Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This podcast and community breaks the silence, shame, and fear that often surrounds sexuality, unwanted pornography use, and betrayal trauma and helps you embrace your God-given sexuality with courage compassion and connection. People just like you share their stories of recovery and forgiveness and experts teach principles, share insights, and provide real tools to help you rebuild trust and develop healthy sexuality. Ask your questions anonymously and expert therapist, Rachel Denton, will answer them and discuss practical tools to help and gain insight as to how ecclesiastical leaders can play an effective and powerful role in your healing. Join Crishelle Simons as she breaks the silence and together we can create a culture of courage, compassion, and connection.
This podcast is brought to you by Reach 10. Reach 10 is a non-profit with a mission to educate and help young adults overcome the effects of pornography and betrayal trauma and create healthy relationships with themselves and others.
Join the community at @breakingthesilence_reach10 or visit reach10.org.
We share these views to open the dialogue and educate on these tough issues and to create a healthier culture of sexuality. The opinions and views shared by the host or guests do not constitute as professional advice or services and do not necessarily reflect the views of Reach 10, and we don't guarantee the accuracy of any statements you hear. Reach 10 is not responsible for your use of information heard in this podcast. We keep learning, and invite you to join us as we build a more open, compassionate, and courageous culture.
Trust and Initmacy 101 with Tammy Hill
===
Crishelle: [00:00:00] You're listening to Breaking the Silence, a podcast by Reach10. Where we are breaking the shame, silence, and fear that often surrounds sexuality, unwanted pornography use, and betrayal trauma, and helping you embrace your God given sexuality with courage, compassion, and connection. I'm your host, Chrishell Simons.
Welcome back. I'm so glad you're here. Breaking the silence was created to be a place where you can come to find more courage, compassion, and connection. You deserve it. If you or someone you know is done trying to quit porn and change on their own, try Relay. My friend Chandler created the Relay app so that you can have the connection, support, and tools you need to change anytime you need them, right on your phone.
Use the link in the show notes to start your free trial today.
I am so thrilled and excited to be breaking the [00:01:00] silence with Tammy Hill and She's so great. If you are not familiar with her work today, you're gonna get a little taste of it and then I hope you just Dive right into all of the incredible things that she is doing in the world.
She has so much, so much good to offer. And today we are going to be breaking the silence on trust and what trust is and why trust is important and how trust affects you and your relationships. So Tammy, if you'll just take a second and introduce yourself to our listeners.
Tammy: That was a very kind introduction. So thank you. I my name is Tammy Hill. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist and a certified sex therapist. And I have a private practice that I have done for 12 years now. I have taught for the last 10 years at Brigham Young University courses on marriage and sexuality.
And I, this earlier this year was able to [00:02:00] publish my book called replenish. Creating Sexual Fulfillment in Marriage and that took me about seven years to write and so it is a work of my, I guess, my heart and my life. I think if you have this book, if you're having sexual difficulties and start at the beginning and work through it.
It's a lot what I'm doing in therapy. It's got interventions that I'm using. I love the book because it has spiritual, spiritual connection to sexuality along with social science research. It has processing as individuals and then processing as a couple, as well as experiential things that you can try to replenish and build your sexual relationship into something you really want.
Crishelle: I cannot recommend this book enough. I love it. I love it. My husband and I both love it. And Tammy is such a gift to this world. Thank you so much.
Tammy: Thank you. I'm so proud of it. [00:03:00] I, it's I published six months ago and on Amazon, it's been in the top 10 that entire six months in Mormonism. And it's just, I've gone through three printings now and my last printing, I added an index to it. So it's even into the second edition. So it's really,
Crishelle: amazing.
Tammy: so excited for it.
So.
Crishelle: Oh, I'm so thrilled. I'm so thrilled. I came to your book launch and I was just so excited and I've Yeah, i've been enjoying it ever since I Bless you bless you for working on it for that long and providing and that's what I love about your work is I feel like In your book, but also your work on instagram and and all the things you do such a good job at tying both the research in with spirituality and with, with really giving practical, practical, realistic tools for people to use.
