Nat's Podcast

I had an unexpected guest on Threads this week, a relationship coach! I didn’t immediately recognize him as a coach, but could tell he was very familiar with abusive tactics. I posted, “Being single means I never have to have sex if I don’t want to.” A lot of people responded and it was nice to see mostly healthy people calling out the issue with that phrase. But there were a handful of men activated by it and responding defensively. David was one of them.

He starts with the popular “you chose him” deflection. It’s meant to draw the conversation away from what’s actually happening. As quickly as possible, men will shield themselves from the implications of rape. In that one phrase he’s attempting to reverse it onto me as my choice of partner. As long as he stays focused on me, he never has to acknowledge the man in this scenario, and by proxy, himself.

“Who you allowed to pressure you” is something he wants to bring attention to. He wants to be sure any pressure his own wife feels is actually her “allowing” him to pressure her. Men like this deflect by placing blame on those who allow the behavior. Distracting from the behavior itself, they can direct your attention elsewhere. It’s a brilliant move. He is never responsible for anything because there is always someone who “let” him or “made” him do it.

“He had his wounds. You have yours.”

Here he begins to diagnose with a crafty balance, putting me and the abusive husband on the same plane. We are the same, equal. If my husband is abusive, then I am too. It’s important to him that we not be separated. That divide will begin to unravel the curtain he’s trying to hold between him and the truth of the situation.

“A healing feminine woman…”

Now he describes something he thinks I want and have not yet. I get the sense he’s done this a lot. The words come out effortlessly and I can feel the ease. He’s not frantic like other men are; his words are calculated, habitual. He’s on autopilot, not noticing this is not something that applies to me. He’s treating me like the women in his comments who push back against his content.

He describes “her healing masculine man” again, as an ideal, something he thinks I long for. Maybe he’s been watching witchtok. I can tell he hasn’t seen me before because he would know this isn’t something I desire. Although I would always love to see men heal, I have no desire to heal them myself, nor own one. He is not “her healing masculine man”, he is his own healing masculine man. His attractiveness is in owning himself—and his desire for me to own myself. I am mine and he is his. This is where my heart is, and why it’s so elusive to David. I’m a moving target for him.

“Stop concerning yourself with…”

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, says the relationship coach. Sweep the abuse under a rug and look at yourself. He might not know this, but looking inward is the most dangerous thing for a victim of abuse to do before she’s healed. Going inward is something she’s always doing, and it’s what’s keeping her bound to abuse. Everything is always her fault, her responsibility to fix. A victim of psychological abuse often lives in a dissociative state. She’s going through the motions to survive one day to the next. Maybe he’s does know this. Maybe.

For good measure, he repeats the idea that I am at fault for choosing him, just in case I missed it the first time. This point is important to him.

“No one holds another individual accountable…”

Now he’s on a bit of a tangent, like a script he has for conversations like this. He has likely said this to several other women, maybe a few before me today. But I have said nothing of wanting retribution, apology, or compensation. He’s arguing with a ghost—imaginary women he’s fighting with online because he can’t have this fight with his wife. He has honed his words, he’s perfecting his script. He’s feigning concern for my healing journey, thinks I’m holding onto the past. He’s projecting a bit too, because he’s not the type to use trauma to help others. He’s the type to sweep it under a rug and think only of himself.

I don’t spend time defending my position but I will clarify things for women reading the comments. This response to him is mostly for them.

“Policing others actions to warn others…”

The hunter sees me as a fellow hunter. But I am a gatherer. I’m not out to hurt men, I’m gathering women to mobilize them on their own behalf. This threatens a hunter because it’s easier to prey on lone women. It’s more difficult to trap woman with community. Women make better targets when we’re not all on the same page.

The hunter wants me to stop talking to other women about all this and stay separate. He wants me to focus on my healing so I can move forward (and away from the content that activated him today). He repeats the imaginary goal of attracting a “healthy masculine man”—it’s what he thinks women want.

“The wounds you’re carrying…”

Years ago when I started TikTok, I had men in my comments try this with me. It’s manipulation dressed up as care. Even as foggy headed as I was back then, I felt the slime of it. Intuitively I understood what they were doing and I rebuked it. I didn’t know why it felt wrong in the moment, but it was and I knew it.

What I’ve learned about men since has helped me see it more clearly. When a man is being genuine with me, he’s not pushing advice onto me because he knows I’ve got it. He’s not trying to change my mind about anything, he’s inquiring about my mind. He doesn’t tell me what I should do, he asks me what I’d like to do. A man who values a woman is not trying to lead her, he’s supporting her in leading herself. ‘

A manipulative man feigns concern to shift the conversation away from his discomfort. You can learn a lot about a man from what he doesn’t want to talk about.

