 is a covenant keeping God and we're so glad you're joining us on this lovely Hope Today show here with Corey Langford and Amy Schaefer and Amy tell us about what we're going to be diving into today because we are going to be talking about covenant with men and women. Oh yes we are talking specifically about the covenant of man and wife. Do you desire a delightful playful intimate relationship with your spouse? If you do, today is the program for you. Our special guest, Shanti Feldhorn is here with her new book called Secrets of Sex and Marriage. And I cannot wait to dive into this subject. She answers and dives into a lot of tough questions and conversations. But guys, now that we have everybody's attention because we're talking about sex and marriage, I'm tired of the world driving the narrative on what sex should look like. It should be the Bible and the believers talking about it. Absolutely because, I mean, honestly, you know, specifically for men as well, men in sex, there is a teaching and it's a false teaching of how we approach sex over time. And so when you get into marriage, especially if you've had sex before marriage, you've had partners and different things like that. You have bonds, emotional bonds, soul ties, then you go into this realm of covenant and there's supposed to be this intimacy. Intimacy and sex are not often the same things. And so you might go in thinking, oh, I'm going to just do it like this and I'm going to be romantic and I'm going to get like this. And then it's a whole different thing, life dynamics change, kids come along, business comes along, money problems, parents might get sick, dementia, pass away. There's all of these shifts that happen that affect the intimacy that we have with our spouses. So it's something that we definitely have to talk about. You just dropped a whole lot of wisdom. I was like, you better preach me. This is a good topic. It is a good topic. And you know, so many marriages are under attack. So many people are walking through things and you know, God designed sex for a man and a woman and for marriage. And I remember one of my spiritual mentors said, you know, that's where like you renew the covenant is in the marriage bed. So we're so glad that you're with us with this conversation. I think it's so important that like you said, Amy, it is important for us as the church, as believers that we should be the ones leading the conversation about sex because you know, you look in the world and I even know growing up, I learned about it. It was from listening to songs, you know, you didn't hear about it a lot in church, but I, you know, I think it's so important that we do have these conversations. Oh, we watch movies, Cinderella and the Prince and these movies and it's such a fairy tale and what their sex life looks like and how this happens and the music like Sidney said and the lyrics we're hearing and it's like, wait, wait, wait, stop the bus. I want to get off and I got to get back to what God says about it. God created it. God loved it. He created it for our enjoyment. He created it for covenant. So I mean, I think, I think that I'm not embarrassed to talk about it, Corey, but you know what? I will say something. I grew up in the church of God and Christ and sex was evil. Okay. It was like, if you're having sex, you're going to hell, hell, hell, holiness or hell. It was so mentally and I studied this in Geneva College when I went there was the was sexual disorders. I had a whole class on that and one of the disorders where that when a person is trained their entire life that sex is bad and then they get married and have to put that switch on and now say sex is good. They're not able to experience the joy and the peace of it because of the guilt of their whole life being I have to avoid this. I have to stay away from this. This is bad. So really even going into some people that may be watching today that don't know how to be vulnerable or intimate with your spouse and it's affecting you and you can't really open up. So this is a good topic. Great topic. Sexual intimacy is one of the most common issues that married couples struggle with with almost 80% of couples mismatched in how often they want it. Our next guest though says that it doesn't have to be that way. Shanti Feldhahn is a relationship researcher, podcaster and bestselling author and in her new book, Secrets of Sex and Marriage, she reveals the secrets behind what is needed for a great intimacy in marriage that will help married couples to thrive. That's what we want. Shanti, welcome to Hope today. I'm so grateful to be with you guys. Shanti, let's dive right in. Does sex really matter in marriage? That is the question, right? I we actually put something in the book about the fact that I had been going through breast cancer treatments because right in the middle of this big research project on this topic discovered that I had breast cancer and I'm fine, by the way. But but in the middle of it, I was having a conversation with this medical professional who was talking about the different treatments and stuff and and I'm like, wait, but you know, this one doesn't that impact your libido? You know, like we were having that kind of conversation. And she knew that I had been researching this topic. And she's like, can I take off my medical professional hat? And I said, sure. So she's like, look, I have been married for 20 years, and we are way past our newlywed phase. And really, does sex really matter? I mean, really? And so I, I was very intrigued by that because that is what a lot of people are asking. And the issue that we found in our research is, yeah, it actually really does. Now, everybody's in a different place and every marriage has different issues. And there are some marriages for different reasons why that is not an easy part of the marriage. But in general, yeah, we found statistically, it has all sorts of impacts on our marriage. Tell us a little bit about the research, the heavy duty research that went into this book and this topic specifically, because you went into some deep questions. We did. And can I just tell you, as a social researcher, when I felt like God was saying, like, this is your next project, I'm like, no, no, I really didn't want to tackle this one. Because I was definitely one