And [00:04:00] so inspiring. I'm so excited to talk to you about trust because I think trust is something that we do need to tie in some of those. Researched and proven and clinical ideas, but especially the spiritual side of trust and, and that they need to meet.
And so, and maybe that's where we can start is what, what would you define trust as?
Tammy: Well, trust, first of all, is the foundation to any stable or or healthy relationship. If you were to think of building a home and the foundation needs to be really solid and not have cracks and problems in it. Because if it does and you go ahead and build a home on top of that, then the home is going to be really unstable.
And, and that's how a relationship is this foundation of trust that you, you are who you say you are and you do what you say you're going to do. And.[00:05:00] You're accountable for each other. You're reliable. I think it shows that you have character trust to me is the reliability and character that you, that you are who you say you are.
And so to me, it's fundamental in any relationship with yourself, with anyone else, especially in marriage though.
Crishelle: Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of want to talk for a second about the trust in ourselves because sometimes I think even we, we lose trust in ourself. How is that? Maybe how's trust in ourself maybe a little bit different than relational trust or is it the same?
Tammy: Well, what this research shows is that the more, when you make a decision, you accomplish what you say you're going to accomplish, the more likely it is for you to continue to accomplish what you want to accomplish. And so that is like building trust in a relationship. You're also building confidence in yourself that you really [00:06:00] will do what it is you want to do.
And so I think we need to have self compassion though. A lot of times I know for me, I always, you know, almost probably for, Good 30 years of my life. I think I'm just gonna have dessert on Sunday And there's some weeks that I make it and I'm so proud of myself And then there's some weeks that I don't and I think oh, well, I'm still human I'm still growing in but I think we do need to have self compassion and realize that we will make We will make mistakes and but that we can get back up and keep on going and trying and striving.
But I think it's good to build on our strengths. If there's something that you know that you're, you're good at. Like, I do know that I'm very good at sitting down and doing the work I need to do every day. Focus on that. I, instead of on the treats I eat, focus on the things I'm doing that are right.
And, [00:07:00] and build on those strengths. We can't expect perfection of ourselves.
Crishelle: Yeah. I'm so glad you brought this up and brought it because I think sometimes when we think about trust and building a relationship or like creating that foundation, sometimes we can take that to an extreme and be like, well, until I'm perfect.
Tammy: Right.
Crishelle: like, I, there's no way I can have a good relationship or a healthy relationship.
And that's, that's not true. Because. Yeah, amen to that. Amen to that. I think that was something I really believed for a long time. As a single person. It took me longer to get married than most of my friends. And I just kept being like, Well, there is obviously more that I need to keep working on.
Because I am still single. And I just kind of like, believed this idea that everyone who was getting married was, I had figured more out and that's why they were getting married. And I realized that that wasn't true, and that I didn't need to [00:08:00] be perfect in order to have a great relationship.
And, and so I'm glad you brought that part up of having self-compassion, giving yourself grace while still striving for that integrity and that consistency and. And that following through on what you're saying you're going to do.
Tammy: Right. I love studying the creation. If there's anything in the gospel that I probably have spent the most amount of time studying, it's in the creation.
And I don't know, a long time ago, cause I'm old. So long time ago, I remember, I don't know. that everything in the world was created spiritually before it was physically created. And I just out of the blue had this idea, you know, I could spiritually create myself every day and then go about my day trying to live what I had created in the morning.
And so I try to do that. And when I'm intentionally doing that and starting my day with [00:09:00] prayer and describing to my father in heaven, what what my day looks like and where there might be times in the day that could be more challenging for me to really show up with integrity and maybe process a little bit about how I want to be in those moments.
And then I find myself actually trying to live that day so much better than if I just say, Oh, I'm going to be better. And then. Go about my day and without as much intention to me, that's really helped me a lot.