“I’m healed. I’m good.”

I decided to call attention to the gaslighting to see what he’d do with it. I intentionally tell him I’m healed because I know he’ll push back on that. It’s important to his narrative that I be wounded, so I offer him a worm. It’s true we’re always healing—my brand is Always Mending. But it’s also true that we plateau healing a lot of things along the way. We will still have little triggers come up and heal those, but the big stuff eventually gets taken care of. That’s what I call healed. It’s only for you to know, and for no one else to tell you when you have healed.

“No one is healed.”

He takes a bite. Introducing childhood trauma, he wants to direct me even farther away from marriage. This is not a surprise. The idea of “past trauma” is juicy to abusive men. They love the idea that something else happened to you before. It absolves them of any responsibility for current trauma. Since nearly every woman has been traumatized by a man, every man has the tool of “past trauma” available to him. On some level he understands he is the one traumatizing someone. But if he can point to some bogeyman from your past, he never has to look at himself.

“Gaslighting is…”

Mansplaining is expected. But he is gaslighting here. If I’m being charitable, I can say he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. Maybe he really does perceive a wound in me. Still, it’s not wounding behind my social media post. I believe he is in fact trying to make me believe an untruth about myself. It’s very important to him that I believe I’m acting from a wounded place because it discredits anything I say. Only healed people are valid. But no one is healed. He contradicts himself.

So let’s go back to the original conversation and put his comment into context.

“Being single means I never have to have sex if I don’t want to.”

This is the message he objected so heavily to and what he felt so compelled to push back onto me. Why? The obvious implication in this post is that if I am not single, I am not free to refrain from sex when I don’t want to. This is how relationships are. Relationships sometimes involve unwanted sex. Rape is par for the course.

Women generally understand the…

Maybe it’s menopause, maybe it’s Maybelline. Maybe she’s seeing someone else. Maybe she just hates sex, she’s asexual. Maybe she’s a lesbian. Maybe she just can’t take accountability.

Men have peppered my comments over the years with all kinds of “excuses” for what’s wrong with their wife to avoid looking at themselves. I offer other suggestions, like, maybe you’re not good at sex and she doesn’t enjoy it. Maybe you’re angry with her when she’s not in the mood. Maybe you need to shower and brush your teeth more often. Maybe you’re leaving all the housework to her and she’s just too tired for sex after doing all that alone.

They don’t want to hear it. It’s always something in her that’s off. And this is where they’ve gone wrong. Not listening to a sexual partner is the fastest way to turn them off.

Attention is sexy

I’ve enjoyed a number of casual partners in my life and the only ones I’ve had a problem with were the ones who seemed not to care about my experience and only wanted to get something from me. As soon as I can feel a man not attentive to me and seeking his own pleasure, I’m not interested anymore. This is normal.

It’s natural not to want to sleep with someone who has no regard for you. If you still want to continue, knowing your partner doesn’t care about you, that’s not a problem in them, it’s in you.

I dated a man once who paid very close attention to me. He watched me when I spoke, with eye contact and reflection. He absorbed what I said and could recall it weeks later. He was able to accurately assess me from what I said and would ask for confirmation of his findings. Sometimes he would catch himself projecting when he was seeing something of himself in me, but he saw it. He noticed he was doing it, and saw the separation between us. This was sexy. This turned me on.

Every time we were together it was like coming home, physically as much as emotionally. When there’s a mental and emotion connection, there is a bond there. Sexual desire doesn’t create that bond, it responds to it.

Another man I dated was able to pick up on small movements in my body and respond appropriately. If I flinched when he touched me unexpectedly, he would apologize and ask before trying again. He was paying attention to my body because he wanted to be respectful of my physical space. This was hot. I wanted him because he was mindful of me.

This is no different with a one night stand. I’ve been with men who were hungry for sex and little care for who with. I could have been anyone, he just wanted sex. This made me not want it. But I’ve been with men who wanted a fun mutual experience. Once on a family vacation to Lake Tahoe when I was younger, I met a man who was so good to me I spent most of my vacation with him, in bed, and river beds. We had a lot of fun for a week or so and I went home having enjoyed a fun time. I didn’t need a relationship, but I did need respect.

And this is the point. It’s not your relationship that turns a woman on. She’s not aroused by a ring. She’s not turned by because you called her your wife. She’s turned on by respect. She’s aroused by goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and your sexual discipline. She’s excited to sleep with a man who adores her and wants her to feel safe and cared for, married or not.

