Speaker: Hey, so normally this podcast is perfectly fine for Littles and it still is, but I want you to know that we do use the word SEX in this podcast and talk about how it's okay for mom and dad to do that very thing. So if that's something that you don't want your littles to hear about, maybe wait until they're not in earshot. This is a great episode for you though parents, and I really encourage you to tune into what we talk about today. 

Dori Durbin: Hello and welcome to That's Good Parenting, the podcast that searches for simple steps to reduce your parenting stress. I'm your host, Dorie Durbin, children's book illustrator, book coach, and podcaster. Besides talking to amazing family experts, one of the things I love to do is to help

Dori Durbin: parents and family focused experts, kid size, big ideas into children's books that kids can actually understand and grow from. But today we're focused on you parents talking about something that many parents quietly struggle with. The murky middle, where couples tend to struggle [00:01:00] when kids take over date nights.

Dori Durbin: My guest today helps couples navigate exactly that season. Angela Griffith is a sex and intimacy coach who works with couples, especially parents, who are trying to rebuild connection and intimacy during the parenting years of raising their family. Angela, I am so excited to have you here. 

Angela Griffith: Thank you for having me.

Dori Durbin: I really, I had a hard time coming up with limited questions for you because I feel like there are so many so before we even get started, for the listeners who have never met you, can you tell us about yourself a little bit and more about the work that you do and who you typically help? 

Angela Griffith: Yeah, so I am, as you said, a sex and intimacy coach.

Angela Griffith: I'm also a homeschooling mom to, uh, some kids with some extra needs. I have been married somewhere between 22 and 24 years. 

Angela Griffith: So a typical day will have me working next to my kids at the kitchen table in the [00:02:00] morning, editing and responding to client emails and inquiries and doing

Angela Griffith: stay at home mom stuff in the afternoon, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, cooking dinner, because why do I have to feed all these people every day? Running up to the Karate Dojo in the evening, tucking myself into the corner and doing some more editing and emails while cheering on karate practice and coming home and doing bedtime and doing some more editing and emails, um, or doing, taking some client calls, you know, 10 or 11 at night.

Angela Griffith: And that's that's kind of a, a day in my life. And so parenting and maintaining a strong marriage connection. Is like this is my g, this is what I am living every single day, right? Is figuring out how to stay connected, especially because [00:03:00] my husband doesn't, uh, he has to travel for work.

Angela Griffith: So there's often periods where we're separated physically distanced because of his job, or I might be traveling for a conference for my job. So it's a lot and I, I get the struggle. And I started, if you had told me 10 years ago that I would be talking about sex on the internet, I would have laughed, maniacally.

Angela Griffith: That was never something that I thought I would do. But after I had my kids, I. Joined an international online women's ministry formed you know, my community. And in that community I realized that women in particular have been so damaged by purity culture. And purity culture isn't a phenomenon that just affected church people because it was in, in pop culture too.

Angela Griffith: Because if we think about our childhoods and, [00:04:00] you know, the nineties with Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears both had purity rings and the Jonas brothers had purity rings and talked about true love weights and all of those things. So it was in pop culture too, and this idea of women's sexuality being a commodity for men's consumption, and we don't get to own our own sexuality.

Angela Griffith: And, and I saw all the damage of all of these messages and I said, you know what? I want to be part of the solution, um, because I know that there is more. There is better. We can have an amazing sex life. And then I snowballed into a whole business where I do coaching, I do public speaking, I do podcasts, I do all the things, and I, I see the difference that.

Angela Griffith: My, my information makes in marriages. I just got an a email last night from saying your, this specific podcast episode. I have been trying to explain this to my husband for 10 years and he has not been able to understand, but this [00:05:00] episode, he finally gets it. . And that makes all of my 2:00 AM editing sessions and homeschooling at 9:00 AM the next morning.

Angela Griffith: Worth it. 

Dori Durbin: That's amazing to go into something that you really never considered and it makes such a huge difference. In my mind, when you get married, you kind of, you expect there to be relationships, you expect there to be intimacy.

Dori Durbin: And I think that, um, sometimes just the. Being a parent almost puts you in like a whole new level of having to do the right thing, having to keep up this image. I feel like, couples are, they go into this re romantic relationship, they get married, they have kids, and all of a sudden they're, um, they're becoming a team.