Crishelle: I love that. I love spiritual creation. I also love that, that part of the creation story and how powerful it is to realize that when we spiritually create, we really set ourselves up for even greater success. And, and pulling God into that is so powerful. Oh, love, love, love that.
Tammy: helpful for me, especially in my relationships with some of the, some of our teenagers is sometimes those that can [00:10:00] be a little trickier and especially at the end of the day, when you're exhausted and you know, you're going to have an interaction, I, I've just found trying to create myself in the way I want to be.
And then in the moment, really lining myself up with that creation is really, really blessed me.
Crishelle: Love that idea. That's so good. So... With trust, how does trust affect our intimacy? Both, like all aspects of intimacy and our ability to, to connect with with our partner in a relationship with our spouse.
Tammy: Wow. That's a huge question because I think trust impacts every aspect of intimacy from emotional intimacy to spiritual intimacy to sexual intimacy. I, if you if you're explaining to your spouse, what. What's really vulnerable or hurting to you and you feel like they blow [00:11:00] you off and don't really give you the attention or the understanding that you're wanting or needing, you're less likely to open up the next time.
Right? Same with with spiritually. If you're sharing something really spiritually significant to you. you to your spouse and they're not there on their phone and not really listening or whatever. Again, you kind of close off and withdraw. And sexually it is so huge because you are sharing the most, you're naked, you're totally naked and being exposed and, and everything is there.
And you are sharing that with someone. And if it's not, If your pleasure and your needs are not being met and, and reverenced and, and attention is given to that pleasure, then it starts feeling a lot of times for women, it just starts feeling like this is just really for my husband. It's not for me.
And that is [00:12:00] not the way we've been designed. We have such capacity for pleasure and, and so there has to be a lot of real good communication skills in order for you to talk about things in a way that you can learn to understand John Gottman's work on attunement. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but I love.
Crishelle: I love his work on attunement. I, all of his work on communicating in marriage, I think is so helpful, but especially attunement. Yes. Go ahead.
Tammy: I agree. You know, as a therapist, my husband has a PhD in family life. So you'd think we could get this just off naturally, but there's times when it's like we just stop and say, okay, we need to give ourselves a few minutes and come back and really attune because I'm not either listening to understand I'm ready to defend my position.
Or he's doing that. And so we need to come back and really turn towards each other and listen with empathy to understand what it is your spouse is [00:13:00] thinking or feeling and, and instead of trying to give advice or solutions, you empathize with them and you might not agree with the way they're feeling, but.
That's not, that's okay. You don't have to agree with everything they're feeling, but you do need to understand, you need to listen to understand. And so for me, when you ask about sexuality and trust, , they're interwoven. You cannot expect to have a dynamic thriving sexual relationship.
If you don't have a dynamic thriving trust in your relationship, they just go together.
Crishelle: Oh, beautifully said. Beautifully said. And yes, I love his work on attunement. And in fact, this week, my husband and I were having a conversation and thankfully went better because instead of me reacting and getting so upset when I didn't feel like he was empathizing [00:14:00] enough, I was like, you know what? I need to pause and attune to you.
And then, and it is so powerful, it's so powerful when we can, when we can pause and really allow for the other person to be heard. And I think what you're saying with that, with trust, is so powerful and profound because it's really difficult to trust someone if you don't feel safe being seen by them. Mm
Tammy: Perfect. Beautifully, beautifully said. I agree. You can't trust someone if you don't feel seen and known and understood by them. And intimacy, I've read several times that people say it's in to me, see, and it's like people are seeing into you in those moments. And if you don't feel that you're being seen, it isn't, it isn't real intimacy.
Crishelle: Right. Right. And I think also one of, I think one of the most beautiful things about The [00:15:00] marriage relationship is being able to know that my husband knows me and knows my strengths. He also knows my weaknesses, which, you know, aren't, I don't like to show those. I don't like those things about me either, right?