of those people like you talked about the beginning where it was like awkward to talk about. But such a big issue in marriage that, yeah, dove into it. And the research that we do, in this case, we always do big nationally representative surveys. And in this case, we also, in addition to that, I recruited a nationally renowned sex therapist to be the co author on the book. He's been one of our advisors for years, Dr. Michael Sitzema, he has something like 35,000 hours of talking to couples about this topic. And he trains most of the sex therapists out there. The Christian sex therapist that is. So it was, it was amazing to work with him in parallel, really working up these massive surveys in order to get really good data. And it was data that was representative across all ages and racial backgrounds and religious backgrounds and socioeconomic and like every which way in order to try to get a picture of what actually is the truth out there. One of the first questions you approach in the book is, are we normal? What does a normal, healthy sex life look like in a Christian couples life? Yeah, well, here's the thing that that question comes from. Let me let me tell you where that question comes from and tell you a couple of the things that we learned. The question comes, the are we normal kind of question comes because we're all pretty isolated about this topic. And as you guys were talking about, we don't have good information from anywhere. I mean, most of us, we don't realize we've got like a lot of mythology and misconceptions rolling around in our head because of movies or what we've read or listened to, like you guys were talking about. And so this topic being one that we don't even talk about with our closest friends, like, I don't think there is any other topic in marriage that you just literally never talk about, even with some of the closest friends in your lives, means that we're all wondering what is normal? Is this okay? What you like, we don't have any grid for that. And the good news that I want to sort of tell everybody is that the heart of that question, you need reassurance that whatever it is that you're going through, whatever it is you're dealing with, you are absolutely not alone. Like there are millions of other couples that are likely dealing with whatever it is that you're dealing with. And so you don't have to have that feeling of being isolated and alone. A lot of times people are wondering like, are we normal in frequency? They're asking a much more specific question. So I can tell you the average frequency, if you're interested, I don't know how far you want to go in that question. I think we should. Absolutely. Yeah, I think we absolutely should. Can we can we go back to that data that you that you found? What did you find that were the biggest responses of people's main problems? So I'm sure our viewers are like, well, what were they saying? I want to know. Let's go into it. What what was the primary areas that they were dealing with with sex and marriage? Well, the most important thing that we actually found overall, which is probably not going to surprise anybody, but statistically it turned out to be a really big deal is that it's hard, not hard, it's not as common as it should be for couples to talk about this together for communication to be an issue. And that, like I said, it probably doesn't surprise a lot of people out there because actually what we found is that only 27% of couples can actually talk about this topic well, or I should say do actually talk about this topic well. And 73% just find it awkward and kind of avoid the conversation. And that's a shame, because one of the things that we found that was a really, really big deal statistically, is there were these huge differences between the couples who communicate well and the couples that didn't in all sorts of aspects of their marriage, not just their sex life, but their marriage. And so because they're communicating about their intimate life. And so that's an encouragement for people is to sort of, okay, maybe I need to take that seriously, maybe I need to be willing to sort of move past the awkwardness and like get curious about, you know, what are some of the reasons why if, for example, you have two different sort of expectations of frequency, tell me what it means to you, like if you're the lower desire spouse, for example, to ask your spouse like, when we're not as connected, what does that feel like? And you may hear them be able to articulate something you never heard before things like like I had one couple where the husband was the higher desire spouse and he finally was able to articulate I'm lonely. Like that's what that's what's going on. And that allowed a whole nother and very important conversation to come forward. So this is often this topic is often really just a gateway to other really important areas of intimacy and marriage. What was one of the hardest, most troubling things that you found through your research and study on the subject of sex? Well, probably one of the one of the concerns is that people do feel kind of isolated and they don't realize that whatever it is that they're dealing with, not only are other people dealing with it and they're not alone, but usually there's a lot of really simple things going on that they're just not aware of. And we're operating based on a lot of, like I said, kind of Hollywood mythology, or, you know, whatever you kind of learned at the lock in the locker room when you were 15, as you know, my husband says 15 year old boys aren't the greatest source of knowledge on this topic. And so we're both the both the husband and wife usually are really trying quite hard in their marriage. That's actually one of the encouraging things that we've found over the years is they both care about each other. They're trying hard. But because of the mythology, they're kind of trying hard in the wrong areas, sometimes, and they don't realize it, or they're hurting each other, and they would never intend to. And so that was the reason we did the research, like, okay, what is it that you're not realizing you're operating based on mythology, so that if you know it, you can try hard in the right areas. And it's a lot of it, not everything, but a lot of it is really simple. Shanti, what are the