Lets Get Curious With Special Guest Jay Stringer

Greg Miller

And that's one of the principles that we teach so much in our workshop, is that curiosity is not bad. In fact, without curiosity, there's no faith. Curiosity is what invites us to explore that which we don't understand. And so we try to really engage the men and women who come through, faithful and true, to be curious about their lives, to ask the question, why do I do what I do?

Greg Miller

Or why am I drawn to what I'm drawn towards and to find those answers? And you're identifying one of Mark's big beliefs was that our fantasies are a messenger from our soul, and our fantasies are trying to tell us about something that we need. And it's important that we get curious. And he would often talk about interrogating our fantasies.

Greg Miller

And one of the lines they use with the men is we don't indulge our fantasy, but we engage our fantasy if we are a good steward of it, in the right help, with the right resources, it really can tell us about that legitimate need that we've been trying to meet through some sort of sexual experience.

Randy Evert

Welcome to the Faithful and True podcast. I'm Randy Everett, your co-host, and today we're going to feature Doctor Greg Miller, our usual host, in a conversation that he had a short time ago with Jay Stringer, who is a therapist and author. Jay has a new book that Greg and Jay are going to be discussing, and the name of the book is desire.

Randy Evert

Here now is a great conversation between Greg and Jay Stringer on the Faithful and True podcast.

Greg Miller

Well, welcome to the Faithful and True podcast. I'm Greg Miller and I'm the host. And today I'm very fortunate to have Jay Stringer with me. I'm Jay is the author of unwanted, and I know that many of the people who listen to our podcast are very familiar with that book. And so we're excited to have Jay with us just to talk about his own journey where he is and a new book that's going to be released soon.

Greg Miller

So welcome, Jay.

Jay Stringer

Greg, it is so good to be with you. Thank you for having me on the Faithful and True podcast.

Greg Miller

Well, to kind of get started, I'd love for you just to kind of catch us up with where you are and really what you are doing now beyond finishing the writing of the book. How do you spend your time? What's your focus right now?

Jay Stringer

So I currently live in New York City. We moved from Seattle, Washington to New York City in August of 2020. So when everybody was kind of moving out of Manhattan, we were moving in. I got a drink with a good friend of mine when we moved in, and he he kind of likened it to, like when you see a hurricane coming through Florida and all the cars are going north on 95, and then there's a couple just odd, bizarre cars going south, and you're always like, what are they doing coming in here?

Jay Stringer

And he said, you are that car. Yeah. So we made a decision to move at a very odd time into the city. And so I'm a psychotherapist, I'm a husband, father to two kids, almost a 13 year old, almost an 11 year old. And, you know, Greg, part of what I feel like I've been in outside of, you know, author therapist is I've been in my own midlife chrysalis.

Jay Stringer

I don't it's not quite a crisis. I don't feel like I'm going to sabotage my life in any royal way. But there's a sense of, you know, a little bit of Homer's The Odyssey happening inside me of, like, what is home all about? And so a lot of deep questions like, Odysseus, just find myself crying all the time with regard to pain, with regard to past, with regard to future.

Jay Stringer

And so I feel like I'm in a little bit of a goop right now that I also think this next book initiated for me, like it's it much more in depth than unwanted, much in a way broader around our relationship to desire. So it has cornered me and has worked on me quite a bit. I felt comfortable writing unwanted because of my own process to outgrow porn and some of the what the research had shown.

Jay Stringer

But this book, and I think just midlife in general, is, is so much more difficult than I anticipated. And so that's a little bit of where I am in the country, but also where I am in this midlife journey that I'm on.

Greg Miller

I think we do have seasons of awakening. You know, there are these shifts in our lives where some big change comes or some small change, and it allows us to awaken to something new in ourselves, or to see something old through a new lens. And we are invited to determine what we're going to do with that as we discover that.

