60 | Jay Stringer: Listen to the Voice of Desire, part 1

For people interested in digging deeply into their stories and better understanding themselves and the unwanted behaviors that plague them, few people have been as helpful as Jay Stringer.

In 2018, Jay's book Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing invited readers to a new approach to unwanted sexual behaviors: one that begins by "listening to our lust." Jay encouraged readers to see their struggles as a roadmap to past harms and current hinderances to freedom.

Now he's released his second book, Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow. Moving beyond the singular experience of sexual struggles, Desire offers a critically important opportunity to better understand the core longings created in every person. To see desire as good, part of how we reflect the image of God. To be curious about our experiences with desire - how it's been encouraged, discouraged, or even prohibited. Through better understanding our relationship to desire, we can live more fully the lives we were created to live.

This conversation was too good to abbreviate, so we split it into two parts... the second half will be available Tuesday, March 10.

Jay lives in New York City with his wife Heather and their children.

#jaystringer #unwanted #desire #storywork #sexuality #masculinity #counseling #coaching #gospel #sexualaddiction #sexaddiction #awaken #awakenrecovery #awakenpodcast #whatwereallywant #wwrw #grace #connection #conversation

Jay's website

Jay's books (Amazon)

Holistic Desire website

Transcript

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Framing Desire And Being Fully Alive

Jay Stringer 0:00

There's so much more that I wanted to uncover and to learn about. You know, not just to understand self-destructive behaviors, but if no one is really teaching us how to form our relationship to desire, I wanted to provide a framework, a roadmap for this is how you become human. This is how you become fully alive.

Announcer 0:21

Welcome to what we really want. Conversations about connection. Settle in and get ready for a great conversation. Let's talk about what we really want.

Greg 0:34

Hey everybody, welcome back to what we really want. This is episode 60, kind of a big deal. 60 episodes. Um I don't know if I want to say a big deal. That sounds kind of braggy. Uh you know what? I don't care. It's 60 episodes. Like that's an accomplishment. Yeah. The 6-0. And and you know, they the phrase is good things come to those who wait. Before we started this podcast in April of 2024, I emailed Jay Stringer and he said, Yeah, for sure I'll be on your podcast. And now, two years, almost two years later, it's finally happened. Jay has been spending a lot of the last couple of years working on a new book that actually comes out the day you're hearing this, probably on March the third, called Desire. We're going to talk a little bit more about that, but mostly you'll hear about that in the episodes. It's been a long time since the three of us have done this to set up an episode. And I think it was probably six months ago or the last time, Bobby, you were well, whichever whichever's been the longest.

Stacey 1:30

That was like a year before Christmas.

Bobby 1:32

Yeah, you've been sick for a long time. Well, I was sick for two weeks before Christmas, and then I've got better for two weeks, and then I've been sick for like six weeks since Well, you look terrible. Thanks.

Greg 1:45

We've had a lot going on. I can't believe I I mean, everybody says this. I say it every year. Can't believe we're already almost in March.

Stacey 1:53

Because we were saying that about Christmas.

Greg 1:55

Is it just me? So what happens when you get older?

Stacey 1:57

The thing is when you get older.

Greg 1:58

It must be. It must be. When you're sick, does time speed up, go slower, or feel about the sick.

Speaker 5 2:04

Yeah.

Greg 2:05

Okay, so getting back to talking about Jay, this is episode 60. It's called Listen to the Voice of Desire. This is part one. It was such a great conversation that I didn't want to chop out any sections of it. And so I just made it into two episodes. Next week you'll hear part two. But I got the

Hosts Reflect On Episode 60 Milestone

Greg 2:21

gang together so that we could talk about just the impact that Jay Stringer has had in the work that we do and in us personally.

Bobby 2:29

Yeah, I just know that for me, Jay Stringer was a was one of the first people that invited me to look deeper, to look beyond just the outward behavior. High school, college, in my early 20s, the battle was always about just just don't do it, just stop it. You know, once I got into recovery and started kind of doing some deeper work, you know, and then I started reading books like that, like you know, like uh surfing for God, and what you mentioned in the episode. And then Jay's book came out. It was invited me to go deeper to say there's something underneath that are causing this. And and yeah.