But it's so amazing to know. And, as we've grown in our relationship and as he's seen me more and more and more fully, it's amazing when he chooses to love me and he knows all those things, right? And I think that that is such a beautiful thing about. Intimacy and trust is that he knows me better today than he knew me even yesterday, right? And, and as we, as we continue , to learn and grow and build that trust and intimacy, how much deeper and richer our relationship gets. And, and it's such a beautiful thing, you know? And I think that's why when people say like, I love you more today than I [00:16:00] did when we got married, and that's so crazy. Like I, that's so true because we know each other more
Tammy: Yeah.
Crishelle: Right.
Tammy: Right.
Crishelle: And, and that trust is such a, such an important part of that in order to be able to be seen
Tammy: Mm hmm.
Crishelle: to like have the space to, to see your spouse and to be seen by your spouse so fully.
Tammy: Yes, I agree. It, it, it really is fun. It's the foundation there. We come back to the foundation again.
Crishelle: Yeah, I love that analogy. So sometimes our foundations, like, for example, there's a tree We're in a rental home, and there's a tree that is too close to our house, and it has, like, there's evidence in our walls where it's caused cracks in the, maybe not cracks, but it is disrupting the foundation, which is unfortunate.
Tammy: Right.
Crishelle: And we love the tree, so it's like kind of a difficult thing. [00:17:00] To figure out what to do and you know, the owner's going to have to make that call ultimately. But that happens, unfortunately, often in marriages in all marriages. I think that there are things that can interrupt and cause problems in our foundations.
What happens?
Tammy: Well rebuilding trust is when we build trust I like to think of it. I'll go back to when I was a teenager, we listened to music on boom boxes and we'd lug these boom boxes around on our shoulders to go play tennis. And I just remember all the little levers. There was the bass and the treble, treble and all these levers.
And you'd try to adjust them just right so that you could have the best sound quality. And
Crishelle: good.
Tammy: So I like to think of it like a, like a trust is like this stereo kind of, you start out by getting to [00:18:00] know someone and once you really get to know them then you start to trust that they're doing, that they actually are who they say they're going to be.
And when you learn to trust them, then you start to rely on them a little bit. And that you can count on that they're going to be there when they say they're going to be there, or they're, you know, that they They go to work when they go to work. You know that that kind of thing that they are doing what they say they're doing.
And then once you're starting rely, you really do commit to this person. And, and that at that spot then is where you feel like you've got this relationship that in marriage, you know, you want to be here, you're committed to each other. You have all this knowledge and then those things like the tree or.
Different things come up and interrupt that foundation. And I think rebuilding trust is a lot the same. You kind of go back through these stages, but there's some other [00:19:00] factors involved too. And according to the research, there, there has to be evidence. That this person has earned your trust. You can't just say, I'm sorry, I'll never do it again.
You have to be able to see that this person actually isn't one of the Jeff and I were at my husband and I were just talking the other day about he does family finance and how financial infidelity is. It's just such a problem in marriage where couples are not being completely transparent with their money.
And so often there's betrayal going on financially within a marriage. And so if that has happened in your relationship, then you've got to have this evidence that your spouse is, is no longer, you know, being dishonest or, or. Spending things in the way that you guys have agreed together not to be spending money.
So there has to be the evidence, there has to be the emotional connection, [00:20:00] reconnection too. So these two things for rebuilding trust the evidence and, and there it's a little bit over. sometimes a long period of time with evidence. Renee Brown talks a little bit about marbles in a jar. And I don't know if you've read some of her books, but
Crishelle: I love hard work.
Tammy: I love her work too.
And she talks about the, you add every time you do what you say you're going to do and you're honest and and transparent and you're trustworthy and what it is you You are going to do within this relationship. It's like you're adding this marble to a jar and it's in the small and simple things day to day that that trust is rebuilt, that evidence is rebuilt.
And then with the emotional connection, when there's been a betrayal in a marriage relationship, not and you're rebuilding trust, not only is the evidence. But there's an emotional intimacy component that must [00:21:00] be there in order for that trust to be rebuilt. And that's the turning towards again and, and saying, you know, I screwed up again.