Greg Miller

And I love the way that you said it. It doesn't have to be a big crisis. We don't have to, you know, explode our lives with these big, grandiose decisions. But it does invite us to consider who we are, what we want to prioritize, how we want to live. And it's about the stewardship of those opportunities in those moments that determine how we move forward or move out of them.

Jay Stringer

Yes, like there's a neuroscientist out of Johns Hopkins. His name is Gould Dolan. And one of the things he talks about is like this notion of a critical period. And, you know, sometimes they arrive through crises, as you just mentioned. But we can also choose to enter into a critical period. And I think that's part of what I'm finding myself entering into is, you know, we can dive into more of this later on the, the, the episode.

Jay Stringer

But just like reconciling like a provisional identity in me of my own family of origin, of just like in many ways, I've been a therapist since I was seven, eight years old, kind of paying attention to what are the patterns of my family? What is my mom need? What is my dad need? How can I offer my presence, my perspective in a way that kind of brings life and integration and rest to a family?

Jay Stringer

And, you know, just getting a sense of like, that worked really well for 40 years. But now there's a sense of like in my free in that role. And so I don't think I'm going to cease being a therapist, but it is leading to these, like, I want to enter a critical period without crisis to really initiate what is the second half of life really going to look like for me?

Greg Miller

You know, what's interesting is I think there are people who are observers, and there are people who are experiencers, and for those who are observers, they do have this capacity, this gift to kind of separate themselves from what is going on, observe what is going on, maybe draw some conclusions, and they have a very different view of life.

Greg Miller

And then you have those that are the experiencers. They are just in it, and they have difficulty sometimes seeing other perspectives or even being aware of something that's going on for somebody else. And I think the invitation is to be a little bit of both. I think it is important that we observe our lives and make some evaluations and determine how we want to live, and we also need to just be in it.

Greg Miller

And the experiencing of it is part of what life is to be. And I think sometimes that invitation to experience for those of us who are observers, can be pretty challenging indeed.

Jay Stringer

Yeah, good framing to be able to and to want the experience to not just observe, not just to offer a perspective, but to be able to say, how does my body, how does my life come alive?

Greg Miller

Yeah. Well, you mentioned researcher, you did research for On One Edge. You've done research for your new book, desire. Have you always been drawn towards researching or. The way I describe myself is I'm not a researcher. I'm just curious. And so I like to figure stuff out. I like to ask questions. So is research something that you really enjoy that kind of brings you life professionally?

Jay Stringer

So this actually connects me some to Faithful and True and Mark Lazar. So back in the day when I first signed the contract for unwanted, it was probably in like 2015. And so that book didn't come out until 2018. So I had written the vast majority of the book and it was like 2016, 2017. And, you know, this was like, what do you want to do with the extra time?

Jay Stringer

Do you want to build an online curriculum? Do you want to do some of that work? And so one of my good friends said, you know what? If you did some original research to kind of validate some of these principles that you're working with and really test your theory out with regard to, is there something to learn within our unwanted behaviors and fantasies?

Jay Stringer

And I think during that time, that's when I first came across one of Marc Glaser's books where he. I forget his exact line, Greg, you might remember it, but it's he said something like, our fantasies are nothing to be ashamed of. They are, in fact, our greatest teachers. And I was like, oh my goodness, that is so good.

Jay Stringer

That's what I'm observing as a clinician. Like there is meaning embedded in the deepest places of shame that we have. And so kind of just knowing that Mark had written, that had said that I had reached out to him just about, you know, this prospect of doing research of kind of what would that look like? What were some of the questions that we could form, and also wondering if Faithful and True might distribute some of the instrument that I had made?

Jay Stringer

You know, we we think we know what's up and we develop these theories that sound good, that sound like they're rooted in Scripture. But one of the things he said is that, you know, if you can get an original research study of even 500 people and really began to test some of these theories and kind of get some original research, that would be a complete game changer in this field.