things that couples are operating out of mythology, and they may not even recognize or understand what's going on and it creates those barriers to have intimacy? Well, one of the most important ones, and I'm going to say this delicately, so because this is like, I know this can be awkward to listen to as well as to talk about, but this is really, really crucial. When we at the beginning of our of our study, this was a three year research project. And at the very beginning, we put out this wide question, this was not one of the nationally representative surveys, this was like to every, you know, everyone on Facebook and whoever wanted to ask, answer this question. And we basically said, do you have, if you could ask a sex therapist, one question about your intimate life, like, what would that be? And by far, the top answer by far, was often from the maybe higher desire spouse, who was saying, why isn't my spouse interested? Like, it's this heart cry, like, what's wrong with me? Why am I not desirable? Or what's wrong with them that they are not interested in as much intimacy as I want? And there is a huge mythology that is underlying that question. And so here's basically what it is. We see one type of desire in when you watch the movies or the TV shows or read about it in the book. And we think that this is just the way that sex works, where you have the guy and the girl, they look at each other, and there's some sort of spark, you've seen this 100 times in movies, right? Where they there's this spark, and there's this surge of desire, this surge of feeling like I really want to be intimate with you right now. And the couple in the movie starts kissing and pretty soon the clothes are often there in bed, right? Like that's, we know Hollywood puts people in weird situations, but we think that process is just how it happens. And it turns out that that process is how it happens for some percentage of the population. But there's not just one primary type of desire, there's actually two primary types of desire. What you see in the Hollywood, the sort of I'm hungry for you and let's go do something about it, that you could call initiating desire. But there's another type of desire called receptive desire. And that person's physiology, the physiology of the person with receptive desire works in the reverse order, believe it or not, where the person with receptive desire tends not to feel that sense of desire. And instead, that person decides to get engaged with their spouse, they decide to connect with them sexually. And as they go, as their physiology gets stimulated, assuming that it's a positive experience, you know, which we're, I'm sure some couples that's not but for the vast majority, assuming that it's a positive experience, then that sense of desire eventually kicks in. And they start feeling that sense of desire that their spouse may have felt 10 minutes ago. And that one thing is crucial for people to know, because if you don't know it, both the higher desire person and the board, the initiating desire person and the receptive desire person, that that couple could be thinking if you're stereotypically the husband and the wife, which is the majority of cases, that husband could be thinking, you know, like, what's wrong? Like, something's broken. Like, there's this isn't the way it's supposed to work. And the wife could be thinking something's broken. I'm something broken in me. And it's probable there's nothing broken. This is just the way that you're created. And it's so, so freeing. Once couples realize this, and they can work with it, rather than against it. And there's all sorts of things you could do to work with it. Shanti, this topic really needs multiple series of shows. It really does. But there's one thing I want to say transparently, because I really want you to address it best you can. I know there's not much time. But listen, what about the couples that male female grew up watching pornography, their whole life, addicted to sex, has multiple partners, changes their life for God, gets married, but still has that neural pathway of years and years of maybe addiction or habits, connections and bonds, but really don't want that life anymore, but gets in marriage. And it's finding that chemistry. How do you help those individuals who may not have that chemistry with their spouse after a history in their past? That's a great question. And obviously, that is can be a very long answer. But the short version of that answer is that, first of all, what most people need to know is there is hope, right? Like we have literally seen thousands of people in that situation that have been just fine, right? It takes purposefulness about it because the person who has had that background now does have to, for example, rewire the neural pathways to put it simply. And that can happen. Like you can totally get victory. But it isn't something that's just going to happen just because you wish it would. Some people get miraculously delivered. Most people, it's a process of work. You know, just the same way if you were in a job and you needed to build up a skill set. You know, it's not just going to miraculously happen usually. You have to work at it. And it's that same thing. And so actually on our website, which is secrets of sex and marriage comm specifically for this, one of the things that we did because my co author, Dr. Saitama is a sex therapist, and he knows all the specialists in these different areas. We have some resources where people can actually go and read a couple of articles specific to this exact situation and actually get referrals to get additional help if they need it. And so that's that would be the encouragement is realized this can absolutely be overcome, but it requires purposefulness from the spouse that's dealing with this and honestly requires grace and patience and care and sometimes boundaries, significant boundaries from the spouse who hasn't had that history. So, so good, rich, rich content. Can you quickly address the seasons of life and sex and marriage? You know, that the young couple that are up all night with babies crying and the woman going through menopause that the sickness you're dealing with or the hard core stress at at work. How do we navigate those seasons? So here's the big word. I wish I