Dori Durbin: They're becoming coworkers, like handling the same responsibilities and trying to figure things out. So do you see that with your clients and what causes some of that for them? 

Angela Griffith: Yeah, so one of the pillars of my work is there's 13 different types of intimacy that we can experience in marriage.

Angela Griffith: Sex is only one of them. Sex is meant to be the [00:06:00] celebration of intimacy that we've established before we've ever gotten to the bedroom. But within that, there's a whole lot that goes into it. And so one of the intimacies that I talk about is parenting intimacy, and that is. When I talk about parenting intimacy in general the way that I usually describe it is every woman who has ever shoved of watermelon out of her knows that moment when you're, you know, postpartum and you're laying in your hospital bed absolutely wrecked, and you see your husband doing skin to skin with this squishy little ball and your ovaries stand up and scream, do it again, right?

Angela Griffith: Or alternatively, if you are the parent of a 10-year-old tween who is having a toddler level meltdown, and you watch your husband battle his own trauma from his childhood to calmly and gently. [00:07:00] Meet your kid where they're at and help calm the storm. You know the urge to drag your husband to the bedroom.

Angela Griffith: Like every, I feel like every wife has experienced those moments, and that's kind of like the joking way that I get people to like understand parenting intimacy. But it's so much more than that because all the intimacies interact and build on each other, right?

Angela Griffith: So parenting intimacy also involves conflict intimacy, because y'all are gonna fight about your parenting choices, right? It can brings conflict, but, um, parenting intimacy can also bring intellectual intimacy where it's learning something new together. So maybe you guys listen to a podcast like this one, or you listen to my podcast, the Go Have Good Sex podcast where I did an episode on Parenting Intimacy and you guys talk about it and you talk about the different strategies that you learned that you might want to employ.

Angela Griffith: What are your parenting goals, right? Like in our house we homeschool. So we occasionally have to check [00:08:00] in about our educational goals. And that brings up commitment intimacy, because commitment intimacy is about where you've been and where you're going setting your future goals, right? You start to see how all of that works together and hopefully becomes intimacy that you want to celebrate when you get to the bedroom.

Angela Griffith: But the other part of that is, like I mentioned, like why do I have to feed these people three times a day . Why? Why did no one tell me that the majority of the thing that I was going to be doing for the rest of my life was figuring out what to feed people

Angela Griffith: and that is tedious and it's exhausting. And especially if you're the ma. If you're a stay at home mom and you have multiple kids and they all ha are screaming and you know, not even like screaming, like angry, screaming, but like kids are just like, they scream because they're happy or because they.[00:09:00]

Angela Griffith: Are bored, like one of my kids has vocal tics and it's just noise all the time. My brain, by the end of the day, my brain is melting outta my ears. And so even like I can feel deeply intimately connected to my husband, but the kids have killed my brain by the end of the day. And even if I want to go hop into bed, my sensory system might be so overloaded.

Angela Griffith: I physically cannot do it, if my nervous system has been so dysregulated by the kids all day long, that's a barrier. And it doesn't mean either of you are doing anything wrong. It means that parenting is hard and like these years are hard. And it's okay to admit that.

Dori Durbin: You know, it's interesting when you were talking about the noise, the drama, the reaction, your nervous system. I remember days where I felt like it almost physically hurt my body. Yeah. Like, yeah. And like, the thing thing you wanna do [00:10:00] is be cuddled and touched. You're like, please just don't even touch me at that point.

Angela Griffith: Yeah, it does. And especially if you're living with a chronic illness, your body is physically hurting. You know, one of my specialties is talking about the intersection of disability, sexuality, and Christianity. And especially if you are living with a chronic illness and you're battling pain to get to the bedroom as well.

Angela Griffith: That's a, that adds a whole other level to things. 

Dori Durbin: Yeah. I'm assuming it would feel similar if you were somebody who had a baby fairly recently and your body just doesn't feel good yet.

Angela Griffith: Oh, that is one of my pet peeves is this whole six week do y'all not realize that is a completely arbitrary made up number? Just because your doctor cleared you physically to have sex does not mean that you should be going home that night and having sex that like it is such an arbitrary made up number if you are not [00:11:00] physically and emotionally and cognitively and your nervous system, all of those things, ready to have sex at six weeks.

