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*DISCLAIMER* This episode includes adult content and is not intended for young ears. 186. Sex Series: Enhancing Female Pleasure and Enjoyment of Sex: An Interview with Dr. Jennifer Degler **Transcription Below** Song of Songs 1:1 (NIV) "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for your love is more delightful than wine." Questions We Discuss: Can you tell us more about the three essential aspects to a woman flourishing sexually in marriage? How is a woman's sexual response related to each day of her cycle? What are some important things to know about female orgasm? Dr. Jennifer Degler is a Psychologist, life coach, author, and speaker. She is known for her frank, funny, energetic seminars which weave together practical information and Scripture with real life examples from her clinical practice and her own marriage and family. She loves audience involvement and keeping a group on their toes, meaning no one gets sleepy during her talks, and everyone goes home with apply-it-now tools for successful living, satisfying relationships, and improved emotional health. Audiences say she could’ve been a standup comedian, but Dr. Jennifer prefers helping people through her central Kentucky counseling practice and writing books like No More Christian Nice Girl and the Deck of Dares: 40 Dares to Make Your Marriage Sizzle. Her fabulous adult children, Josie and Jake, delight in telling their friends that their mom runs a sex shop when, in reality, she founded CWIVES.com, a ministry to help Christian wives make their sex lives sizzle. When she’s not podcasting and blogging about emotional wellness, relationships, sex, and spiritual growth on the JenniferDegler.com website, you can find her teaching a women’s Sunday School class, kayaking, and enjoying her empty nest with her high school sweetheart husband, Jeff. Fan the Flame Dare of the Month Thank You to Our Sponsor: Justin Maust, EOS Implementer and Speaker Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“ Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“ Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” **Transcription** [00:00:00] <Music> Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host, Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here. [00:00:23] <Music> Laura Dugger: Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes, and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message. I'm excited to introduce you to an old friend and today's sponsor, Justin Maust. He's an Expert EOS, Implementer, a certified speaker for the John Maxwell team and a passionate coach committed to glorifying God by helping business owners get everything they want from their business. We're continuing our sex series with an incredible interview with Dr. Jennifer Degler. Dr. Degler is a psychologist, life coach, author and speaker. You are going to laugh and you're going to learn so much as she shares about practical ways females can flourish in their marriage and in their sex life. Here's our chat. Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Jennifer. Dr. Jennifer Degler: Thank you, Laura. Thank you for having me on. Laura Dugger: [00:01:23] Well, will you just start us off by sharing a bit about yourself and how you ended up in this line of work? Dr. Jennifer Degler: Well, Laura, I don't think anybody on sixth grade career day says I want to be a speaker when I grow up. It's one of those things that if you end up in this field, it's usually because of this is just something God called you into, and you've also done your own healing journey and found out that there are a lot of people who are really hungry for solid, practical, biblically-based sexual information. So I am a clinical psychologist. I am not a sex therapist. A lot of people think I am, but I'm not. I am a clinical psychologist. When I was a young mom, I was asked to speak on sex to a MOPS group, a Mothers of Preschoolers group. And I said, "I don't speak on sex." And they were like, "No, you're a psychologist, you should be able to speak on this." So I decided I'm going to come up with answers to my questions that I had as a young mother. Like, where did my sex drive go? Why am I so tired all the time? How can I make my sex life better while I still have little ones running around the house? Out of that first presentation, that was probably 24 years ago, I've just developed a speaking and writing ministry helping Christian wives make their sex life sizzle. [00:02:54] Laura Dugger: That's amazing. I'm so grateful for the work that you do. For generations, we've learned more about males' normative experience of sex. But you, Jennifer, do such a great job providing knowledge about the woman's experience as well. So can you tell us more about the three essential aspects to a woman flourishing sexually in marriage? Dr. Jennifer Degler: Sure, Laura. So this is a model that I developed. I call it the sexual fire triangle. And if you are ever a Girl Scout, you may remember the fire triangle. You need three things to make a fire. You need heat, you need fuel, and you need oxygen. And when you combine those three things, then you get combustion and you get a fire. And I believe as wives, we have three aspects to our sexuality in marriage that we have to keep tending to those three areas in order to keep our sexual fire going. So the first part would correspond to fuel, and that's a healthy, sexually responsive body. A lot of the work that I do, Laura, is around educating women about their bodies because we tend to talk about our genitals because they like, "Oh, it's down there, I got something going on down there or I don't have anything going on down there, you know, kind of like we're talking about Australia. So I want to help women understand how does their body works in the bedroom and what can we do to help create that, just to make sex feel good and help your body, you appreciate your body and help it work well. Then the second aspect, which would correspond to the heat in the sexual fire triangle, is an emotional connection between a husband and wife. So helping couples understand how can they improve and deepen that emotional connection. And then finally would be the oxygen aspect of the sexual fire triangle, which is having