Stacey 3:04

As a partner, I know some people feel like it's an excuse if they get to understanding what was going on even before they met their spouse. But it was for me just, I guess it wasn't about me, which I remember our therapist saying that pretty early on. I was like, what do you mean it's not about me? She's like, Well, it has it has impacted you, but it's not because of anything you didn't do or, you know, did wrong. It's, I guess, cemented or whatever, validated that this really is not something that's wrong with me.

Greg 3:35

Yeah. One of the first things he says in the book is this phrase, listen to your lust. And that was a new way of looking at lust, at the concept of it, because growing up in the church, I think probably all of us have heard many lessons, many sermons focusing on what the Bible says of flee from sexual temptation. And that's true, but those two things are not mutually exclusive. We can move away from that rather than indulging it, but still have some attention that we pay and some curiosity. I I would use the phrase curiosity

The Influence Of Jay Stringer’s Work

Greg 4:09

from a safe distance.

Stacey 4:11

My tendency is I hear something I don't like, and Greg knows this. I just nope. And then I just want to move on. Like we're not we're not talking about that. I don't like that. But just that slowing down, being curious, like what could this tell us? I'm learning and experiencing the value of all of that.

Greg 4:32

As you're about to hear, this is a conversation not only about Jay's new book, Desire, but it's also about kind of reflecting on what the last eight years of unwanted being in the world have been. But I'm really excited for you to hear him talk about this new book, Desire, because it's not just about sexual desire. That's part of it, but he really talks about five core longings related to desire. And I'm just, I'm not gonna really talk about them. I'm gonna name them. We all have a core longing, a desire for wholeness, for growth, for intimacy, for pleasure, and desire for meaning. So many people with all types of addictive or compulsive or unwanted struggles, not just sexual, but with chemicals, with other processes, with alcohol, are gonna find something to relate to. And I really can't wait for you to hear it. It's refreshing. And if you listen to the conversation, I think you'll see why Jay has become such an important voice. Again, this is episode 60. Next week will be 61 parts one and two of our conversation with Jay Stringer called Listen to the Voice of Desire. And the conversation starts right now. Hey Jay, how are you? I am doing all right today.

Jay Stringer 5:45

And you?

Greg 5:46

Really, really well. Happy to see you. Likewise. This has been something I've been looking forward to since we started the show almost two years ago. So I'm I'm glad we're finally talking. It's great to see you again. Welcome to what we really want.

Jay Stringer 5:58

Looking forward to where we're gonna go in our conversation today.

Greg 6:02

Yeah, me too. I think the last time we saw each other in person was in Brentwood, Tennessee, a couple of years ago. You were speaking at the counseling center at Fellowship Bible. Stacy and I got to drive up from Birmingham and hear you and meet you in person for the first time.

Jay Stringer 6:17

I remember, I'm like trying to remember all the aspects of the I don't expect you to. No, but I I love my time in the Nashville area. Like we've had I've had a lot of good professional trips, and then my wife and I took a trip down there with some friends. So I love Nashville.

Greg 6:38

We love Nashville too. We've got a daughter who lives there, but not for much longer. She's moving to North Carolina soon.

Jay Stringer 6:43

So yeah. Yeah. Whereabouts in North Carolina. In Charlotte.

Greg 6:48

So there's a there's a restaurant

Partners, Blame, And Validation

Greg 6:50

in Nashville called Ladybird Taco that was. Oh, yeah.

Jay Stringer 6:54

I uh went there on my last visit.

Greg 6:55

Okay. And our daughter has been working for them for the last few years, and they're opening a store in Charlotte. So she's gonna be moving to be a part of that.

Jay Stringer 7:03

Charlotte, just on the radar. No kidding. You need to get there. Yeah, that's great. Remind me where you are. Birmingham, Alabama. Right on. And you're in New York. Yep. Yeah, we have had we got like a foot of snow, and it was stunning and beautiful. And then there's just so many millions of pets. So it's been dirty, and then the the rains have come today, providing some good melt, but it's clear.

Greg 7:32

Well, Jay, I always ask our guests this, and I would just be curious to know what do you really want out of our conversation we're gonna have today?