Angela Griffith: Don't do it. It is okay to wait 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 a year, 12 months after birth to have sex because for some women it takes that long for her to recover, and that is okay. We need to normalize that being. Okay. 

Dori Durbin: So are women afraid that they'll lose the husband's interest

Angela Griffith: yeah, there's a huge message of obligation sex, the messages of, oh, your husband cheated. Well, how often were you having sex? Oh, your husband's looking at pornography, aren't you meeting his needs?

Angela Griffith: Make sure that you bounce back after you have your baby because you don't want him to have to look elsewhere. I see it all the time in my comment sections, men saying, if she won't have sex with me, [00:12:00] I'll just go get it somewhere else. So it, it creates this culture of obligation. And we also know that obligation kills desire.

Angela Griffith: So if a woman is feeling obligated to have sex that she doesn't want to be having, she's not going to want to have sex. But that obligation's going to push her into it. And we actually have scientific research. Dr. Kami Hurst, she has a podcast called Sex Therapy 1 0 1, and it's really geared for sex educators, sex therapists, professionals who work in this area.

Angela Griffith: So it's nerdy, sciencey. Just forewarned, if anybody's like, I wanna go listen to this. Like, it's not just two girls chatting it's kind of a little more academic is the word I'm looking for, but she had. She is the most recent season of her podcast has been fascinating for me as a professional because she has done scientific research and found that women who [00:13:00] consent to unwanted sex, in obligation sex, where she feels like I have to have sex with him or there will be some sort of consequence.

Angela Griffith: Not like he's going to hit me, but like, he'll cheat, he'll use pornography. Right? Like some kind of long term negative outcome. Dr. Cammy found women who consent to unwanted sex develop PTSD over long periods of time. . And we see that. And so in 10, 20 years you get into this marriage where she's been en engaging in obligation sex for that long.

Angela Griffith: She's developing PTSD symptoms. I have a creator friend who. 20 years was engaging in sex that she did not want to be having. And she wound up developing autoimmune issues. She was being screened for all kinds of autoimmune diseases. She tells this story where she was standing in the grocery [00:14:00] store one day and just broke down because she couldn't recall the word for ketchup because it was affecting her brain, her memory, her entire memory was just shot.

Angela Griffith: Um, and that was all a direct consequence of engaging in sex that she didn't wanna be having obligation sex. And so that's this other layer that we have when we are in the throes of parenthood. Whether you have a newborn or whether it's the mom with four kids who's just burnt out, at the end of the day, society's telling her, you have to do this because he needs it.

Angela Griffith: Bad things are gonna happen if you don't do it. And. It's a way of turning her sexuality in a commodity for his consumption and instead of honoring her innate sexuality and sex is as something that they celebrate together instead of something, some service that she performs for him. 

Dori Durbin: You and me almost speechless, Angela, because I think that there is, there's a lot of [00:15:00] pressure on, this is going to drive my spouse away because I'm not doing what I said I was going to do, or I'm not living up to my end of things. And having the kids is unfortunately, like a a perfect distraction because then it's, you know, the kids, the kids in that case.

Dori Durbin: So let me ask you this, okay? Somebody out there is listening and they're like I'm not doing anything with my spouse because I resent the fact that they're not around and I'm doing all this work, and they come home and that's what they want. Where do you take those people that feel that resentment and the frustration that they may be having, or maybe haven't even admitted to?

Angela Griffith: That's a valid response. If you feel like you are alone, that you're doing it all alone, why would you want to have sex? If sex is supposed to be the celebration of intimacy that you've established before you've ever reached the bedroom, if you don't have anything to celebrate, why is anyone surprised?[00:16:00]

Angela Griffith: And this is where I see a lot of people saying, well, she's just using sex to manipulate him. No, it's not manipulation. Okay? Healthy women in safe marriages don't turn down good sex for no reason. And a safe marriage is so much more than just, well, he doesn't hit her. A safe marriage is one where I feel supported.