healthy, biblical positive attitudes towards sex. So what do you think about sex? Because the brain is the most powerful sex organ that you have. Your genitals are important, but that brain is really important too. So what you're thinking about sex controls, many times for women, whether they'll even let their body respond or whether they'll allow themselves to feel an emotional connection to their husband. So we want women to pay attention to those three areas. And if things have been flagging in the bedroom and kind of losing their sizzle, it really helps to just stop and evaluate those three areas. How are things going with my body, how's my emotional connection, and how's my attitude towards sex? Laura Dugger: [00:05:48] That's so helpful. Even the analogy of calling it the sexual fire triangle because there's three elements essential for fire. And I agree with you, these are three different parts, that if you take out any one of those components, it will have an impact on a couple's sex life. So what we've covered in the past have been the second to them, you mentioned. But I really want to go back to the first one, the healthy sexual responsive body. Can you elaborate and just tell us more about God's amazing physical design of female genitalia and how it changes day by day? Dr. Jennifer Degler: I would love to, Laura. And this is where if people are listening and your kids are in the car, if you haven't already made them put on their headphones so they can hear this because we're going to talk about the genitalia and use the correct terminology for that. For so many women and men, they really know very little about the female genitalia. Many times women will just refer to their genitalia as their vagina when that's just part of their genitalia. So we want to help women recognize, first of all, about their clitoris, that they have this amazing organ on their body that is created solely for pleasure. A man's penis is a multipurpose tool. It's not created just for pleasure. It's created for procreation and urination and for pleasure and for writing your name in the snow. There's a lot of purposes of a penis. But a clitoris is only there for pleasure. So we want to help women understand that something they need to find if they haven't already. And you can certainly look at anatomical drawings and see where that is at the top of that clitoral, the lips of the labia. And to understand that all of the nerve endings that are in your husband's penis are in your clitoris and that that network of arteries, the network of all the blood and the tissue and nerve endings, that all of that continues up into a woman's body. [00:08:07] So while the clitoris itself is very small, it's only the size of about a pea that a whole lot of things are happening inside your body where you can't see it that are helping you get sexually excited and helping your body be more responsive. So helping women educate themselves about their clitoris and then understanding that most orgasms that women are having their clitoral. Even if they're having an orgasm as a result of intercourse, so that would be a penis and a vagina, that it's because of clitoral stimulation. And that it's difficult for women a lot of times to have an orgasm just from intercourse. That's why we create a baby. But in terms of creating pleasure, we need to make sure that they are looking at the clitoris as well. This is where sexual pain can be an issue many times for women that this is not being addressed and they're having intercourse and it's hurting. Maybe not even intercourse, maybe just some kind of manual stimulation. And that is painful to them. And instead of saying, hey, that hurts, I need to go get that checked out, a lot of women will just grin and bear it and that will shut down your body. After a while, your body will begin to armor up. So it's so important that if part of the reason why your sexual fire is going out is because sex hurts, then we need to stop doing what hurts and go and figure out what is causing me this pain. Or if you're thinking, gosh, my genitals just doesn't hurt down there, but I just don't ever seem to get a lot of pleasure, it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel bad, but it doesn't feel good, then that's where it's helpful for couples to read a book together, maybe to go and talk to a therapist to figure out, okay, if it doesn't hurt, but it doesn't feel good, what can we do to help maximize the woman's pleasure? Laura Dugger: [00:10:17] That is all so helpful and so clear. And then also just looking at female's hormones and how they change throughout the day and they change throughout our cycle, what are some helpful tips that we may not be aware of that are actually affecting us sexually? Dr. Jennifer Degler: So if you take a typical 28-day cycle, and this would be for a woman who still has a period, then day one of your cycle is the first day that you begin bleeding. And then right in the middle of that, usually around day 14 is when you ovulate. And the way you're going to respond sexually can really, really vary from day to day. So if you start at the beginning, on that day one estrogen is beginning to rise and that's the happy hormone. So typically, women are beginning to feel better emotionally. Now, usually if you're actually on your first couple of days of your period and you're having a lot of cramps and whatnot, you're not necessarily feeling better. But as you're getting into days three, four, five, and so on, as estrogen is rising, then you're beginning to feel better. Serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter, it follows estrogen. So when estrogen is up, serotonin is up. And when the estrogen goes down, serotonin goes down. Well, serotonin helps with our mood, helps our mood feel more positive, more stable. It helps us sleep better. As well, CRF, which has to do with regulating our blood sugar, that follows estrogen as well. So we typically are feeling that we're not having cravings in those first two weeks of our cycle. So usually for a lot of women, this is a great time to have sex because they're happier and they like the people in their house better and their body is more responsive. And around about maybe day 12 going into day 12, day 1…
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