Jay Stringer

And so that was all kind of early days of unwanted of like, do I do research? Do I just build an online course, which I eventually did and just be, like you said, curious about what we could find? I knew anecdotally that there was a lot of meaning embedded within those behaviors, but I really wanted to test it.

Jay Stringer

And so all that to say, signing a book contract and having to wait, I was so frustrated at my publisher for not publishing it in 2016, 2017, but really, that gap really allowed me about a year to do to build the research instrument, to test it, to get the results and to weave them into unwanted and change some stuff within it.

Jay Stringer

So, so grateful for, you know, Mark's mind, but also his like push to really validate this, so faithful and true is a big part of that 2017 year for me.

Greg Miller

Yeah. You know, I do think what's true is in many people's face experience, they're taught to be afraid of their curiosity. And that's one of the principles that we teach so much in our workshop is that curiosity is not bad. In fact, without curiosity, there's no faith. Curiosity is what invites us to explore that which we don't understand.

Greg Miller

And so we try to really engage the men and women who come through, faithful and true, to be curious about their lives, to ask the question, why do I do what I do? Or why am I drawn to what I'm drawn towards? And to find those answers? And you're identifying one of Mark's big beliefs was that our fantasies are a messenger from our soul, and our fantasies are trying to tell us about something that we need.

Greg Miller

And it's important that we get curious. And he would often talk about interrogating our fantasies. And, you know, one of the lines I use with the men is we don't indulge our fantasy, but we engage our fantasy if we are a good steward of it, in the right help, with the right resources, it really can tell us about that legitimate need that we've been trying to meet through some sort of sexual experience.

Jay Stringer

Yes. And I think, you know, our our scriptures are full of it. So when, when Adam has just eaten of the tree that he was commanded not to eat from, it's not bounce your eyes. It's not get Apple monitoring on your computer. It's like, Adam, where are you? And to Jacob, the question is like where or what is your name?

Jay Stringer

And then to Hagar, who's been immensely traumatized by the first family of our faith, the angel of the Lord arrives in this place of barrenness, difficulty near death, in in ask where do you come from and where are you going? So I think if we are hearing the voice of God, it is one of curiosity to really invite us to understand where do we come from?

Jay Stringer

Where are we going? And you know, one of the examples I found later on from just even something like Harry Potter has the Mirror of ERA said, and that's desire spelled backwards. And so when Harry looks into the Mirror of ERA, said what he sees as a reflection of his parents, so as an orphan, what he wants to see is integration.

Jay Stringer

It's family, it's community. But when his friend Ron Weasley looks into the mirror of Iris said, his backstory is, you know, he's growing up in the shadow of his older brothers achievements. He kind of doesn't think much of himself. And so when he looks into the mirror, he sees this Quidditch champion. It's it's a bit more of a narcissistic fantasy, but that sense of curiosity, of being able to say, if I were to look into the mirror of Iris said, what would be reflected back to me?

Jay Stringer

Or if God were to come and find me, what questions would the God the universe actually want to ask me with regard to the place that I'm in? And curiosity about that will lead us so much further than a thousand nights of prayerful despair, or trying to will our way, or monitor our way, or get accountability into change.

Jay Stringer

It's just curiosity is so much more powerful than any of us are really willing to grapple with.

Greg Miller

Right. And I think one of the shifts that's so important is many of us in the church experience that we had was we were taught or we were introduced to this idea that when God moves towards us, he's moving towards this out of a place of accusation of challenge or even reinforcing our shame versus it really. I often say that when God moves towards us, God always moves towards us out of a place of love.

Greg Miller

And those questions have a very different energy and tone. When we recognize when God is asking, where are you? It's not out of an accusation. It's more out of this invitation, this place of love for us to become more aware of where we are. I love those maps that say, you are here, and one of the piece pieces I think is missing for many of us is we're not good at identifying where we are.

Greg Miller

We don't have the you are here thing really worked out because we're not that great with self-awareness. And so all of this is about awakening away. Kind of like what we talked about, this journey that you're on, its awakening to the reality of where I am and hearing that invitation of where I might be or where I want to be.