Angela Griffith: I feel like I can be my whole authentic self and not judged or condemned for being too much or not enough. It's where I feel like I have a whole partnership and I'm not just left to do this stuff alone and that my husband wants me for more than what I provide and so what I do with couples and this, and the way that it usually shows up is the couples come to me and they say he [00:17:00] wants sex all the time.

Angela Griffith: I never want sex fix my libido. And it's not that your libido is broken, it's that the foundation of the marriage isn't. Solid. And so what we need to do is we need to take a step back. We need to look at the 13 different types of intimacy, and we need to figure out where you guys can spend some time building up the connection so that you have something to celebrate when you get to the bedroom.

Angela Griffith: Because it the intimacies aren't designed to be a token that you insert a load of dishes and you get sex out, right? They are an investment into the relationship. They aren't about, if I do this thing for you, then I get this thing for me. They're at one time you actually liked me as a person and wanted to spend time with me as a person.

Angela Griffith: Why did I like you as a person? Let's figure this out so we can actually enjoy each other again.

Dori Durbin: [00:18:00] That's pretty powerful. . Who was the person that I fell in love with? Why did I wanna take this step To even have a family to be where we're at now?

Dori Durbin: What was the initial feeling? . 

Angela Griffith: The first thing that I ask when couples come to me with a libido difference the first thing that I'm going to ask them is when was the last time that you had fun together? And they usually stare at me blankly for a moment, and then she'll say, well, we had a date night, maybe six months ago.

Angela Griffith: And I'll say, I'm not asking about a date night. 

Dori Durbin: Hmm. 

Angela Griffith: I don't care about date night. In fact, I posted a, a podcast a few weeks ago that is really controversial because I don't think date night is necessary to marriage date night is not going to sustain and maintain the intimacy in your marriage. I and, and honestly, like if you are living with a disability or if your kids have disabilities, like saying that you have to have date nights for a healthy marriage is ableist because not everyone can go on dates and that's a whole other rant for another [00:19:00] day.

Angela Griffith: The point is, the first thing I'll do is when was the last time you had fun together? We had a date night, six months ago. I'm not asking about date night. When was the last time you had fun together? And then they usually stare at me blankly and I sigh and I say, okay, we gotta figure out how to have fun together.

Angela Griffith: How did you have fun together before you got married? I worked with a couple and they were like we did a lot of, you know, uh, 10 mile hikes in the mountains and then you can't do that with a toddler and a baby.

Angela Griffith: It's not only practical, right? So some people are, are outdoor cats and they need help figuring out how to be an indoor cat for a season. I specialize in indoor cats activities. I am in no means an outdoor cat, 

Dori Durbin: so they're not gonna be the ones hiking, but you're finding something that they can enjoy, 

Angela Griffith: right?

Angela Griffith: We're going to talk about what they enjoyed before they got married so that we can figure out how that translate in translates into the life that they are currently living. , We were a single income family.

Angela Griffith: I [00:20:00] know what it is to have $0 to devote to anything. And if a client is choosing to invest money that they already don't have to come to me for coaching, I am going to honor that. And I'm not going to disrespect them further by saying, well just get a babysitter and go on a date night.

Angela Griffith: That's so I, oh, can you dull? It makes, I have such a pet peeve about date nights because in this economy, who can, who, if you don't have family to watch kids for free, who has the money for a babysitter and then to like leave the house and do pay more money to do more things out of the house. So I specialize in.

Angela Griffith: Helping couples identify things that fit the life that they're living. Mm-hmm. Right. There was a season where we couldn't leave our kids with anyone because their needs were so high and so unique. You know, we had food allergies, we had sensory problems. I [00:21:00] had a kid that was running full force at the wall just to feel something, because his sensory seeking was so much right.

Angela Griffith: And you can't leave a kid like that with just anyone. They'll hurt themselves or someone else, or property, god forbid, like they break someone's car or something. So there was a season where like my husband was over the road, I didn't see him, but once a month for two days. And I had sensory kids and food allergy kids and like, how do you stay connected in that?

Angela Griffith: And really, it really prepped me to be able to meet couples where they're at and say, okay, this is the life you're living. Here's ways that we're gonna stay connected with the capacity and the life that you have. Because if it's just one more thing on the to-do list it, it's not gonna happen. It has to fit into the life that they're living.[00:22:00]

Dori Durbin: Yeah. So it could be something even as simple as cooking together. Reading together. 

