Latest / Behind Every Great Man / EP 58: Why Were You More Sexually Free Before Marriage?
Transcript
- BETM EP58 V2: Behind every great man is a great confidence. Hi, and welcome to Behind Every Great Man. I am Jessica, your host. Behind Every Great Man is a great woman who remembers who she is. I want to talk about something that I feel is a little backwards. So, when we were dating, many of us felt free, maybe flirtatious, adventurous, playful. We would dress how we wanted, dance how we wanted, tried new things. We discovered things about ourselves. There was a freedom that was felt. There was this anticipation, mystery. There was excitement. What I really got to thinking about was how uncertain that time was. We didn't know if the person we were dating or we were in a relationship with would this last. We didn't know if the person would stay. If you had similar experiences like me, it was a lot of question marks. Such as does this person love me? Am I too much? Am I not enough? then we get married, we choose our partner, we make promises, we make our commitments, we build a life together, and theoretically we've created the very environment to which we should feel freer freer than ever. We've ever felt before. We have this commitment in place. We have familiarity. We have certainty if you value that. We have someone who knows us, who has seen us without makeup, who has seen us at our worst, who have watched our worst days possible. Who's seen our imperfections and they've chosen to love us anyway? So what I got to thinking about was how that seems very backwards to me. Why is it that some of us felt more comfortable exploring in the uncertainty when love was uncertain and then become more inhibited once love was actually secure? Isn't that backwards? Because I believe marriage is Should be one of the safest places we ever experience. A place where we are accepted, we are loved as is, we're not afraid to be judged, where we can explore and experiment and discover and reveal and unveil. And r realize things about ourselves that we didn't know existed. I'm not just talking about sex, I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about your femininity, your sensuality, your playfulness, your curiosity, your freedom. Our freedom to be silly, to be adventurous, to fail horribly, miserably, and still be loved and still laugh at these things together to discover who we are as women. Because we know that we're loved. I wonder if we've confused the commitment of marriage with being confined in who we're allowed to be or who we're allowed to become. There's a beautiful song called Little Bird by Blessing Offer, and some of the lyrics go where's my notebook? Freedom on your own ain't really free. No little bird, that ain't what it means. And I won't take the wings you're used to having. I just want to brush with my hands. I think that's how it goes. Even freedom needs some fences. Even blue skies need the ground. It's actually such a beautiful song. And it got me thinking about this topic and the relationship between freedom and having somewhere safe to belong. I never quite got that when I was dating or younger. I always thought. I can't get married because I want to be free. And I'm realizing that's quite the opposite. I started thinking about a bird and its nest. A bird needs somewhere to land, somewhere to live, somewhere to rest, somewhere to feel protected. But that nest was never intended to replace the sky. And I think so many of us spend our marriages building the nest, making our home, making it beautiful, managing it. We're raising the children, we're trying to create our own traditions, managing our relationships, doing our best to maintain them, We're building this beautiful life. And this is life. These are all beautiful and worthy things that we take on as wives and as mothers. But we're also supposed to experience that life, to enjoy it, to explore it, to fly. I don't want a marriage that makes me feel smaller or makes me feel confined or my world smaller. I want a marriage where we continually discover how much more there is to each other, to him, to me. It's so easy for us to get our identities wrapped into others, into our loved ones. We become someone's wife, someone's mother. Person who remembers everything, the birthdays, the appointments, keeps track of the groceries, manages the school calendar and everything that's coming up, the to-do list. We become so responsible. And that's what the roles ask of us. And we show up. And there's something beautiful about that responsibility. And I wouldn't have it any other way. I love being a mom. I love being a wife. These are not roles I want to escape. But I also don't want them to be the only parts of me that exist. Before I was a mom, I was a woman. Before I was a wife, I was a woman. You were a woman. A woman that loves. music and dancing and having fun and feeling beautiful and feminine and the woman who enjoys flirting with her husband and being playful, the woman who's creative and adventurous and spontaneous, the woman who's curious about her sensuality and her sexuality. She's still there. She's still here. And maybe you're listening and thinking, I don't even know who she is anymore. I don't even recognize her anymore. That version of me feels long gone. And I get that. Because man Life can get so chaotic and so full and ask so much of us and need so much done that there's very little room left for what we want to experience, what we like, how we want to feel, not everyone else. I think that there's a difference between building a beautiful life and feeling alive inside of it. Are we experiencing pleasure? Ask yourself that. Not just sexual pleasure. Pleasure of being a woman. Of being alive. Of Having a body that can feel or allowing ourselves to do something simply because we want to do it. When's the last time you did something like that? Crazy like that, just because I simply want to do something. It's not for efficient reasons, it's not practical. I don't believe pleasure is something we have to set aside when we become mothers and running a home. And I definitely don't believe sensuality is something we need to get rid of or abandon when we get married. Quite the opposite. And we can't talk about marriage being a safe place for all of this without acknowledging that safety isn't created simply by exchanging vows. That's just not something that is built in. It's created by how we treat each other, by whether we feel emotionally safe, if we're respectful to each other, whether we Feel respected, whether our needs are being met, our partners' needs are being met, because marriage should be the space that we become more of who we are, not less, more curiosity, more acceptance, less judgment, less shame, less guilt. Being a devoted wife doesn't mean that we have to just abandon ourselves. It doesn't have to be one or the other. I love saying it. Two things can be true at the same time. I hear the language all the time. I want to feel like my old self again. I wish I felt the way that I did before I had kids. I wish I had my body back. But we're not meant to go backwards. We're not meant to be who we were at 25, however old you are. What if there are parts of ourselves we haven't even discovered yet? I love the thought of that. I love to think that there are parts of Jessica that I haven't even experienced yet. More room to grow, more confidence to be had, more wisdom to be gained, more understanding of our bodies and our relationships. Yes, there's more responsibilities, got it, but there's also more depth. There's also more wisdom. I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to become the woman that I was at twenty five. I wanna discover the woman I can become at forty-five, fifty-five, sixty-five. I want to Keep surprising myself. I want to keep Surprising myself with the depths of my relationship. And I want my husband to keep discovering me because we're human beings and we're still growing, we're still evolving, we're still learning. He is and I am. I think there's something incredibly erotic about that. Two people who know each other deeply, who care for each other deeply, yet remain curious. about one another and who they're becoming in every season, every year. That creates or that's still mystery. There's still discovery there. There's still more to reveal. So maybe we need to change the way we think about marriage. Instead of seeing it as this place that we settle into who we we're supposed to be or the roles that we play? What if we what if we saw as the place Where we finally feel safe enough to explore who we can become, where the wife can also be the lover, and where the mom can also be the adventurer, where we're not confined to those roles. The Christian woman can also be the sensual woman. That's how I would define myself. Where we can be. Deeply loyal and devoted and playful and still be responsible and still be spontaneous, still be grounded, centered, and free. If we are lucky enough, if we are blessed enough to have a marriage that's built on love and built on trust and built on mutual respect it can become one of the most extraordinary places for that growth to happen. I know because I experience it and that is why I thought about that song The Little Bird because maybe it's about knowing where you belong so deeply that you're no longer afraid to fly and you have somewhere safe to land. If there's one thing that I want you to take today, it's you don't have to return to the woman you once were before marriage. You get to discover the woman that you're becoming. Behind every great man is a great woman who remembers who she is. Thanks for taking the time to join me on this week's podcast episode. You can find more episodes of Behind Every Great Man on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if this spoke to you, please subscribe and share it with a friend. Thanks again, and I'll see you next week.