I was looking at porn again today or I really blew it. I overspent again or whatever the situation is. You have to be able to reconnect emotionally at a, at a level that feels secure. Apologies have to be felt.
Crishelle: Yeah.
Tammy: You can't just say you're sorry. And I won't do it again. And then maybe you have evidence that this person's really not doing that again.
But there's still this void of the emotional, the, that you feel like the person truly is sorry for what they did. There's these two really important components. And when I work with couples and there's been infidelity in the marriage and as I work with this fairly often but if those two parts [00:22:00] aren't both happening, I don't have a lot of hope that this marriage is going to last.
But when these two components do happen, These people, they're miraculously, they become so strong and their relationships are just revitalized. In a way that is so exciting to me to see
Crishelle: Tammy, I love that you shared that because I have seen that and, and I think sometimes we hear so often of just like people's marriages falling apart and, and that like, Oh, if there's, if there's porn, if there's infidelity, like it's the end.
Tammy: right.
Crishelle: And sometimes it is sometimes. It is. That is the story. But observing my parents repair their relationship over the years has been one of the more beautiful.
Experiences of my life because I've seen [00:23:00] exactly what you're talking about where where it has healed and it can heal. It's difficult. It has been a long and very painful journey. And there have been times where I'm like, you guys should probably throw in the flag. Let's just, you know, like, I don't know if this is worth it.
And thankfully. They didn't listen to me in those moments, but no, it has been such a beautiful thing to see them continually work on rebuilding that. And what I think is really beautiful is that I see them doing things that I also am doing in my relationship. Even though like that hasn't, it's not because we're rebuilding, but it's because it's a continual process of always building trust.
It can't be like, okay, we're good. I trust you forever. No, it's, it's. It's something continuous and it's such a beautiful.
Tammy: It is. It's it's so I know that the Redeemer is involved in all of that [00:24:00] redemption of those relationships. It's always very, very humbling to be a part of that process when you see people really working like that and have his help and his power with them. I also really love that you said repairs because for me, part of, if we're talking about evidence that we need evidence and we need the intimate, you know, vulnerable emotional connection that, that happens in repairs.
When you, when you've screwed up and you come and you say, I'm, you know, accountable for your behavior and you describe or ask for forgiveness and how can I do it better next time and that those repairs are really essential. And John Gottman, again, I love his work. And so I refer to him often, but there's, you know, he has more.
Data than any other social science researcher over a course of 50 years, so it's good to rely on his information,[00:25:00]
Crishelle: It's so true. I find myself often going back to his work as well.
Tammy: Fundamental he talks about repairs though and the process of making repairs daily just in lit, you know, Not maybe it's not a big infidelity or even a big thing, but maybe you were short tempered and maybe you were a little impatient when I get.
I'm not proud of this fact, but when I get a little frustrated with my husband, my natural, I don't know why it is. It's always been this way. My impulse is to flip him off. I just get, I get so yeah, I'm so ashamed. It's like, it's just, it's been my whole life. I don't know why that's something and I'm working and I've continued to work on it and I am much better than I used to be but and that hurts him so bad when I do that.
He just doesn't understand why he can't control that or choose not to control that. And so coming back and say, Golly, I really blew it again and I'm very [00:26:00] sorry. And try, I'll try to be a little better. I'm trying to be and, and I think those daily repairs. Are essential for trust.
Crishelle: And I love that you called it daily repairs. And, and thank you so much for sharing that little, that example from your own life. I didn't mean to make light of that. I think it's just, it's so interesting because, because we all have those little things. And I'm like, oh man, I totally do. I have my own version of the flip off.
I'm like, Oh, dang it. I did it again. Not proud, definitely not proud of it. But the daily repairs, I love that because president Nelson has been inviting us and president Nelson's the president of the church of Jesus Christ, the prophet of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. For those of you not in our faith tradition but he has invited everyone to Repent daily and what that's exactly what [00:27:00] these daily repairs are is just is coming back and reconnecting and making, making right the things that didn't go as smoothly or as great as you wanted them to.