Greg Miller

Back to that idea of desire. You know, we we same principle. A lot of times we are taught to fear our desires. And yet the Scripture is very clear about giving the desires of our heart. And so, as you mentioned the mirror, it's that recognition that we desire what is missing based upon what we were created to have.

Greg Miller

And it's exploring that which gives us the opportunity. Tell us about your new book, desire, and kind of how that's evolved and what you're hoping for. The book.

Jay Stringer

Yeah. So desire was really looking at, you know, after I wrote unwanted, we would get emails from all over the world from people just kind of like asking me to interpret their sexual fantasies. So some people started calling me like The Porn Whisperer because it was like, okay, here's a fantasy, Konjuh interpret it. And it was, you know, one of those things that was like comical to me.

Jay Stringer

It was funny to me to be able to get some of these requests. But part of what I knew is that it struck a nerve in people like it was leading to that sense of curiosity of why do I do what I do? And to me, that's what Romans 12 two is all about. Like, do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Jay Stringer

But part of the dilemma in a lot of Christian circles is that there is no true discipleship, meaning teaching, to help you to understand what is happening inside your sexual mind. Like what are past experiences of trauma? Or how does your family of origin, or your investment with your mom or your dad, or the porn that you are introduced to?

Jay Stringer

How does all that begin to form your mind and your arousal template, and the things that you are seeking after and sabotaging with your life? So part of what unwanted was able to do is to show that our sexual fantasies and the sexual difficulties that we find ourselves in are not random, and that they can actually be a roadmap to healing and growth like they identify the themes of trauma, heartache, family of origin that we don't know how to address.

Jay Stringer

And so I think, you know, to what you were saying earlier, part of the madness and the deep anger that I have for so much, so many Christian circles is that that that where are you? And I am here, like most of us don't know who we are or where we are. Intellect crisis comes and I want to shake the church by being able to say, why are we setting up crises in difficulty and sabotage, to help people to understand their story and to wake something up inside of them?

Jay Stringer

Like, we don't need that. We need the elders among us to initiate us into what it means to have an identity in terms of what does it mean to have purpose. So anytime there is the abdication, not just of a mother or father, but a community, there's going to be a crisis that initiates some level of soul formation, that our our soul is not above catastrophe, to wake us open, to wake us up.

Jay Stringer

And so part of what I started grappling with is, you know, we come from a Christian world that teaches us to fear our desires. And then in the more progressive space, there's this notion of like, what does it mean for you to follow your desires and follow your heart into this one wild and precious life that you've been given?

Jay Stringer

And I love that invitation, but they don't offer any real framework of actually how to develop your desires. So part of what I'm trying to work through with desire is how do we intentionally form our desires. And so I think about desire similar to like the parable of the talents that, like the master, has given people a number of talents.

Jay Stringer

And what are you going to do with those? And I think a lot of times Christians bury their desires because they don't want them to be selfish. They don't want them to be, God forbid, sexual. And so there's this sense of we just bury and suppress, and we've been trained to suppress our desires. But then when it comes to like, where am I supposed to go with these longings inside of me?

Jay Stringer

Often the only channel that some people have is unwanted sexual behavior, infidelity, porn. And it's this duality of my public life. I'm supposed to be suppressing desire, but the only place that I can actually express desire is in an unwanted behavior that then reinforces the judgment. Right? And so part of what I wanted to do with this book was to offer a roadmap, offer a framework for people of how do you intentionally form desire into this mysterious powerhouse of connection, purpose, and love?

