Jul 10, 2026 · 39 min · 12 segments
Have you ever wondered why intimacy can feel so difficult, even when you've done everything "right"? In this episode, I explore how the messages many women received growing up can quietly shape their…
Not in the words that came out of her leaders' mouths, but in what she absorbed underneath them, that her body was powerful and dangerous, that her sexuality was a force that she had to manage to be a good Latter-day Saint woman, that her worth was tied to keeping herself covered and pure, that her future husband would want sex more than she did, and that her job in marriage would be to make herself available.
And she heard over and over that marriage would be the place where all of this would change, where her body would suddenly become beautiful and wanted and celebrated, where desire would finally be welcome.
That desire was a threat, that attraction was something to suppress, that noticing her own arousal was dangerous, that wanting sex made her less holy.
Her nervous system absorbed all of this and built protective patterns around it long before she ever met her husband.
And then she got married and was told essentially, "Flip the switch," and her nervous system could not flip the switch because the switch was not wired to wedding rings.
[laughs] It was wired to years of coded messages about who she was allowed to be.
There was desire in the anticipation before the wedding, the butterflies, the longing, the feeling of finally being on the verge of something that she had waited for.
And there was maybe some desire in the very early days of her marriage when everything was new and her body had not quite caught up yet with what was now permitted, but it was never sustained.
The newness wore off, and the conditioning reasserted itself, and within months of getting married, Rosalie was lying next to her husband, wondering what had gone wrong.
Not a marriage that had gone cold after years of growing apart, a marriage that never quite caught fire in the first place, despite both of them showing up faithful and committed and trying.
She wanted to want him, but her body had gone quiet, and she didn't know how to call it back.
Not in the words that came out of her leaders' mouths, but in what she absorbed underneath them, that her body was powerful and dangerous, that her sexuality was a force that she had to manage to be a good Latter-day Saint woman, that her worth was tied to keeping herself covered and pure, that her future husband would want sex more than she did, and that her job in marriage would be to make herself available.
And she heard over and over that marriage would be the place where all of this would change, where her body would suddenly become beautiful and wanted and celebrated, where desire would finally be welcome.
That desire was a threat, that attraction was something to suppress, that noticing her own arousal was dangerous, that wanting sex made her less holy.
Her nervous system absorbed all of this and built protective patterns around it long before she ever met her husband.
And then she got married and was told essentially, "Flip the switch," and her nervous system could not flip the switch because the switch was not wired to wedding rings.
[laughs] It was wired to years of coded messages about who she was allowed to be.
There was desire in the anticipation before the wedding, the butterflies, the longing, the feeling of finally being on the verge of something that she had waited for.
And there was maybe some desire in the very early days of her marriage when everything was new and her body had not quite caught up yet with what was now permitted, but it was never sustained.
The newness wore off, and the conditioning reasserted itself, and within months of getting married, Rosalie was lying next to her husband, wondering what had gone wrong.
Not a marriage that had gone cold after years of growing apart, a marriage that never quite caught fire in the first place, despite both of them showing up faithful and committed and trying.
She wanted to want him, but her body had gone quiet, and she didn't know how to call it back.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