Jay Stringer 7:41

What I really want is for people to recognize that their desires are one of the most beautiful aspects of their life, and that it's not possible to develop too much desire for God. I think we have been told a lie that either tells us to fear our desires or the other approach, which is just to kind of follow your desires. And no one is really teaching us how to form our desires into this place of connection, purpose, and love. So what I really want is for people to really recognize that the desires embedded within their heart are a bit like the parable of the talents, that the master has given people talents, giftings, desires. And just that question of what are you doing with them? Are you suppressing them? Are you denying them? Or are you intentionally growing them? So I think of you know, whether it is this podcast, whether it's a book, whether it's a ministry, whether it's Lady Bird Taco, it's that sense of all of these

Listen To Your Lust Without Indulging

Jay Stringer 8:56

are the byproduct of desire well lived. And so rather than desire being something to fear, something to dread, desire is one of the most stunning, beautiful gifts you could have ever been given. And I want to wake people up to the reality of how beautiful they can become.

Greg 9:18

Gosh. One thing I love, Jay, is just in topics like this, there are so many voices, thankfully, today, many more than there used to be, who are speaking in alignment on things like this. And what you said at the beginning reminded me of something that Dan Allender wrote in God Loves Sex. I mean, he talked about the the extremes either ignoring it or indulging in it. And we I hear you saying we don't want to do either one of those things.

Jay Stringer 9:44

Yeah, that I mean, a lot of us are deeply familiar with the aspects of Christian faith that will tell us, you know, there there's some ambivalence around desire, right? So there's a sense of don't trust your heart, it's deceitfully wicked. And then there's also a sense that God wants to give us the desires of our heart.

Greg 10:05

And so just that sense of and that it needs to be guarded because out of it flow the wellsprings of life.

Jay Stringer 10:10

Yes, exactly. And what does it mean to seek first the kingdom, to desire the kingdom? Well, like your kingdom is gonna look very different than my kingdom based on our story, based on Alabama versus New York versus wherever we are. So there is a level of differentiation, individuation, uniqueness that's gonna play out in all of our desires. So sometimes the conservative tradition is, you know, fear your desires because they might become selfish or God forbid, sexual. And then the progressive paradigm that I talked about earlier is much more that sense of follow your heart. Like I love the Mary Oliver line of what is it that you want to do with this one wild and precious life that you've been given, and to follow your heart. But it's like if we don't understand why we desire whatever it is that we desire, and we're not interrogating our desires and understanding who put them there and why they're there, we're really not going to be able

Transitional Character And Breaking Patterns

Jay Stringer 11:12

to develop our life. And so I think part of the third way is yeah, don't fear it, don't follow it all the time, but also try to figure out what does it mean to intentionally form your desire.

Greg 11:25

Yeah, that's so good. Well, we're gonna talk about desire. Before we get to that, I want to talk just a little bit about unwanted and also kind of start off. Uh when when we had Adam Young on recently, I I told him that I think it's important to give honor to those who for whom honor is due. And I wanted to start off just with a couple of thanks for you. One is just for writing unwanted, you know, and Jay, in the work that I do, I have personally now gotten to speak to hundreds of men, and it's not an exaggeration, who have been able to get unstuck and start moving towards healing in large part because of how that book helped them understand and connect to their experiences. When it came out, I remember reading it. And the first time I heard that it was coming out, I think that it was Nate Larkin or Drew Boa who had posted that it was coming out. And so I got it as soon as I could. And I thought this is this is one of those culture conversation-changing books. Prior to that, went in the realm of the people that I work with, I was always having them read Michael John Koustic, Surfing for God, and I still do, but you know, unwanted just it it addressed so many of the core things. And the other thing I wanted to thank you for is just exposing me to Carl Fred Broderick's concept of the transitional character. Isn't that great? We first heard, yes, we first heard you talk about it in Brentwood a couple of years ago, and that just has resonated so deeply with me that we actually, as we're winding down our men's intensives, we talk about that to encourage them to develop a vision for their lives moving forward. And there's so many men who go through our roots retreat intensive who just like they light up when they think of themselves as having the capacity and the potential to be that in their family. So thank you for the book. Thank you for helping people get a grasp on some things that that Shane just really wants to keep us from understanding.

