Healthy Sexual Relationships in Marriage, Feat, Katie Schroeder

Building Families Through Intimacy: Why Construction Leaders Need to Talk About This

Elevate Construction exists to bless families. We protect workers and we’re bringing respect back to workers in construction, supporting and teaching leaders and for the leadership on project sites, for the ultimate purpose of creating stability and respectful environments that protect families.

Essentially, Elevate Construction’s divine purpose is to build families. So why would we talk about things like marriage and intimacy and pornography? Because it builds families. Jason was at a bookstore and he felt inspired from heaven to pick up this book about intimacy and marriage. They’re going to discuss some of these things and really key in on how we can be better at intimacy in marriage, because this really builds families.

Whether you’re religious or not religious or whatever, there are a lot of people that have false concepts, stigmas, aversions, embarrassments when talking about sex and sexual intimacy. People can either go way off the deep end or be overindulgent when they’re younger or completely avoid it their entire childhood.

Parents say no, no, no, no. Then all of a sudden somebody gets married and it’s like yes. And they’re like “Okay, I need a minute. I’m not mentally ready for this.” There’s just a lot of lack of education for people in this realm to prepare them for marriage or relationships. That’s why we’re going to talk about this because sexual frustrations plague many marriages. It’s a problem for at least 50% or more of couples and it’s the leading cause of divorce.

Why You Might Think Everything’s Fine When It’s Not

Katie says the book is actually really interesting because you might think “Well, it’s fine. We have sex all the time, so everything’s fine.” But it’s probably not as fine as you think it is. There’s probably a lot of issues underlying, hidden, or there could be. A lot of people end up in these sexless marriages. Katie thinks sometimes we do get a sex education in school. So nobody’s confused about the mechanics of sex. But the mechanics of intimacy are quite a bit different.

It’s kind of like in construction, everybody talks about increasing production, increasing production. What does that mean? Nobody knows what that means. When we talk about increasing happiness in marriage and improving intimacy, at least Jason will speak for the guys, they have no idea what that means for a woman. Everybody knows the mechanics of sex. Everybody knows about the details and how it all works. But it’s very infrequent that somebody knows exactly the differences between men and women when it comes to these things.

We need to fix this. The other thing is we probably need to get really good paradigms when we’re teaching our children about it. For instance, if you’re super religious and you’re like “No, no, no, no, no,” probably a better message is “Not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet. Go” when you’re married. When it’s “No, no, no, no, no,” there’s a story in the book that was quite sad where a couple just got married, they come back from the reception. His grandfather was like “Where’s your bride? What’s going on?” He was like “Well, we drove separately so nobody would think that something was going on.” He was like “You’re married. It doesn’t matter.”

If we’ve told people that sex is wrong, sex is wrong, sex is wrong, and then all of a sudden on somebody’s wedding night we’re like “Go, feel comfortable with this,” probably not going to happen. The other thing is, if we’re overindulgent or indulgent, or we’re having sex before marriage, is this an indulgent, selfish, fun thing or practicing for a future marriage? Or is it just the mechanics without the connection? Those are the two things we’re working on in the sense that we need couples to be holier and healthier. And we need to teach our children so that they have better marriages.

The Biggest Difference: When Foreplay Actually Starts

What are some of the differences between men and women when it comes to intimacy? Katie says the biggest difference is that for a woman, and it says this in the book, and it’s probably pretty accurate, foreplay starts basically after you just had sex. So all of the events now leading up to the next time you’re going to have sex count as foreplay.

It’s the husband’s or male partner’s behavior. It’s how he treats her, how he connects with her, how he listens to her, little acts of kindness, whatever her love languages. It’s all of these things that build to put her in a space that causes her to want to be intimate with him. For him, foreplay starts right before you’re fixing to get busy. And then after you’ve had sex, then a male is more prone to connect or be softer in his approach or listen or be emotionally available.

The cycle is completely off. They’re completely opposite. Women want to connect to have sex. Men have sex, then they want to connect. So you have to find a way to bridge that gap. That’s probably the biggest thing: understanding that it just starts way, way before for a woman, how she feels about you to get to a spot where she feels comfortable being vulnerable or being intimate.

If It Was Good Once, It Can Be Good Again

The honeymoon period. We’ve all had times in our marriages where this has worked. We’ve all had times in our marriages where we have really focused on the other person and it’s been a beautiful thing. Then maybe we get a little bit unfocused and things head in a bad direction. Katie’s point was: if it was good once, it can be good again. If one person has done it on the earth, you can do it. We’ve set an example. So there’s hope to come back to that.

Jason would say from a vulnerable standpoint, and this is not criticism for Katie, but probably the topic of intimacy has been Katie’s personal nightmare for 18 years. That’s accurate. Same for Jason because his cycle is like every two days and her cycle is like once every two weeks or every two weeks. It’s off. For Jason, because he’s a dirtbag, it’s caused contention. He’s been withdrawn, pouty, a number of things. Katie’s just had to kind of partner up with him and be super considerate. And sometimes that causes an aversion.