Jay Stringer

And so we did way more research on these topics of kind of like, what were the best couples doing, you know, what were people doing that actually enjoyed their careers, that had a lot of confidence, that had meaning and purpose in their lives? If people had high relational satisfaction or high sexual satisfaction, what were they doing that those of us who felt like we were deeply struggling were not doing and all of that was, you know, unwanted, addressed as, you know, patterns of unwanted behavior, but it didn't really address people would say, like, I'm still in the same marriage, or I'm still in the same career, or a lot of women or men would say,

Jay Stringer

I don't necessarily have an unwanted behavior, but I just feel like I need a defibrillator for my sex life, or I need something to wake me up to actually want to have meaning and purpose. And so it's a much broader book for men, women, for people that are struggling with an unwanted behavior, but really just anybody struggling with what it means to be human.

Greg Miller

Right. Well, what I hear is it really is an invitation to begin to speak the language of desire. You know, probably what's true is for those couples, for those individuals that aren't regularly thinking about, what do I desire? What do I desire for my career? What do I desire in my parenting? What do I desire relationally or sexually?

Greg Miller

Like we often say, it's not enough just to leave something. You have to be moving towards something. And I do think you're right that we've been taught to fear desire as if all desire is bad. And yet when we recognize that there's something good in us, in the uniqueness of who God created us to be, that our unique desires can also be good, I think it's it's interesting how so many of the people who come to our workshop are able to identify what they don't want for their lives, but they really struggle naming what they do want for their lives.

Greg Miller

And one of the principles that we teach is sometimes what's motivating are sexual. Acting out is somewhere in our life. We experience something that was positive, that kind of connected to the desire, and then we sexualized it. And so one of the big ones I see you kind of mentioned this is freedom for a lot of people. Their acting out is sexualized freedom.

Greg Miller

This opportunity just to give into this desire and the secretive way. Well, there's nothing wrong with having the desire. It's simply about stewarding the desire. But it has to start with naming the desire.

Jay Stringer

Yeah. So I mean that that goes back to that sense of if, let's say you grew up in a rigid family, in a rigid family creates rules, they create weapons, they weaponize rules, and they kind of make you feel like you have no freedom. But, you know, oftentimes when we grow up in that type of family is we feel both powerless.

Jay Stringer

But there's also some level of humiliation that we experience there. And so that's part of the question that we have to ask is like that powerlessness doesn't go. It doesn't just evaporate. And that's one of the allures that we have to an unwanted sexual behavior is that it's not just about lust. It's not just about some sense of, you know, I'm aroused, therefore I go to it.

Jay Stringer

It's a sense of that freedom of I've never felt free. I've never felt powerful. And in the world of pornography, for 8 to 10 minutes, I can feel free. I can get what I want, when I want it. And if you're coming from a rigid family or a disengaged family where you could not get the things that you longed for, porn is such a powerful experience within that particular realm because you actually feel like you can want something, right?

Jay Stringer

So that's true. But the other thing that you are hitting on that I think is unbelievably true in recovery communities, Greg. And this is just again, I talked about wanting to shake the church from time to time. I want to shake recovery communities because so much of the addiction framework, so many 12 step programs, so many kind of programs that I interact with around the country, it they frame desire as this thing that you are going to be in prison by.

Jay Stringer

You need to fear it, and you need to leave it, and you need to kind of suppress it for fear that it's going to get out of hand. And one of the examples that I've always thought about is I remember seeing a client who had come out of a pretty rigid CSat framework. And again, all clinicians are different.

Jay Stringer

And so but his the the clinical framework that he came in was just like he felt burdened that this was going to be with him his entire life. And there was a sense of like just that his eyes were so dim. And so one of the things he talked about is like, jab, been sober for eight months. I'm doing all the right things.

Jay Stringer

I've hit all the right meetings, and part of what I told them is, I feel like you have taken me into your backyard, and you're saying, Jay, look at my backyard. There's no weeds anywhere. And I'm like, but it's it's a desert. There's nothing back there. So you've taken your gospel and recovery version of roundup weed spray, and you've covered the whole thing, and there's nothing growing.

Jay Stringer

But it's like the purpose of recovery is not suppression and killing off desire. It's actually allowing good, beautiful, and true things to grow. So that image of let's grow a garden here, and are there going to be weeds that you're going to have to encounter along the way? Absolutely. But that's all tended to in the service of growing something beautiful.