Jay Stringer 13:20

Greg, thank you. That's unbelievably kind. And I receive your thanks and also thank you for helping support, you know, the the message getting out there and the work that you're doing. And because again, like a book can change a conversation, it can kind of lead to some ideas, but until there's a sense of like, how does this actually apply to my story and getting into the trenches that you and I both do with men? It's just it that's where real change begins to play out. So like receive your thanks, but also thank you for the work that you're doing and support. And just a brief note on that transitional character, in case people don't know what that is. I can't, I I thought I had the the quote memorized, but it's essentially like this notion of someone who in a single generation changes the incor entire course of a lineage who refuses to pass down the poison, they metabolize generation. Yeah. And they break the mold. Yeah, they break the mold. And that invitation of kind of that's been cornering me as of late. I'll get to your other question as well, but just when I was recording the audio for my book Desire, I was at a crosswalk outside a random house and I saw this quarter, and I don't normally pick up loose change, picked it up, and on the image of it was Ellis Island. And, you know, Ellis Island, of course, New York City, but I I had just learned like a week before that about my great-grandfather who came here from Sweden and came through Ellis Island and then is eventually settled out in Duluth, Minnesota.

Naming Darkness: Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Jay Stringer 15:05

And I kept that quarter the entire week in my pocket as I recorded because it was like that sense of he was a transitional character. I don't know the full backstory of why he left Sweden. I know there was a ton of hardship. I think 20% of people left Sweden between 1890 and 1910. So he was under hardship, but he needed to change. Like he had a desire, motivated by hardship or a new start, and he left. And now I'm like in New York recording a book on desire because of like my great-grandfather. And I'm like, that's part of what it is to live life. Like, I think we think a lot about recovery or desire just in reference to like who we're becoming or for our marriage or potentially for our kids. But it's like we just have no idea two, three generations or more down the line, yeah, what patterns we are disrupting in breaking the mold and just kind of moving towards health, moving towards desire. So I think it's just so fun.

Greg 16:10

Being willing to make the sacrifices that come with that. I I remember not that long ago seeing a social media post from Samson Society, which of course is a recovery fellowship that Nate Larkin started 20 or 30 years ago. What it said is pain moves through families until someone is willing to feel it. And that's that's what the transitional character is and eloquent. If the if the trauma, the generational trauma is that hot potato that every generation says, ooh, too hot, and they just toss it to the next, somebody's gonna say, I'm willing to get to take the burn so that my kids don't have to.

Jay Stringer 18:14

Indeed.

Greg 18:14

But it's not just our kids, is it? I mean, the transitional character really affects the culture around them. I mean, a single person can be a transitional character in the spheres of influence in the world where they live, can't they?

Jay Stringer 18:25

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Does not matter your relational status. I mean, I think that that's just the sense of like who's gonna tell the truth. And so whether you're metabolizing the poison and not passing it on, not transmitting it, I mean, I think of someone like that you had mentioned, Dan Alender early. He was really the first Christian that I heard in college that gave me permission to name darkness, to name heartache. And so, you know, just I remember thinking through, you know, just the notion of like holy week where you have Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. Most of my childhood was this movement to like Sunday. Like, yeah, some hard things have happened in my life, but I just need to get to Sunday because that's really where God's glory will be most manifest, is in my ability to tell the truth about the resurrection. And Dan was the first person that was like, no, like when you try to move towards resurrection without naming the crucifixion, without entering death, you actually trivialize something of the cross. So that sense of if we are to make Jesus known, we don't just make Jesus known on Sunday. We we make him known when we tell the stories of our own abuse, our own trauma. You know, holy Saturday is a day of hell. And so the more honest we are about our heartache, about the confusions, about our midlife crisis, about the disillusionment of how hard marriage can be, about what it's like to get married one day and then wake up betrayed. That's Holy Saturday. And so the more honest we are and have integrity to stay there and to find language there, the more we actually

Expectations And Impact Of Unwanted

Jay Stringer 20:13

serve the Jesus story. And so that was just so liberating to me to know that I didn't just have to move everything prematurely to Sunday. Because you can't, you can't manufacture Sunday. You have if you're actually in the woods, that's the great Dante line is in the middle of the dark woods of my life, I woke up wholly lost. That's Saturday.