Why is it that somebody who is on a different, maybe slower cycle can develop an aversion? By the way, it’s a myth that it’s always the girl who wants it less. Sometimes it’s in a different direction. But why, Katie, can someone develop an aversion? “I think it just starts with that feeling like you’re obligated to have sex with somebody because you’re married to them and you don’t want them to go somewhere else. So you have all these reasons why you should have sex with them or you feel like you should have sex with them. And that you don’t want to and you resent that you have to and then that resentment can build and cause an aversion to where it’s physically repulsive to have sex with someone who you love.”

If you’re not in the mood, then it’s a bad mental state mixed with a physical action. Tony Robbins says if you want to change anything, think a happy thought and then clap or jump or do some kind of movement and it anchors it into your body. You associate, you program neurologically your mind by mixing emotions and actions. If you always have a negative emotion with the action of sex, then you’re going to neurologically program yourself into an aversion. The point is you can get back to that honeymoon phase.

The Honeymoon Phase: Working Through the Grief

Katie wants to talk about the honeymoon phase because that was really beneficial to her to understand. Biologically speaking, our minds kind of trick us into this very chemical love. That’s when you just want to do anything for your spouse or the person you’re dating. You kind of have blinders on. You don’t really see the whole picture.

Then after you’re married, it could be a couple of years where you start to be like “Who the hell am I married to? Who is this guy or girl or whatever?” You’re no longer being driven by that kind of chemical blindedness that you were before.

What can happen is like a grief process. You have to come to terms with the fact that you’re almost mourning this marriage that you thought you would have or this person that you thought you married because they’re not the same and you feel tricked or you feel trapped. You have to work through almost like the stages of grief for that honeymoon, for that marriage, what you thought your marriage was going to be like.

Katie remembers feeling like “Who is this guy? He was not like this when we dated or he was super nice because Jason has a hard time sometimes being super nice.” She felt like “This is not the person that I married” and she’s sure he felt the same way.

She wishes she’d learned a long time ago that that’s a process you can kind of work through and then come out on the other side more committed to the work that it takes now to build a marriage that is truly based on not just a chemical attraction or a chemical high, but that you are now more devoted to building this marriage.

A key component of that is building the intimacy. Sexual intimacy has to do with obviously the physical, but it’s also spiritually connected. So a spiritual intimacy and an emotional intimacy. And then you couple that with sexual intimacy. You have to have all three.

Katie would say Jason was not emotionally intimate ever. You’re emotionally intimate. Not really. Like you’re not emotionally there. So the resentment is really the thing. You don’t want to come into any kind of sexual situation where you have resentment. That’s super unhealthy.

You want to do any work that needs to be done so that you’re preventing that “she’s just doing her duty or he’s just doing his duty” situation. You don’t want that in a marriage. That’s the opposite of what you want. That’s the sort of thing that leads to parallel marriage, which is just that roommate situation where you’re doing all the logistical things, you’re checking all of the boxes except for the important stuff: the three intimacies which are crucial to happiness in marriage.

Love Languages: Serving, Not Auditing

When we read books like The Five Love Languages, that’s for you to serve your partner, not to audit your partner and expect something back. Katie always says it’s not her obligation to take care of her spouse’s needs, but if you read a book like The Five Love Languages, that’s so that if you choose to and you have the desire, and you should if you’re married, you have the opportunity to go find out what your spouse’s love languages are and take care of those needs. But never to audit and require it and make somebody feel obligated. That’s when aversions start to happen.

Katie feels like the love languages thing can be weaponized quite easily. You can weaponize that by saying “Well, my love language is physical touch. So if you loved me, you would touch me.” Or “Katie, your love language might be acts of service. So I can’t validate any of those acts of service you’re doing because that’s not my love language.”

For Katie, if Jason was thoughtful, he would have magically read her mind or left the keys hanging so she could take the girls to seminary in the truck. If he was trying to serve her, he would have just left the keys where he knew she would need them rather than seeing that he maybe tried to hug her and that was his way of showing affection.

Sometimes you can misinterpret too. A man maybe does have this physical thing and he wants to hug you when you’re having a hard day and you’re just like “Get off me. Why would I want to be hugged?” And he’s just trying to show you comfort.

It’s not good to say “I’m not going to accept any acts of love if they’re not in my love language.” You’re shutting yourself away from a lot of beautiful things in the world, not just from your spouse, but even your children or whatever. Use all of these tools in the name of connection, not “How can I get what I want?”

Skin Hunger and the Need for Touch

If there’s any disconnect in intimacy, if there’s any disconnect with any of the concepts they’ve talked about, we need to get help. We need to read good books. Reach out to Jason on LinkedIn or email at jasons@elevateconstructionisd.com or call 602-571-8987. He can hook you up with a couple of recommendations. Do the Google research, ask your spouse, get counseling, marriage counseling, because life really, you should have joy. It shouldn’t be a nightmare. It shouldn’t be super horrible. There are ways to figure this out. There’s hope. There’s light at the end of the tunnel.