And they're such beautiful opportunities. In fact, I had one earlier this week where, yeah, I was just. Really, I mean, bless my heart, I'm pretty sure I had a screaming nine month old and a very whiny two and a half year old at my feet, and I was trying to make dinner, and my husband just like walked in and just said something that I was like, You what? You don't like my chocolate bars? Okay, I don't make them for you, I make them for me! Like, I don't even remember exactly what it was, but I was just like, You're criticizing me right now and I'm really upset and I like reacted way bigger than I needed to And and it was just a really beautiful thing when I came back later and I was like, you know what?
It wasn't fair of me to get so mad at you.[00:28:00] I, I was super activated and really stretched thin in that moment and all of that being said does not excuse how I treated you.
Tammy: Right.
Crishelle: so sorry because that is never how I want to treat you. And it was so beautiful because I feel like it helped, it helped us to come back.
Whereas it's been like kind of edgy before that. And I love that because that's what I've also noticed as I've, as I've come to God with daily repentance, it I feel that same connection with God more and instead of me distancing myself and leaving the distance and just being like, well, whatever, it's fine.
And like going longer in between, I find myself coming back and repairing my relationship with God more often in, in smaller and simpler ways that are so meaningful and profound. And, and I feel like it's really improved even my trust in [00:29:00] God. And so I, this repair daily repentance. Whatever you want to call it, it is such a beautiful and worthwhile, worthwhile practice.
Tammy: totally, and I, I, that's what I was going with when I was introducing John Gottman for the second time and I kind of got off track, but the re his research shows that when we make, when we're parents and we're modeling marriage for our children, which unfortunately our children learn about marriage by observing us and that's going to be what they learned the most about marriages right here at home.
And though, according to his research. It is more impactful positively for our Children. When we mess up when we don't do it right or perfect the first time, but we come back and make repairs and they observe us making the repairs that is teaching [00:30:00] them profoundly how They can come back and talk about things and they don't have to ignore it the rest of their lives or sweep it under the rug.
But they can come back and talk about things and they can still be friends and, and mom and dad, husband and wife and, and move forward. And so I love the idea of repairs, not only for the daily repentance and for the reconnection, but also for the modeling that it is for our children.
Crishelle: Oh, and hallelujah, because
Tammy: Yeah.
Crishelle: I'm so grateful for that research, because otherwise I'd be like, Oh, God bless you guys. What? You know, like, I hope we all make it. No, but this is so, so true. And I feel like sometimes the disconnect for our kids... Can come if we don't model the repair part for them and we just have the conflict.
So, that is something that I've really tried to be intentional is if, you know, we do have a conflict and the children happen to witness [00:31:00] that. I should say when, because it's not if. But that we also are intentional about repairing in. With, with, like, they see the repair and not just that, like, it got swept under the rug or somehow they're fine and, like, mom or dad took one for the team and everything's fine.
Like, I think it's helpful to intentionally make sure that you're, you're modeling that repairing part.
Tammy: I agree.
Crishelle: with your children as well. Oh man, this is, I love this conversation so, so much because because I think that trust is so integral to our relationships with ourselves and with other people and with God.
And that, that trust is so, so important in those. I, this is a question that I Is coming more from me and from my experience how do I reconcile this? I I really struggled when I was really hurting. [00:32:00] And in my early 20s trusting God when I had been so hurt by other people and by the sexuality that he'd given me.
And I was like, how do I trust you when this has burned me so bad and you didn't help me? And it felt like he didn't help me. How do you rebuild that? Like, how do you, how would you say you rebuild the trust that you have with yourself and with God when you've been hurt?
Tammy: I guess if we're talking about sexual abuse situations you know, that is a big question for, for individuals who've been victims and feel like that this wasn't fair. And now their sexual, sexual experiences as they grow up are all tainted by this trauma that they had in their past. And you can easily blame God for that if you want to.
In my work that has, and there's been some of my work that has been with [00:33:00] clients who, who dissociate from serious, horrible, abusive situations. And I've sat with a partner of mine that's a psychiatrist. This isn't so much recently, more early in my career who is working with people who dissociated.