could plaster this across the TV screen. Have grace. Have grace with yourselves. Have grace with one another. Have grace with the season. Because these are things that, you know, it does go life does go in seasons. And there are just going to be times when things are a little bit different. The one thing that I want to encourage couples with that I hadn't I hadn't quite realized even after years of research on marriage, of which this was a part, until this project working with Dr. Seitzma, I hadn't quite realized just how much there are other ways to continue to keep that intimacy going, even during, even during times and seasons where it may be difficult for one or both partners. And, and there's all sorts of things I could say about that that I probably will avoid saying on air and just encourage you to like think about what that might mean. And if you need some examples, they're in one of the chapters. Real quickly, Shanti, do you believe that God created sex and that it is for our enjoyment? Oh my gosh, I mean, it's very clear from Genesis, right? From the beginning, the two shall become one flesh. And this is one of the things that God created for oneness. It's one of the areas, one of the reasons why when people say does sex really matter? And it does really matter. Even if it may look different at different seasons of life, and you may have to handle things differently if there's medical issues or whatever. But clearly, God created sex for enjoyment, but not just enjoyment. I mean, if you're focusing just on enjoyment, that may change over the years. But God also created sex, literally the word in Hebrew is yadah, which means to know. And it's to really truly intimately know your spouse, and to really truly become one. That is so, so crucial for everybody to know that that's really what we should be aiming for. Shanti, thank you so much for being with us today. This book, Secrets of Sex and Marriage, is really probably a must have for you and your marriage relationship. It will help you. Thank you so much for being with us today. Absolutely. It was a delight. Cory. Wow. Wow. Listen, that that that was intense. And I want more. I really do. I really want more. Listen, Shanti talked about the scripture a little bit, and we're going to go into that with Genesis 2 and 24. It says, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. This scripture is so absolutely important because that journey to oneness is not easy, especially when you might have had your mother and father and you're looking at their marriage as the as the example or the standard. But God is saying you have to believe their ideals. That was a different time. This is the new millennial time, and you have to cleave to that culture of marriage with your particular spouse. And one thing that I found that a lot of spouses deal with is that when when your parents or grandparents or other friends want you to be in your marriage like how they're in their marriage, but that may not work for you and your partner. It's important that you have that oneness with you and God that he said this is the blueprint that I have for you, and you have to separate from others and come to one another and with some good counsel and some in a good leadership and a good pastor and in all of that helps as well. Good community and drive. That is so I love like everything like you're saying in the wisdom because one thing you know just like in church recently, I think a lot of times is that when we have weddings, right? Everybody's so excited. But I remember a pastor told me weddings are funerals. When you go to an altar, you are called to die. So we say, oh, we're going down to the altar and we're so excited, but we are actually we're dying because in order for two to become one, there has to be some subtraction. There has to be some used to kill the flesh every day. And so I think even when it comes to intimacy, I love what Shanti brought up about Yadda. I remember reading that, Amy, in Genesis with Adam and Ede Yadda, they knew one another that I think a lot of times in our culture to sex is just the act itself. But God is not call us just to the act. There's a deeper intimacy. There's a deeper connection. When we come together that one night, we are renewing our covenant. And I even had like one of my minutes there. The spiritual mindset girl, when you need to renew your covenant, she's like, go and make the devil mad and lay down with your husband and become one because the enemy fights it so much in marriage. That's the one thing he wants. If I can separate them, if I can divide them, there won't be oneness in that covenant. So this is so important. And I think this is, well, we can go on for this for days. And she talks about grieving things in this book, you know, things that you desired that didn't come to pass. You thought you'd be at this point in life. You thought your sex life would look like this. You thought your marriage would be this. You thought your desire would be this. And really it's dying a thousand deaths, dying to your flesh, dying to yourself, dying to your own desire so that you can meet the needs of somebody else. And honestly, Sydney, it's a beautiful way to minister to your husband through the marriage bed, the act of sex. You know, I'm just like feeling as we close out the show, you know, and we have like 30 seconds, Corey, can you just pray for the marriage couples? Absolutely. Listen, I just want to pray really quick that God, you would do healing, healing within the relationship, healing within the mind, healing from the past, healing from bonds that you would have your way in all marriages and begin to let your glory shine through. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Amen. So we just declare and decree that your marriage is going to be fulfilled. There's going to be happiness and that you're going to experience the yadda, the intimacy with your partner today. On tomorrow's Hope Today, hear one woman's powerful story of life and healing after abortion. Jessica Patterson, founder of Women's Choice Network's post-abortion care group, shares her story and how she's created a safe space for others to heal, face their past and talk freely about the trauma of abortion. That's tomorrow on Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.