Jay Stringer

And so I think that you're spot on. Like that's what we need. We don't just need freedom from something. We need a sense of what is our freedom for. So we've got to address the patterns of self-sabotage and the things that are ruining our life. But the reason why we do that is so that we can actually be free to pursue what the God of the universe has put inside of our heart to pursue.

Greg Miller

Yeah. You know, we we talk about this idea that recovery isn't just giving up a behavior. That recovery is the journey of becoming the person that God created you to be. And very central to that are our desires that God gave us these desires that are good and help us to be unique and also help us to be universal, to be in community, all of those types of things.

Greg Miller

But, you know, for many of us, so much of our lives is shaped by fear and shame, whether it was in the church or out of the church. It is always this thing that we're going to do something wrong or desire the wrong thing. And I love that image that we would never grow a garden if we were afraid of the weeds.

Greg Miller

You know, we have to be willing to acknowledge, yes, there can be weeds, but we don't have to fear the weeds. We have a strategy to deal with the weeds. But let's grow this incredibly beautiful garden because that's what we were invited to do. That's who we were created to be.

Jay Stringer

And I think that's such the invitation to people is like when you go back to it could be places of childhood. But just like where did you come alive. Like what were the stories, what were the experiences that you had a young as a young boy, as a young girl that woke you up. So, you know, at some point you might want to be like Mike, like those old commercials or that sense of, you know, go to space like Sally ride or Lance Armstrong or like play the guitar like Bono.

Jay Stringer

But some at some point along the way, you realize, like, I'm not going to go to space, I'm not going to the NBA, I'm not going to be a rock star. And oftentimes we we turn our backs from those desires rather than seeing some of the metaphors of, I want to explore, I want to go into places of the unknown to learn what we could find, or I need to express myself and experience my body and bring my voice to the world.

Jay Stringer

So if you go back to some of those childhood desires, there are going to be clues inside of them that are really trying to wake you up. The other side to that would be, you know, Annie Dillard, who's a Pulitzer Prize winning author. She has this great line where she says, I never knew I was a bell until the moment I was lifted up and struck.

Jay Stringer

And that's one of my favorite things to do with people during retreats and intensives is just like, what are what are the places in your life where something inside of you, like the bells were ringing in your adult life, like when I got to do this thing with my family, or when I had that meal, or when I was in the backyard over, you know, a barbecue or a solo stove.

Jay Stringer

And we were just like having a good cigar and a good drink. And people were laughing like that was an experience of a bell like moment. Or maybe it was like studying something in Scripture, and there's something about what the spirit was making clear to you that you're like, this is something of the beauty and meaning of your life.

Jay Stringer

I think the God of the universe loves to remind us that we are a bell and loves to ring stuff inside of us, and that's what we really need to be loyal to. Not loyal to our family of origin. Not loyal to what we think that we're supposed to look like as good Christians. But it's a sense of God is working through our desires to wake us up to what he wants us to pursue.

Jay Stringer

So all of those experiences of like, those bell like moments when you get to lead, when you get to be part of a family, get to be part of a community, or you just feel like the power of your body as you surf or you climb a mountain. All of those are bell like moments that I think God is speaking to us, reminding us of the talents, reminding us of the desires that he put inside of us.

Jay Stringer

And that's what we need to be loyal to as we go forward.

Greg Miller

Well, and I love that imagery of when we are, when our bell is being wrong, when we're firing on all cylinders, when we're in that space that we were created for, to be reminded that that brings God pleasure. You know, it's that old movie, The Chariots of Fire, where the guy says, when I run, I believe that brings God pleasure.

Greg Miller

And we all have that. We all have the capacity to live our lives so that God experiences pleasure. But for many of us, we've been taught that pleasure is dangerous, that pleasure is scary, and that pleasure is to be avoided. That pleasure is superficial or, you know, but to recognize no, God has pleasure. God experiences pleasure when we are living the abundant and full lives.