Angela Griffith: Yeah. Those are really reading 

Angela Griffith: Those are, yes. Cooking together is a really great example of work intimacy. Um, when I'm talking about the intimacy specifically, and I'm describing work intimacy, I'll say, don't make it weird.

Angela Griffith: Don't show up at their office. Work intimacy is working towards common goals. So examples of work intimacy are things like cooking together. I have had couples who really enjoyed cooking together and what I suggested was they get a cookbook and they set the kids up with a little kid charcuterie with a movie.

Angela Griffith: And then they choose, they do one recipe out of the cookbook in the kitchen together, and then in the cookbook write down, um. We didn't, we, you know, give it a star rating. We cooked it on this date, we didn't like this. Next time we'll try this. Right? Like, and then when you pull that cookbook back out, you've got these [00:23:00] little notes in there of like the time that you cooked it together.

Angela Griffith: And that couple really loved that because they loved cooking together. Something else that I suggest for almost all of my couples is get a deck of conversation cards from Amazon, usually less than 20 bucks. And what we do in our family is we do try and prioritize eating at the table, at dinner, at the table together as frequently as possible.

Angela Griffith: But you know, with kids in extracurriculars and a husband that travels and a wife that travels, it doesn't happen every night, right? But the nights that we do sit at the table and eat together, we break out that conversation card deck and that deck does so much heavy lift lifting in this house because one, I'm engaging in intellectual and emotional intimacy with my husband because as he and I are answering questions, we are like getting a glimpse into why his mind works that way.

Angela Griffith: He's [00:24:00] understanding my point of view. Right? So he and I are engaging with intellectual intimacy, even with 17 kids around the table. And because people have this idea that intimacy is something that happens when the kids aren't around. And that's not true. Intimacy is built on small, everyday moments together.

Angela Griffith: But then we're also like teaching the kids. How to be at a table and engage in grownup conversation around a meal together. We're teaching them the art of debate because I don't know what's broken in your brain that you think pineapple goes on pizza, but we're going to educate you on this.

Angela Griffith: We're teaching them to respect other people's opinions even when they're wrong. And our kids are learning these skills and their vocabulary is expanding because, you know, depending on the questions that are getting asked, we've been using a couple of decks that are geared specifically for kid questions, but we've had a deck sitting [00:25:00] here that's more like adult questions.

Angela Griffith: And I don't mean like raunchy adult questions. I mean, like, one of the questions was like, what's your favorite inexpensive wine? But then one of what the question that we had two nights ago was what current news are you following? What news stories are you following? So we wound up talking about the war in Iran with our kids, and they were getting educated about current events because of this thing that started out as intellectual intimacy with my husband.

Dori Durbin: That's so neat. I actually spend time helping experts translate ideas . To kids. So if you could plant one idea into a child's mind concerning healthy intimacy, healthy relationships, what would you want them to learn really early on ?

Dori Durbin: Consent. Consent. 

Angela Griffith: Consent. Consent. Sex education starts at birth and people get so angry when I say that and they say,

Angela Griffith: no, a 3-year-old needs to know about sex. And I'm like, why [00:26:00] are you weird that you think I'm telling a 3-year-old about sex? But consent and sex education start at birth. That means when I go to change my infant's diaper, I am going to use the correct anatomical terms.

Angela Griffith: I'm not going to call it a wee wee, I'm not gonna call it a cookie. I'm going to call it a vagina or a penis or actually a vulva. Vagina. Penis. I'm anus. I'm going to use the correct terminology from birth. When I am changing their diaper, I'm going to, and when they hit that stage where they turn into an octopus when you're trying to change their diaper.

Angela Griffith: I am going to narrate and I'm going to tell them, I understand that you don't want your body touched right now, but when you're this little mama's in charge of keeping you safe, and I have to keep you safe by changing your diaper, I can't let you sit in a dirty diaper because it's not [00:27:00] safe. You'll get a fire butt is what we, when my kids would get a diaper rash, that's the term that we used for diaper rash was a fire butt.