One last thing. There’s something called skin starvation or skin hunger where human beings, whether they think they do or not, sometimes need touch. Jason was walking out of his shed the other day and he realized just for a minute that he just needs to touch Katie. If they just cuddled or held hands, there’s a lot of times where we solve the need to just touch somebody skin to skin with sex when it might be a handhold or a hug or a cuddle or being near somebody.

The other thing is with our children. Studies show that if our children don’t get hugged and hand-held by their parents in appropriate ways, then they might be suffering from skin starvation, be doing things that might be leading towards the more unnatural or unhealthy or be putting themselves into sexual situations where they otherwise wouldn’t just because their skin is hungry for touch, because that’s a normal human need.

Katie points out that during childhood, kids are picked up and cuddled and tickled and all of those things. Then we start to, maybe it’s American society, but we start to back off of that touch as they go through puberty. It’s like “Oh, your body’s different now. So I’ll give you respect or autonomy.” Then pretty soon nobody’s touching them and they just crave that.

The book said that French or Puerto Ricans at a cafe will touch each other on the arm or whatever. They have contact with each other like 120 times an hour, whereas Americans it’s something like 20 times an hour. We’re just not a touching society anymore.

We can do better. If Jason could encourage anything, it’s that he wishes he would have had this information 18 years ago because literally without any irreverence, it’s not Katie’s fault, the topic of intimacy has been one of the hardest things of anything he’s ever had to deal with. If there was anything that was going to tear apart his marriage, it would be this. This is definitely one of the tops for a lot of people and a lot of couples in addition to finances.

Katie thinks it’s unnecessary to live in a sexless marriage unless there was a medical reason. A guy might be on a two day cycle. A gal might be on a two week cycle or one month cycle. Usually the rule of thumb is about once every week is at least considered healthy, maybe more, maybe a little bit less. But if you’re in a relationship where you’re frustrated and it’s about once every month, every three months, every six months, then maybe there’s an opportunity there.

From Jason’s perspective, we want to build families and raise children in a way that they’re healthy and they can have beautiful, wonderful marriages and live in a happy manner. That’s the purpose of this podcast. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

FAQ

Q: What’s the biggest difference between men and women when it comes to intimacy?

For a woman, foreplay starts basically after you just had sex. All of the events leading up to the next time count as foreplay: how he treats her, connects with her, listens to her, little acts of kindness, whatever her love languages. It’s all of these things that build to put her in a space that causes her to want to be intimate. For him, foreplay starts right before you’re about to have sex. After sex, a male is more prone to connect or be emotionally available. The cycle is completely opposite. Women want to connect to have sex. Men have sex, then they want to connect.

Q: How does someone develop an aversion to intimacy in marriage?

It starts with feeling obligated to have sex because you’re married and you don’t want them to go somewhere else. You have all these reasons why you should have sex with them and you feel like you should but you don’t want to and you resent that you have to. That resentment builds and causes an aversion to where it’s physically repulsive to have sex with someone you love. If you’re not in the mood and it’s a bad mental state mixed with a physical action, you neurologically program yourself into an aversion by mixing negative emotions with the action of sex.

Q: What happens after the honeymoon phase ends?

Biologically, our minds trick us into chemical love where you want to do anything for your spouse and have blinders on. After you’re married, maybe a couple years, you start to be like “Who the hell am I married to?” You’re no longer being driven by that chemical blindedness. What can happen is a grief process. You’re almost mourning this marriage you thought you’d have or this person you thought you married because they’re not the same. You feel tricked or trapped. You have to work through stages of grief for that marriage you thought you’d have, then come out more committed to the work it takes to build a marriage based on devotion, not just chemical attraction.

Q: How should I use The Five Love Languages in my marriage?

Use it to serve your partner, not to audit your partner and expect something back. It’s not your obligation to take care of your spouse’s needs, but if you choose to and have the desire, find out their love languages and take care of those needs. Never audit and require it and make somebody feel obligated. That’s when aversions start. Don’t weaponize it by saying “My love language is physical touch so if you loved me you’d touch me” or “I can’t validate your acts of service because that’s not my love language.” Use all these tools in the name of connection, not “How can I get what I want?”

Q: What is skin hunger and why does it matter?

Skin starvation or skin hunger is when human beings need touch. Sometimes we solve the need to touch somebody skin to skin with sex when it might just be a handhold, hug, cuddle, or being near somebody. Studies show if children don’t get hugged and hand-held by parents in appropriate ways, they might suffer from skin starvation and put themselves into sexual situations they otherwise wouldn’t because their skin is hungry for touch. During childhood kids are cuddled and tickled, then we back off as they go through puberty, then nobody’s touching them and they crave it. We’re not a touching society anymore and we can do better.

On we go.