And I can. I can remember one particular experience of a woman that she had been sold out by her father as a young girl and for years and she had at the time when I was working with a psychiatrist more than 40 different distinct personalities that he had identified and, and she would just go back and forth between these people in session all the time.
And I can remember, I think asking a similar question to the psychiatrist after this particular session that was so painful for my heart to witness and it was heartbreaking. What he [00:34:00] said to me has stuck with me is that the reason she has more Personalities coming forward is because God has made it so that in the moment when you are having trauma traumatic experiences, your core self is not showing up it.
Your core self is being protected and that and to me that, If we can get to the core self of individuals who've been horribly victimized and abused. And when you get to the core self and you start connecting and staying to the, with the true self, these other personalities start to integrate. And, and then like this woman, I don't see her too much now, we really connected and so for years I would meet with her and, but she's a healthy, strong woman now, and she's had a lot of good [00:35:00] care, but when I sit back and I think how unfair was that, where was God in all of that, in actuality, He was there.
Because her, her very self was never fully present in the midst of the, of the chaos and the trauma and not being protected by someone who should have been protecting her. So that gives me peace. If, if there has been you know, serious trauma or not even serious trauma. If there's been traumatic experiences associated with sexuality, I urge anyone listening, please reach out and get some help because you can integrate and you can become, your brain can heal and you can become fully present the person that you were created to become.
I know it's possible. I've seen it too many times to ever deny it. As far as attitudes around sexuality. I think sometimes when things happen sexually and it's [00:36:00] not going the way you expected, and this is more what I deal with in therapy now is that women often are not really having a lot, a lot of the clients I work with, the women aren't experiencing a lot of sexual fulfillment and they're resentful that it takes them so long to be able to figure this out when for their husbands, it was just a.
No trouble at all. And, and so there gets to be some of this bitterness associated with that. And for me in those situations, I just have to come back and try to come back to the principles and the principle to me, and I wrote this down so that I wouldn't say it wrong, but sexuality is a blessing for all of us and it is designed to give us joy and it is designed for us to be able to express love in our lives.
And if we can come back to that true principle and hold on to the hopefulness found in that and do the work that we need to do to be able to [00:37:00] experience that I don't think we need to push or doubt our trust in God when he's given us this capacity. What we need to do is Instead of questioning our trust in him is to understand the principles and do the work to claim the blessings from those principles.
Crishelle: Tammy, I love that so much because I, I mean, I feel like I wish that, you know, you could have said that to 24 year old me or however old I was, but I was just like so frustrated because and it was, it was primarily other people's pornography use that just been so hurt, like so hurtful and like, why are, why are you this way?
Why are you keep hurting? Your relationships and me and anyway, but I, I love this because I feel like that's, that's what I ultimately found is that in my anger [00:38:00] towards God and my like wanting to like be so mad at him for creating us as sexual beings, I had to just actually refrain. What sexuality, sexuality actually is and that I had like bought into the lie That the world and Satan wants us to believe about sexuality And I needed to reframe that back to what you just said in fact I want you to say it again because it was so powerful and profound So I'm gonna have you say that one more time
Tammy: Well,
Crishelle: good
Tammy: a sexuality is a blessing for all of us. And it's given to us by God. We are designed, it is designed to give us joy and to both give and receive love in our lives. And it is an absolutely essential part of a happy marriage. And if you, if you can come to really accept that, that that's truth, we have to accept truth. And then once we accept the truth, we can do the work we need to do [00:39:00] to claim the blessing of that principle. All
Crishelle: So so true and so good because I'm sure that there are things in that where you're like You may be like, I don't feel that or that's not my experience. The more you can come back to and align your experience with that truth, it's going to require a lot of work. It's going to require change. It's going to require repentance, it's going to require repairing,
Tammy: of these things. Right.
Crishelle: of those things.