Greg Miller

And that is the invitation in such a redemptive way to pursue and understand our desires. Well, yes. Is there anything else, as we're closing, that would be helpful for our listeners to know as we look forward to the book being released soon?

Jay Stringer

I would say approach the book cautiously, because I really believe this book, like when studied, when read, has the potential to transform people's lives. And part of that is because of the, you know, I in the book, I use a five part framework that we have these five core desires. We have a desire for wholeness, which is about our desire to heal, to understand our story, to know where we come from.

Jay Stringer

We have this desire for personal growth, which is all about developing hospitality for our difficulties. But we live in an age that, you know, part of the answer to the midlife crisis is to optimize your health these days. Like you get your what band. You optimize your sleep. And so we're seeing a lot of kind of mimics of what personal growth and development look like on the market these days.

Jay Stringer

But, you know, personal growth is really about developing hospitality and developing a sense of differentiation. And who are you? And then the third desire is a desire for intimacy, which is about learning how to give and receive love. And that's what I found a lot after unwanted is, you know, people were like, I don't know how to do intimacy.

Jay Stringer

The home that I came from wasn't intimate. I don't know how to do this. So really providing a framework for people to know how to desire intimacy. And then the fourth is pleasure. And what are, you know, what is good sex about? What is embodiment all about. And then the fifth desire is about meaning and purpose. And so it's a framework that's really intended to help grow people.

Jay Stringer

And so just to go back to your question, what I feel like is really important is I don't know if I explicitly say this in the book, but one of the concepts I think a lot about is that of a symphony. And one of the reasons why a symphony is so powerful is that it's it's full of kind of differentiation and linkage.

Jay Stringer

So differentiation is the sense of like when you walk into a symphony, you want to make sure your violinist is like the best in the city. So if we were to go to the symphony in Chicago, Greg, like, we would want to make sure that it's a great percussion team. We want them trained. If you were to come to New York and we were to go to a symphony, you want the people in that symphony to know who they are, to put in the practice time.

Jay Stringer

But the magic of a symphony is not just that. It's like, wow, that's a great cellist. It's somehow all of these differentiated instruments are coming together to make music. And one of the challenges that I've always felt in marriage and general, specifically Christian marriage, or just like the notion of church and ecclesia, is that we're supposed to have unity.

Jay Stringer

We're supposed to bring, you know, some sense of togetherness and community. But I think we've got some of it backward that we're trying to have intimacy and togetherness and union and delight without having a true sense of I love the language that you used of this is where I am on the map, meaning this is who I, who I am.

Jay Stringer

These are the desires. This is the story that I bring to my marriage. And so this book is really an invitation to grow a sense of self that we're aware of narcissism of, kind of not clinically speaking, narcissism is not a fullness of self. It's an absence of self. And so I look to the world around me to reflect who I am.

Jay Stringer

But this journey of differentiation says like, where do I come from? Who am I? How do I develop a sense of self that I can actually bring into relationships and into friendships? So I think that's a really important kind of category that sometimes the issue with intimacy or the issue with a church community is not that there's a lack of unity and togetherness.

Jay Stringer

I think one of the big struggles is that there's actually a lack of differentiation and personhood. So when you think about the Trinity, the Trinity is what it is, not just because of unity, but because there are three distinct persons that all know how to dance together, that all know how to support one another as one. And so I think the Trinity is just such beautiful language of what does it mean for you to be a distinct man or woman?

Jay Stringer

What does it mean for you to be a distinct partner, a distinct member of a community, but also learn how to bring your talents, your desires together for the whole so that that's a bit of the framework. But also one of the important categories I'm working with is that of differentiation.

Greg Miller

Absolutely. Well, what's interesting is for a lot of people, they believe in order for there to be community, there has to be conformity. But when there's conformity, there's not community, because community is based upon our individual selves joining with others. And one of the phrases we often talk about is, I cannot be with anyone else. If I cannot be with myself, I cannot be with God.

