Licensed sex therapist Sam Jolman has helped hundreds of men with intimacy issues during his professional career in the past 20 years. Now he has written a new book aimed at male readers titled ‘The Sex Talk You Never Got’. A married dad of three boys, Jolman is very concerned that men aren’t talking about sexual activity within accountable and protected scenarios and thus sees a great need for discipleship and nurturing in this area.
Christian Daily International interviewed Jolman about the hidden issues affecting men and their sexuality and how to address them in a biblical way.
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Poetry is a subjective literary form that many people in modern western culture associate more with femininity because of the emphasis on emotions, something that seems less compatible with the typical alpha male stereotype.
Yet for Sam Jolman, this is just one illustration of a false trope. He believes that the inner core of humanity both embedded and hidden in some men is akin to unspoken poems, waiting to be explored. However, a safe outlet for such honest expressions has been sorely lacking in many of the clients he has seen over the years.
An example he gave is the inner need a husband has for his wife to provide him space to really tell her his story within a non-rushed, trusted and respectful environment, where he could confess his real journey about how he came to understand sexuality in the first place.
Jolman’s professional experience suggests that if that space is not given, there is a risk that men turn to unhelpful sexual behavior as a means to “soothe” the inner turmoil. A need, he emphasizes, that is more emotionally internal rather than merely physical. This is particularly prevalent among the many silent men who suffered sexual abuse and have been unable to talk about it.
Jolman’s new book - which John Elredge, author of the classic ‘Wild at Heart’, called “the most important book on sexuality that you will ever read” - evolved from a realization in his therapy work that men struggled because the only way they could think about sexual sins “was through sin or not sin.” Hidden events of the past, such as sexual abuse in different forms, were given less attention.
“They only thought about it in terms of, am I lusting or not lusting? There was such a struggle to look deeper at their story of, you know, what had shaped them sexually,” Jolman said.
“I don't know if I've ever had a guy come in and say, ‘hey, I need to talk about my story of sexual abuse,’ or ‘hey, I'm curious about some things in my past.’
“A lot of guys will hold the things that have harmed them more as their own shame. Their own… you know, ‘well, there's some things that I plan to take to my grave’ or ‘there's some weird stuff that happened when I was a kid.’”
In Jolman’s view, men think less about the hurt caused by unbiblical sexual behavior such as pornography and adultery, and more about whether they are behaving well or not, in a strong legalistic sense.
“And so I thought, we need a better conversation here among men that helps them go deeper in their story. You know, I'm sharing this book out of my own journey as a man, having some of those same struggles, like the shame when I did struggle sexually and how to find a place to go with that, other than just shutting it down in silence.”
The ongoing controversial debate about gender and sexuality in the secular world, the ‘Me Too’ movement and such cultural shifts, could have a positive effect for men in this area, as it could open up the possibility of much-needed discussions, according to Jolman.
“What's the vision here for male sexuality? I think it's no secret that the world has wrestled greatly with the impact of male sexual desire.
“There’s these really macho, rigid views of what makes a man. Right? And you’ve gotta look a certain way and not feel anything. You know, be tough.”
This embodied masculinity has infiltrated the Church to a certain extent, said Jolman, who emphasized the importance of remembering that the design for both masculinity and femininity originally came from God.
“They’re the designs of God but they’re meant for human flourishing. And so however they come together, men and women, they’re meant to create our collective human flourishing and obviously the worship of God.
“We have such a shared humanity between us, as men and women. And I’m convinced gender is probably best talked about in terms of poetry.”
Jolman criticized the cultural view that men are physically stronger than women. This is mostly true, he said, but not exclusively. He warned against such “rigid views” of manhood.
“So whatever is true of the differences in gender, I say that men tend to be over-sexualized and under-sexually nurtured. And again, that might be true of women as well. But, I'm addressing more of, what I would call, the need within the masculine culture that we've all inherited to have a deeper conversation because for a lot of guys, probably the place they've had the least meaningful conversation in their life is their sexuality.
“They'll either get locker room talk or sex jokes, but they don't get healthy ongoing conversation about sexuality. And so where do they go to get that information, you know… pornography, Google, their friends.”
Jolman nowadays sees a type of culture whereby men see sexual activity as the way to feel their masculinity. “And it’s a false place,” he added.
The therapist referred to research by secular author Peggy Orenstein, who said girls felt cut off from their bodies and not understanding their bodies’ responses, needs, limits and desires. With boys, the issue was being cut off from their hearts.
“I thought that resonated,” Jolman said. “Men have got to look at the emotional side in order to make sense of the meaningful side, not just the physical side of themselves.”
He believed the “poetics of sex” were more the “heart of sex”, the meaning of it, rather than bodily mechanics and learning how anatomy worked.
“There were men getting disconnected from their hearts, whereas for young women, they were getting disconnected from their bodies. And that was the theme Orenstein saw.
