our souls need without certainty and control that the ego wants. 

Tanya Hale 42:58 

So if I'm understanding that the more we step into our spirit, our soul, our body and our spirit together, the more we find peace there, the more,  the greater our sense of self, the more then that we're able to put into a relationship as well. And the more we're able to create that intimacy and... then sexuality, is that a natural byproduct or can there still be some disconnect going on there? 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 43:28 

I mean, there definitely can still be a disconnect, but what I would say is if we really become to peace with ourselves, on some level, we must address our bodies and our sexuality because they are part of being human. And there's a different range in how sexual people are and how embodied people are in kind of how they orient to life. But what I think it does require is a addressing the question of, am I worthy of pleasure? Am I worthy of love? Can I know my body? Can I know my sexuality? Can I understand it? Because it's to let go of all the fear and to trust in ourselves and in goodness and the divinity of our bodies enough to create goodness with them. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 44:21 

And so we certainly might do this in a stepwise fashion. I don't mean it all is happening at the same time, we might find deeper self acceptance in some area and then still be trying to sort out what that means around my body or sexuality. But I think the more fully we step into the self-validation, the self-acceptance of stage three, the more we trust ourselves to create goodness through our bodies, through sexuality, and the more willing we are to know ourselves in this way. In stage one, we're much more afraid that we're being run around by it. And so then we're kind of afraid to know it because we're afraid we'll give it too much control over us. We're not sure it's good at all. But as we grow and trust ourselves as the choosers in our lives, as the ones that are determining who we'll be and what we'll create, the less we are afraid to know our bodies and minds, the less afraid we are of pleasure. 

Tanya Hale 45:22 

I love that. I think pleasure gets such a bad rap, right? Just that word, I think makes a lot of people go, "Ooh, yeah, like, that's not what I'm here for." And yet, that is part of the pathway to this joy that we needed to have. And so much of that pleasure is through our physical body, whether it be sexual, or, you know, food or through temperature or whatever, right? Yeah. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 45:46 

100%. Yeah, I remember my daughter, sometimes at the dinner table, I would talk about clients anonymously, of course, but I would say, "I have a client," I remember saying this to my daughter, who at the time might've been 10 or 11, but I said, "I have a client who in her family, they learned that any pleasure of any kind was sinful. It was like it was lesser. And it wasn't just like sexual pleasure. It was like to acknowledge that you really felt good about something, that you really liked something, that you enjoyed your success or something. That was all to be less spiritual. So that spirituality was like long suffering and self denial." And I was just commenting on that. And I remember her saying, "that means you can never be happy." And I was like, "that's true. That is what it means. Because if I can't know pleasure, then I can't know joy." 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 46:44 

And again, yes, we should be wary of a pleasure that's about escaping our lives, but there's a pleasure that moves us more deeply into life, that allows us to receive God's love, that allows us to receive a spouse's love. Think about a baby, the way you're showing that baby you love them is through pleasure, and kissing them, holding them. It's all through the mother tongue of the sensual. And the way I know my mom loves me is she takes pleasure in my existence, that it gives mom pleasure to be with me. That's also, it's not just that I'm having pleasure, mom has pleasure. And so that's what we long for in sex too, is that awareness that my spouse takes pleasure in my existence in their life. I take pleasure in theirs. And again, it's a pleasure that brings us together, that makes us more whole, that allows us to believe in a God that wants us to have joy. There's real virtue in it. We prefer the control of self denial, but what actually challenges us more is to have faith in our worthiness. And in the worthiness of being loved and experiencing joy. And that's really what I think God is asking of us, and that takes even more faith than we may currently have. 

Tanya Hale 48:15 

I think it's also what God offers us, if we're willing to do the work to really come into alignment with our spiritual selves and with his spiritual self and with our partner's spiritual self. If we can really pull those into alignment, I think that that physical pleasure through sexuality is a beautiful gift, but I think there's resistance because so many of us have not framed it as a gift for a large part of our lives. It's something to be fearful of, rather than something to embrace and embody and look forward to. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 48:54 

That's right. And I know some people have experienced trauma through the bodies, through sexuality, you know, a lot of people have good reason to be afraid of it because it can be people can use it to to exploit and to take advantage. But of course, you can also relate to your body and sexuality to love and be loved to create deep beauty. And and so it's really what we do with that language of the body and sexuality. 

Tanya Hale 49:26 

Love this conversation. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Any last thoughts pertaining to the conversation we've had  today that you would want to throw in here at the end? 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 49:39 

Well, just that it's okay, like sometimes we think," oh my gosh, I've gotten it all wrong and I've learned these lessons wrong and taught these lessons wrong" and just to like have compassion towards ourselves because figuring out how to be human and to do it well is a process and just being willing to be engaged in that process and learn as we go is where it's at. It's what we're here for. 

Tanya Hale 50:13 

For sure. I love that. I really loved reading your book. I've loved the last few years where I've just followed you so closely to really start to put these pieces together that that to me never had any any place together before. And to really start putting it together and being able to implement that and implement it in my in my new marriage. Yeah, has been just a delight. And just so appreciate the work that you've done. Thank you so much for the courses you put out there. For the podcasts that you have for all the other places, your Facebook page, all the other places that I find you it's it's really impacted my life for the better and I appreciate that. 

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife 50:58 

Thank you. Thank you, Tanya. Thank you. 

Tanya Hale 51:01 

Alright, could you tell I was just fangirling the whole time over Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife? Her work really has just so significantly impacted my life, my marriage with Sione, and the work that I do with you and she helps me so much in putting pieces together and understanding concepts and then being able to bring it all together into one piece for you. So really appreciate Jennifer for being on the podcast with me today. 

Tanya Hale 51:29 

Also, just want to remind you that if you go to the show notes, I will have her website, I will have her podcast listed, I will have all of that so that you can contact her there and get more information about the work that she does. And also in those show notes every week, I also have a list of other podcasts that you can listen to that will build on the same information. I will have my previous podcast that I had with Jennifer Finlayson-Fife down there this time as well. Okay, that's going to do it for me my friends. Have an awesome, awesome week and I'll see you next time. 

Tanya Hale 52:03 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!