Greg 20:37

Yeah. You can you can try to do what you just said, to focus solely on Sunday. But you know, when I was in music and worship pastoral ministry during the years of my hidden sexual addiction, it was just it was just pushing all of the stuff that nobody could know down like a beach ball and just trying to focus on the part that I wished was consistent with everything. And you hold the beach ball down long enough, eventually it's gonna come up and it's gonna be ugly when it does.

Jay Stringer 21:05

So true. And it gets baptized with worship. I mean, that sense of worked with so many worship leaders, as I'm sure you have too, but it's it's like a binge purge cycle. They're binging on Friday, Saturday, and then they're trying to work it out and they feel a whole lot about so just some of that praise and some of that arousal of even what Sunday can be mirrors what they were in the days before. But it's agonizing to see.

Greg 21:34

Yeah. Well, speaking of being honest and telling the truth, what did you think was going to be the impact of Unwanted when you wrote it? And compared to what you've seen now over almost eight years since it came out, my my guess is that you probably knew you were onto something very, very important. I mean, you can't do research with 4,000 people on a subject matter like this and not be convinced that this is something the world needs to know about. And so I'm sure that you had a sense that it was going to resonate, but how did you anticipate that happening compared to what you've gotten to see since 2018?

Jay Stringer 22:10

Yeah, such a good question. So many layers to that that reveal like the depths of my shame and the height of my ego, all wrapped up into that.

Announcer 22:21

So I don't I don't tend to ask short questions. So do do with it whatever you want.

Jay Stringer 22:25

Yeah, I mean, there it's a mixed bag, and I'll dive into some of that. So, you know, part of it is when I started doing the research, I remember writing a blog for Covenant Eyes, and it was kind of I can't remember the exact name of it, but it was essentially like what your sexual fantasies might say about you. And that blog dropped, and we got like a hundred requests for therapy. And I knew it was like decently written, intriguing concept. But what it, what I knew it did is it struck a nerve in people of, you know, not just trying to manage it, not just getting internet monitoring and for covenant eyes to publish it. I was so taken aback by that of like, wow, they're actually open to, you know, doing the work that they need to do, but also asking these deeper questions. So I knew that we struck a nerve, and people were writing in. Some of my friends during that season started referring to me as like the porn whisperer because people were like writing in their sexual fantasies of like, I'm into this rare subgenre. Of porn or BDSM, can Jay interpret this? Or what's this fetish symbol? And like just like some people.

Announcer 23:38

It sounds like Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel like interpret this dream for me.

Jay Stringer 23:43

Yes. And that's what it turned into. And so that was like such a it was odd, but also something like that was so delightful as an author of like, yes, like we want to be curious about these things. There's also a version of myself that, like, as this middle school boy that like, you know, never thought that I'd be talking about stuff like this on your podcast or writing a book. So there's like a part of me that's like horrified of like, what am I talking about? Why did I do this with my life? But I remember there were that, you know, there were places in my own trauma, loneliness as a middle school boy where, you know, one foundational memory for me is like looking out the bus window of a like a bluebird bus and like some of the worst years of my life, seventh and eighth grade. And I remember just like looking out the window crying because of all the pain, but there was also this sense from the spirit that there will be a day where these tears like it will actually matter, that there's something about the heartache of what I'm going through. And that was like an early promise that unwanted began to answer, that there was

Beyond Porn: Roots, Family, And Meaning

Jay Stringer 25:00

a sense of as I began to enter into the pain of my childhood and recognize let me back up. So, like I've been reading Beowulf lately, and I've been taking, I'm in like my own midlife crisis, not crisis, but more like a chrysalis in the last year. And so been reading like the Odyssey, Beowulf, like these big archetypal books. And so the thing about Beowulf is I'm not gonna ruin the story because it's a huge story, but essentially like Beowulf has to go. He goes into Denmark among the Danes, and there's this monster by the name of Grendel that's just haunting the Danes. And so he goes in and he kills Grendel, but almost immediately there's a sense of you have to deal with Grendel's mother. And that's part of what I have felt like in my own recovery and processes, you know, I thought the issue was porn, I thought the issue was an eating disorder that I had. But in the midst of the pain of those dynamics, I started recognizing like I've got to deal with my mother, I've got to deal with my father, I've got to deal with my family of origin. And so those were, I think, some of those tears on that bus that then began to get answered and unwanted, where it's like, yeah, I've got to address this kind of stuff. And I think just honestly, you don't write a book unless there's a foolish hope inside of you to actually want to change the world. So I have had, you know, my publisher said, you know, we're giving you a very small advance because with this thing might sell like 5,000 copies. You're a first-time author. Most books don't sell more than like 3,000.