“And I thought about it and, this is my opinion, but the two most virile pictures of men in the Bible are firstly Adam when he meets Eve in the garden. They're both naked and without shame. It’s profoundly virile, you know, a sexually awakened moment.
“And then secondly the poet writer of Song of Songs is very clearly aroused and moved by his bride. And what happens to these men? Meaning. What happens next is they break into poetry.
“Right? Both of them, in the moment, break into poetry about their beloved. And, again, it's not obviously the only thing that happened. It's pretty clear in Song of Songs, these two are making love.
“And, obviously, Adam knew his wife at one point or several points, and, you know, she became a mother. So it's obvious that it carries on into sex for them, but there's this moment where they break into poetry, both of them.”
Jolman stressed that he did not believe every man needed to become a poet to be biblically sexual. “But there’s something about the heart. To me, that reveals their hearts are present, in the act.
“In other words, it’s not just getting off sexually with a sexual release bodily without the heart present. And I think that’s a place where we get stuck as men, seeing sex as a release, a bodily function and need. You know, sort of like sneezing!
“And what I understand is that sex is not an inherent need for the body. Nobody’s died from a lack of sex. It can be a very powerful desire in us and overtake us in many ways, but it’s not a need. And, you know, love is a need. Oxygen is a need. Food is a need. Relationships are a need even, but sex is not.
“So it’s trying to help men know how to better embody their sexuality and connect with the heart of it more – the meaning.”
Jolman said that “the more you humanize men, they become more like men.” The central tenet of this humanity is inviting a man towards love and the image of God in him, and the virtues of courage, sacrifice and temperance.
“I think we’ve so often defined masculinity as the opposite of femininity, and I think that sets us up wrong, like that phrase ‘the opposite sex’ as opposed to saying there’s actually a lot of humanity that we share and it’s not opposite.”
Jolman rejects a rigid cultural view that men want sex and women do not. He criticizes the notion of putting shame on a wife who does enjoy sex, perhaps more than her husband. He recounted that in his therapy experience, there are “many women that are saying, ‘I’m interested in sex and he’s not.”
Jolman also lambasts the pressure being put on men to be results driven. He points to the fact that men are not rewarded for rest, or finding healthy comfort, but only perseverance at work. He recalled painfully how he worked in construction many years ago and the builders [men] would drink copious amounts of alcohol at the end of the working day. To numb themselves to sleep, in Jolman’s view, “And then they’d wake up and do it again the next day.”
“We don't often reward men for their relational skills: for their empathy, their attunement, their ability to father well, their ability to have good and healthy relationships within their workforce. We don't reward men for that.
“It feels like the Industrial Revolution has objectified men to be these producers, of getting things done. And certainly women have suffered their own version of that.
“And that’s obviously an extreme but I’ve heard similarly that some men use pornography and masturbation as a way of putting themselves to sleep at night. It’s not so much a lust thing but an attempt at self-soothing. It’s not an overactive sex drive per se but wanting comfort that gets stuck in more of an addictive pattern with pornography.
“I’m inviting guys to think a little deeper about maybe you just struggle to know how to bring comfort to yourself.”
Jolman pointed to research showing that little boys were physically cuddled less than girls as babies and infants. This righteous touch deprivation can then reveal itself later in life, on the football field or through sex. The so-called obsession with sex by some men is thus, in reality, an obsession for touching, to bring comfort to themselves.
The therapist encouraged wives to understand “most men have had severe neglect in their sexuality. They haven’t had very meaningful conversations, and it’s probably true of women too. But just to understand that when a man is asking for sex, or focused on sex, it’s about other things. At some level, there’s always more going on in his heart.”
Jolman suggested asking questions about the meaning of sex, being curious about a husband’s story, asking him to speak from his heart about it, such as ‘When did you learn about sex?’ and ‘What was it like?’ or ‘What do you love about sex?’ or ‘What things shaped you around your sexuality?’”
“I think that if a woman does no more than just say, ‘Oh, it’s men. Guys will be guys’, that can be dismissive to a man. I’ve never met a man that just wanted sex. Hands down, every man I talk with wants more than sex. He wants love. He wants the relationship too.”
Statistics from the Center for DIsease Control in the U.S. show that 50 percent of women have experienced sexual trauma and the known figure is one in three for men, according to Jolman: “That’s a staggering amount of people.” He added that figures showed between 20 to 30 percent of men have experienced sexual harm, a similar figure to women.
Jolman wants churches to focus less on preaching about sexual behavior because churchgoers, who have often experienced sexual trauma, do not need extra burdens. He encouraged church leaders to do research on sexual trauma and said the Bible contains examples such as Esther who was a sex slave, forced to comply with the king’s sexual wishes.
More than anything, Jesus Christ himself likely endured a level of sexual harm, according to Jolman. “There was a culture in the Roman world of the penetrated and the penetrator. You dominated people and made them subservient to you. And when Jesus was stripped naked and nailed to the cross, that was as much sexual harm, as physical death.
“So I think that lens will help you to see Scripture in a far deeper way in terms of the story of sex.”