Angela Griffith: And acknowledging I have to keep you safe. And then when they get older, one of when we were navigating sensory stuff one of my kids really liked to be tickled, but we always told him, you know, like if you say stop, we're gonna stop. And we honored when he said, stop.

Angela Griffith: Like a lot of parents will like. Kind of just push past that when both of you are kind of riled and you guys are having a tickle fight, or you're play wrestling because play wrestling is such an important developmental thing for kids, right? You'll some parents don't hear that stop and they just keep pushing distinctly.

Angela Griffith: Remember being little and like my grownup pushing when I, like we were pray, play wrestling, or they were tickling and I would say Stop. And they like wanted to have that power over me. But as soon as [00:28:00] they say, stop, we stop and we, we talk about, you said, stop. I'm going to stop.

Angela Griffith: We will always, and we talk about you are the boss of your body. You, no one gets to. Do something to your body that you don't want. You know, we say like when we're leaving you know, if we're at like Easter dinner and we're leaving, we'll say, go ask if anyone wants hugs. We don't say Go give hugs, go give kisses.

Angela Griffith: We say, go ask if anyone wants hugs. We've had adults want to do like, come give me a hug and kiss. And if the kid doesn't want, we stand up and say, oh, they don't want it right now. But, you know, and we turn to the kid and say, would you like to give 'em a high five or do you wanna just wave? And we empower them to make those decisions from when the time that they are super little at the doctor's office.

Angela Griffith: If the doctor just starts to do something, I stop them and say, please let him know what you're doing. [00:29:00] Let you know. He give him the opportunity to understand what's happening and to consent to it. That is all part of teaching consent. 

Angela Griffith: I have a Amazon storefront and I have a section on my Amazon storefront that has books for kids, and there's so many good resources in that tab. Uh, I can't even remember all the titles right now.

Angela Griffith: But they have really great books and one of them. Specifically, I think it's called let's talk about body boundaries and consent. And it talks about these sorts of things. 

Dori Durbin: Well, that's awesome. And then as they get older, they have that already built into their system. So you, you're not sending a 13-year-old right off to some event and not able to say no or know where their 

Angela Griffith: body's 

Dori Durbin: boundaries are.

Angela Griffith: Yes. 

Dori Durbin: Yeah. 

Angela Griffith: Yeah. Like even this morning, I was waking up one of my kids and I was tickling [00:30:00] them and like going after to tickle their feet. And they were like, I said, no, that's off limits. And because they are allowed to have boundaries with us as their parents, and I think a lot of parents think that their kids shouldn't be allowed to have boundaries with their own parents.

Angela Griffith: But if they're not allowed to have boundaries with you, how do you expect them to have boundaries when they're 15 and on a date? 

Dori Durbin: Right. That's scary because if you don't think about it that way . The door's wide open for whatever. Mm-hmm.

Dori Durbin: Yeah. 

Angela Griffith: Right. 

Dori Durbin: Ugh, you've given, us a lot to think about consent is an amazing piece and the boundaries piece of that too is really important.

Angela Griffith: And it like, it even goes so much further because now link that back to what you and I talked about with obligation sex.

Dori Durbin: Yeah. 

Angela Griffith: And women thinking that they can't say no to sex, that they don't want with their husbands or something bad will happen. 

Dori Durbin: Yeah. 

Angela Griffith: Because how many of us were taught consent in the [00:31:00] eighties, nineties, ? 

Dori Durbin: I'm curious, what are some small ways whether it's physically or verbally, that parents can show their children, uh, what healthy love and partnership looks like? So, so not even just parent to kid, but parent to parent. What? It helps the kids understand what a healthy relationship looks like.

Angela Griffith: Don't be afraid to have rupture and repair in front of your kids. There's a lot of advice that's don't fight in front of your kids. Don't disagree. Yes. Don't have a knockdown drag out in front of your kids. They need stability. But if kid says directly to my husband, Hey, can I go play outside? And my husband's initial reaction is no, because he's the one who's just gonna knee jerk react to things I am not afraid to say, but why? Mm-hmm. And that's not [00:32:00] undermining his authority. It is demonstrating conversation.

Angela Griffith: It's demonstrating back and forth. It's demonstrating conflict in a small scale that is not threatening. And sometimes he'll change his mind and sometimes I'll say, oh yeah, you're right. I didn't think about that.