Greg Miller

If I cannot be with myself. And the being with myself is very much like you're saying, is engaging my uniqueness. The fact that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, that I was uniquely knitted together in my mother's womb. And so until I can be with myself, there is no connection community with anyone else. No one like.

Jay Stringer

Two of the greatest needs are. I mean, it's to be authentic and to belong. And somewhere along the line, we do realize that if I'm going to belong, I can't be authentic. And if I'm, I can't entirely belong. And so, I mean, I love that image of most of us feel bent towards conformity, as you said. And so I think part of that invitation is to be able to say, where are you underdeveloped as a man or a woman?

Jay Stringer

Because sometimes in marriage we just end up giving our spouse a laundry list of needs and like, here's my wounded child. Here's where I haven't been loved. Here are all my attachment patterns. But I think to recognize where am I fearfully and wonderfully made? Where do I want to come alive? And then you get to actually bring your spouse an adventure.

Jay Stringer

You get to bring her a sense of exploration, a sense of where are we going to go with this one wild and precious life that we've been given, instead of it just being like, I don't know how to be alone. I don't know how to regulate my anxiety. And I need you to need me. I need you to want me, even if I don't want or desire myself.

Jay Stringer

It just sets up such a hostage situation in our relationships.

Greg Miller

Well, when one of the pieces I think is significant is if I need someone to rescue me, I cannot be intimate with them. If I'm in competition with someone, I cannot be intimate with them. And so the first thing that we work on is having a strong enough sense of self that I don't need to be rescued by somebody else, and I have a clear enough sense of myself that I can be unique in the context of community with others.

Greg Miller

You know, one thing I would encourage our listeners to do as you're reading the book is here. The invitation, whatever the specific invitation for you is, as you encounter the material, listen to that and then also seek to understand the resistance. You know, there's always that part of us when we're introduced to something new that can still threatening that we back away.

Greg Miller

But hear that as an opportunity to explore what a what am I resisting about as I pursue my desires? And what am I resistant as I even consider what those desires might be?

Jay Stringer

Yeah, there are. I mean, I just think of the Indiana Jones scene where it's like he's about to start. He knows he needs to take the step onto the bridge, but there's no visible bridge. And yet that's I mean, that resistance of if I really go into this, I don't know what happens next. And I think that's a really good place to be in life, is there's a poet who says, like, thus, we live between two worlds.

Jay Stringer

One world is dead, and the other world feels powerless to be born. And I think that's a really good place to be in life, where I know I can't go back to this old way of engaging others about sabotaging my life, but I also don't know how to build the future that I know that I desire. And we live between two worlds.

Jay Stringer

And so there's always going to be resistance. But there's also that sense of risk of I know I can't go back and I don't know how to go forward, but that's that's how we build a sense of self. That's how we build a life that we're deeply grateful for. In in all of is through setting sail.

Greg Miller

Yeah. Well, great. Well, J. Thank you very much for being with us and sharing your time. We are excited. Your book comes out in March, and so I encourage our listeners to get a copy of it and hear that invitation. And again, thanks for all you do. Thanks for the work that you've done in the whole area of sexual health and recovery and transformation.

Greg Miller

So again, thanks for your time and for those of you who have joined us, we hope that this has been meaningful and we look forward to being with you at some point, and you listening to and participating in our podcast in the future.

Randy Evert

Thank you for joining us today on the Faithful and True podcast. We hope that you've enjoyed the conversation between Doctor Greg Miller and Jay Stringer, author of the book The Book desire. This is a great conversation that I'm sure you're going to find compelling and very interesting. We'd also like to invite you to visit our website, Faithful and True, where you'll find many resources in available information.

Randy Evert

We have information about our three day intensive workshops, as well as the online registration to sign up for those events. In the meantime, we hope that this coming week for you will be a week that's filled with many blessings and with great vision.