Speaker 5 26:50

Yeah.

Jay Stringer 26:50

And so, you know, I accepted that, but also like I have a level of defiance in me around my family, around books, what people tell me will happen. And so there was some sense of I really want to change the conversation and trust that it will do the work that it needs to do. So on one level, I'm so taken aback by the reality that it's sold over 100,000 people. I was gonna say 20 times their optimistic estimate. Yeah, and I'm also upset that like there's not more that have been purchased. So I don't know how to hold both those like awe and also the sense of there's been so much crap put out there in Christian sex circles just with regard to how do you address porn or how do you address this battle or whatever language you want to put to it, there's also a sense of this, it's still surprising to people when they aren't in a recovery community. Like, so I want it to be more mainstream, but it's also I think that's part of the prayer of other books and other things that need to be written to wake up the conversation. So yeah, I'm so grateful. I want more, and I'm also so

New Book Desire And Five Core Longings

Jay Stringer 28:03

intrigued as to what ideas will come from, you know, our peers and people that are in college, grad school that are seeing, sensing things right now that they're gonna change this and they're gonna be the transitional character in this field. So feel so grateful for the role that I've gotten to play. And I'm also just intrigued as to where does this go next?

Greg 28:26

That's really hopeful to hear you talking about the new voices coming up that we haven't, you know, identified or heard from yet. Because it's one thing that's really cool, just being as old as I am and seeing how conversations have changed uh in my adulthood, you know, because I've been an adult, I guess, through in in all ways that that's defined for 35 years now. And people my age could not talk about sexual struggles and were instructed in Christian circles not to. Well, now, you know, young, young men who come to our recovery meetings, their problem isn't that they don't have anybody to talk to about it. You know, that's and that's such a huge blessing that the stigma of just I have to keep. Now, there are some who still feel that, but by and large, you know, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, younger millennials have a freedom to talk about sexual struggles that wasn't there before. But what it is, it's a pooling of people who struggle with the same thing but don't know what to do about it. And so now thinking about your voice and people like Sheila and Sam and, you know, other and Dan, others who are doing such helpful work on it, and then who knows who else is coming? That really is a hopeful thing to think of.

Jay Stringer 29:39

Yeah, for people coming out of IGen, like, you know, to use Jonathan Heights' language of a phone-based childhood versus a play-based childhood, like there are gonna be thinkers and people that have that level of defiance of, you know, a lot of us had no digital safety. We had no digital guardrails. Why did our parents expose us to nine hours of social media a day? And yeah, I mean, they're gonna have the same things that were like, you know, did my parents see me? Did they offer attunement? Did they offer safety? It's very possible that they're gonna have parents that offered them sight in one level, but then abdicated their health in other areas. So I, you know, the language does need to shift. And I'm I'm so intrigued as to research and people in their 20s, 30s that are like, we need to disrupt this thing.

Greg 30:31

Well, I'd like to just shift over and talk about the new book. It's called Desire. And we're recording this in late February, but the book is actually gonna be available March the 3rd, which I think is the day this episode is gonna drop. So happy release day. We're just gonna say that. We're gonna say that with uh with anticipation and and yeah, and optimism. You guys sent uh an advanced PDF copy and I got to read it. And just wow, I mean, I was wondering what your follow-up book to Unwanted was gonna be like. And it's so much broader than another book about sexual struggles. When when you were the guy who wrote the book Unwanted, and then you got a book coming out called Desire, it probably is a presumption some people are gonna have is that this is gonna be a book about sexual desire. And it certainly includes that, but it's a lot more. I want to just read something that is early in the book that that just made me excited to read the rest of it and ask you to talk about a little bit. You say, Who are you at your core? What do your deepest desires reveal about the essence of your identity? Don't buy into modern sound bites that confuse self-destructive desires with coping strategies or reduce

Differentiation, Midlife, And Growth

Greg 31:44

healing to an endless quest for self-improvement. There is so much more to you than that. While it's natural to want to be free from the negative survival strategies of trauma or make improvements, true wholeness comes from asking, what do I want to be free for? What kind of life would I be living if I were fully alive? I mean, when you were talking about wanting to write the first book just because you wanted to change the world, like that is that sense of full aliveness. I'm gonna be so defiant and brazen that I'm gonna do something that I think maybe God could use to change the world. So I'd love to just hear you talk about what got you in the zone for a book on desire.