But the more you do that, the more freedom and the more trust, the more love and, and the more, the blessings are totally there for you. Oh, Amen to that. This is so so good. I was having, I was, how do I say this? My bishop said something on Sunday that I thought was very profound and this comment might come out of left field and I'm not going to give the full context for it but he said that our sexuality was given to us by God [00:40:00] so that we could be one.
physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually, in every way you can imagine. That's what it's designed for. And I thought that that was so beautiful and profound that he said it that way, because I was like, Oh my gosh, you're right. In order to have sexual, like it requires us to be one. And And if I am so frustrated and angry because I have an orgasm as much as my husband has, or as quickly as he has, and that's what I'm focused on, then my, it, then we, then either one of us will always be frustrated.
But if, if we can let, if we can allow sexuality to, , truly make us one, then the frustration and the resentment melt away. And, , all of the orgasms and the fulfillment and the pleasure comes so much more naturally.
Tammy: you.
Crishelle: And so I just, I [00:41:00] love how you said that. It is so beautiful and profound and, and you're so spot on.
Tammy, this has been, I'm so grateful for this conversation.
Tammy: Well, me too. This is what I love to think about and study. And I, I, we are different men and women are different. We this could be a whole nother podcast because it's something I've researched forever, but when you really think about how little throughout the history of time that we've known about female sexuality and female pleasure in sexuality, most of us, my age, absolutely.
Your age. Most likely you know, when you were learning about sex or first becoming sexually active, we based ourselves on what we understood, but all of that understanding was only researched on men. And so [00:42:00] everything that we've thought was normal for men and women through all this time has never been meant.
To be for women. And so women feel that they're the weaker sexual partner. They feel that they are broken some way slower some way, and it can cause those feelings of resentment. When we really come to understand that we are different and there's intentionality in those differences. And that those differences are, you know, we're created by God.
They're intentional for a reason. And one of those reasons, right, has to be that we have to really trust,
Crishelle: yeah.
Tammy: have to trust that we can figure this out together. We have to be able to trust in order for all of these pieces, like you were saying, to kind of come together and for us to truly complete each other, which is what in marriage we're designed to do ultimately.[00:43:00]
Crishelle: Perfectly and beautifully said. Tammy, this has been such a good conversation. I, I feel like I have had incredible insights. I'm like, wow, I can't wait to continue to apply that one to my life. I'm just so, so grateful. Where can people find you?
Tammy: Well, I retired from teaching at BYU a couple months ago, so not there. Thank you. I have a website, TammyHill. com. I do three or four virtual making love retreats, which are really fun and private and inexpensive. I used to do a lot of live retreats before COVID. And then during COVID, I started doing virtual ones, which are like.
A tenth of the cost of the live ones. They're just, and I, I just love them more and more. So on my website, you can find about, about my events and I have a blog on there as well. I'm on Instagram [00:44:00] and I have my own podcast called the live your wide podcast, and we're going into season four of that.
Crishelle: Way to go. That's so great. Season four, that's a big win. Oh man, I will, I will link all of those things in the show notes so that our listeners can find you. And oh, like I said, listeners in the very beginning, if this is your first experience with Tammy Hill, I hope you jump in with both feet because you are such a blessing.
And I am so grateful for all of the work that you are doing.
Tammy: So kind. Thank you.
Crishelle: Thank you for listening to Breaking the Silence by Reach 10. Break the silence and help us create a culture of courage and compassion by sharing what you learned today with someone you love. Help us reach more people by rating and reviewing us on iTunes or liking and leaving a comment on to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes.
Reach 10 is a non profit. You can [00:45:00] help support this podcast by donating on our website and following us on social media. We share these views to open the dialogue and educate on these tough issues and to create a healthier culture of sexuality. The opinions and views shared by the host or guests Do not constitute as professional advice or services, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Reach 10.
We do not guarantee the accuracy of any statements you hear. Reach 10 is not responsible for your use of information heard in this podcast. We keep learning and invite you to join us as we build a more open, compassionate, and courageous culture. Keep breaking the silence.