Angela Griffith: Mm-hmm. And it, it's showing our kid, like healthy communication, conflict, repair, all of those things. I think a lot of us were brought up in ways that was like, respect my authority. And there's this idea of like, you can't question the other parent in front of the kids. And that's not necessarily the healthiest thing in all 

Dori Durbin: situations.

Dori Durbin: I like the fact that you're not looking for a specific conflict. You're just asking for an explanation of what the reasoning is. 

Angela Griffith: And it's okay to like challenge ,

Angela Griffith: it's getting, it's like clarification. 

Dori Durbin: Yeah. 

Dori Durbin: It teaches the kid to be able to speak [00:33:00] up for what they're wanting and they're curious about. Yeah. 

Angela Griffith: Yes. Yeah. 

Dori Durbin: Very good. . Oh my goodness. Like I said just a few minutes ago, you've given us so much to think about. I think it's great.

Dori Durbin: One of the things I really wanna hit, and I know that we're running real close here on our time. I want listeners to be able to find you. So I know you mentioned your podcast. Where else can they find you, um, to get more help and find more information about what you do? Angela? 

Angela Griffith: I am the Christian sex expert across all platforms, and my website is the Christian sex expert.com.

Dori Durbin: Perfect. And they can, work with you through 

Angela Griffith: If you want private coaching, you can book coaching through my website. My website has a ton of digital downloads. There's digital downloads. There's a couple of courses that I have created available on my website.

Angela Griffith: I have a sex journal that I wrote and all of that is available on my website. 

Dori Durbin: Okay. One thing I always like to end the podcast with is an actionable step for our appearance. So what is one [00:34:00] simple step that parents could take today to begin strengthening the connection or reconnect in their marriage?

Angela Griffith: So the conversation cards was going to be my answer, but then we got into the conversation cards already. So I am going to say

Angela Griffith: a 32nd hug without expectation. 

Dori Durbin: Tell me more about that. 

Angela Griffith: We talk, if you're listening to parenting podcasts, you have probably heard a lot about co-regulating with your kids' emotions, right? How it's important for kids to, when they're overwhelmed by big emotions that you as a parent aren't managing those emotions that you are co-regulating and you, they are accessing your calm, your nervous system to regulate themselves, right?

Angela Griffith: But why don't we talk about doing that with our spouse? Nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about doing that with your spouse. And so. [00:35:00] Referencing a point you made earlier about, you know, like she feels like she's doing it all alone. He just wants her for sex. If the only time that you are touching your spouse is when you want something from them, when you want sex from them, it's no wonder that they're going to start bristling when you try and touch them, because your touch does not come without expectation.

Angela Griffith: And so practicing non-sexual touch that is free from expectation will help to regulate your nervous systems for both of you, and it will help to strengthen your connection because we know that touch between loved ones generates the dopamine, the oxytocin, serotonin, all the happy chemicals.

Angela Griffith: And so making a habitual practice of that will help generate that happy chemical soup in your brain on a more consistent basis, which will lead to long-term. More connectedness. 

Dori Durbin: I love that. And it reignites that connection, [00:36:00] that physical connection that, it's not forced.

Dori Durbin: There's, it's consented. Yeah. All of the things. It hits all the bubbles. Yes. That you've already talked about. 

Angela Griffith: Exactly. 

Dori Durbin: I think anybody can do it. That's even better.

Angela Griffith: Yes, exactly. Um, 

Dori Durbin: Angela Griffith, you have given us so much to think about, like I've said three times now, but so many good pieces of device and things that people can take next steps on.

Dori Durbin: I, I just appreciate your honesty and your willingness, your bravery to talk about these topics that people really shy away from. Thank you for being able to do that and willing to share all that with us. 

Angela Griffith: Thank you so much for having me. 

Dori Durbin: We are so lucky to have you. If anybody is listening right now and there was a actionable step that you could start today, I really encourage you to do that because reducing parenting stress doesn't start with changing our kids.

Dori Durbin: It can start with changing our relationships, especially with our spouse. So if there's one moment that you can end the day and say, well, hey, now that, that was good parenting. It's a [00:37:00] great day. Thank you again, Angela. 

Angela Griffith: Thank you.