Jay Stringer 32:23

Yeah. So there were a lot of questions that you know, unwanted could answer, like sexual fantasies or unwanted sexual behavior and some of the antecedents and roots of that. But we would also get so many emails from people saying, I don't have an unwanted sexual behavior, I just like need a defibrillator for my sex life, or what do I do after betrayal, or just a sense of, hey, I'm still going back into the same marriage. I'm going back into the same family. I so as I paid attention to what my clients needed, as I paid attention to what readers were writing in about, as I paid attention to my own story and life and what did I need as I approached midlife, this was the book that I felt like I needed to write. So I didn't want to stay in just the, you know, the Christian bedroom space of addiction or compulsive behavior, because there's so much more that I wanted to uncover and to learn about. And so this was a book of, you know, not just to understand self-destructive behaviors, but if no one is really teaching us how to form our relationship to desire, I wanted to provide a framework, a roadmap for this is how you become human. This is how you become fully alive. And so the the five desires that I'm working with in that in the book are a desire for wholeness, which is all about going back to your past, knowing your story, healing, a desire for personal growth, which is about how do you develop a sense of self, hospitality for some of the struggles of your life. We should dive into differentiation because I think it's critical for people to understand, but the development of yourself, intimacy, and the reason you know how to desire healthy intimacy, that a lot of us, it's not just that we're not good at intimacy, it's that we had no model for intimacy. So when marriage exposes how underdeveloped we are, sometimes we think our marriage is broken and it might be broken, but that's part of the point of a marriage, is it's actually working quite well to reveal the patterns that have been in the secret, that are the patterns that have led to some level of difficulty or misery or dread in your marriage. So sometimes what we think a marriage is not working well, I think is actually working quite well to disrupt, to reveal, and then a desire for pleasure. And how do we understand our relationship to sex and to desire? And then the final desire

Pause For Part Two And Listener CTA

Jay Stringer 34:58

is a desire for meaning and purpose. And, you know, just as you were reading that quote, just when I think about personal growth, for example, you know, we're both men in our middle age, right? So that the sense of I'm 55, I'll own it. Yeah, yeah. I'm 40, I don't know how old am I, 42? But just that sense of, you know, that it used to be that you'd get like, you know, the the classic sports car Corvette when you're going through a midlife crisis. And now it's like health optimization. Like I have my whoop on. I have like you're you're trying to optimize your life, you're trying to live forever, like Brian Johnson's don't die. Right. And so it becomes this sense of, you know, growth is about like these hacks of kind of keep hammering, keep pushing through stuff, and not really learning how to grow a sense of self, like how to grow, you know, differentiate, how to develop yourself in the midst of this. So I just think we all have these crucibles that we have to go through. And part of the dilemma that I always experience is like, why does a crisis need to happen for people to wake up? Yeah, to be able to understand their story, to be able to understand. So I'm trying to invite people to, you know, what if you didn't have to completely sabotage your life to find it? To be able to kind of lose the provisional self that you developed to get you through your childhood, but then really to ask that question of like, where do I really want to go? That if the God of the universe has put desires, has put passions inside of me, I think that should be our deeply hopeful mission is to uncover, to excavate, to ask where is this heart meant to go in the world?

Greg 36:52

Okay, so that's where we're gonna pause and say this is the end of part one of our conversation with Jay Stringer. Make sure that you come back next Tuesday. We will have part two of our great conversation. And we're actually gonna dive a little bit more into his new book, Desire. Can't wait for you to hear that. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe to or follow the podcast so that you'll always get new episodes as soon as they come out. And we sure would appreciate it if you would write us a positive review. Give us five stars wherever you get your podcast, help spread the word about what we really want. Thanks everybody. We'll see you next week.