It’s not menopause, it’s you

But this is confusing for women to articulate because society has convinced us all that sex just flows naturally in marriage simply because you’re married. Women have been told that sexual desire happens within them. They don’t know it’s a direct response to their environment.

I’m single, no man around to entice me or disgust me, and still, my desire is affected by external factors. I can be in the mood one minute and turned off the next simply because I stubbed my toe and now I’m in pain. But it’s not really a lack of desire for sex. I still love sex and that didn’t change because I hit my toe on the coffee table. It changed because my focus is now on pain instead of desire.

When you’re upset with your wife for turning down sex, she can’t feel desire for you because her focus has shifted to consoling you. She feels sorry for you now. Or if you were particularly angry, she may feel afraid. Regardless, she is no longer responding with desire but with caution because you’ve reacted badly to her.

When you shame your wife for not having enough sex she can’t focus on sex because she’s focused on shame. When you call her frigid, she can’t think about sex because she’s thinking about her husband insulting her. If you accuse her of cheating, she can’t think about sex because she’s wondering how it the world you got that idea. When you blame it on menopause she can’t be interested in sex because now she’s worried about her health, and she’s wondering why you’re not. You’re not worried about her—you’re worried about sex. This is yet another turn off to her.

Authentic care is a turn on

Remember, care and attention is what turns her on. But here’s the thing… it has to be authentic. Another mistake men make is running through a list of tasks like “make eye contact when she speaks” only to be thinking about rebuttals (or the game) the whole time. A man will do the dishes once or twice but not make a plan to take charge of labor around the home in general to make his wife more relaxed and open sexually. He’ll see a therapist but not do the work to really change on a deep level for himself first.

This is the hard part. There’s no checklist. There are no hoops you can jump through to “get” sex from someone. You have to be the kind of person they desire sexually. You need to embody the aspects of a desirable partner.

Relationships change all the time. People change and grow. The purpose of a relationship is to grow together. If your partner is changing and growing and you’re not, you’ll need to catch up. You’ll get left behind if you don’t. If you think it shouldn’t change, you’re not healthy enough for a relationship and it’s probably a good idea to end it. If you’re growing apart, there’s no shame in going in separate directions.

But if you want to fight for your relationship, be the person who has that relationship. Find out what that relationship needs and become the person who would enjoy that. Or, go after what it is you really want. If you want a relationship with plentiful sex and no growth or emotional connection, let your wife go and find someone else who shares your interest in a lifetime of casual sex. If you can’t keep up, go find someone who’s going nowhere and stay behind with her.

You may find me harsh in this, but authenticity requires being true to yourself—and it means being honest with yourself about who you are. What are your real desires, what are your limitations? Do you have what it takes to be in a relationship with this woman anymore or are you not that man? Are you just tired of being married? Be real about that. Talk about it. Give her honesty if nothing else.

But if you really do love her, not as a possession, but as a human, consider taking a step back to assess yourself. Talk to a professional if you can. Learn about yourself and what you want with and without her. Who are you outside of your marriage. How do you wish she saw you? You have to show up for yourself, take care of your own needs.

And if you’re a wife in this scenario, you do the same. Look into what drives you, what makes you happy, what turns you on. Or used to. Who are you and what do you want for your life? What did you once want that you’ve lost sight of? Can you go after it now? And if you did, would he be a part of that life? Don’t wait on him to change, but be open to the possibility he can.

Consider separation and celibacy while you work on yourself. Both of you. If celibacy scares you, that’s something to talk about right there. Why? How did you land in a space of dependence on physical intimacy and what can you do to have a healthier connection with your body?

I’m not here to change your mind but to make you aware of it. So many of our decisions are automatic. It’s programming. We all have to awaken to this programming in order to change. I’m just a bell that rings to wake you up. The rest is up to you. Do you want more or are you content to stay where you’re at?

Rise and shine.

Shortly after my ex-husband moved out, texted me from ALDI. I had locked his keys in his truck and needed me to help. By the time I got there he had called a friend who was coming to help. But for 10 minutes he sat in my car in the rain reminding me why I had asked him to leave.

Once his friend got there, I went into the store to do my own shopping, since I was there. I figured I should get some… what was it called? Oh god, it’s so easy, why can’t I remember? It’s the red stuff the kids put on their food because I’m a terrible cook and everything tastes bland. They tease me about it. Come on, I know what it is. It’s a staple. I’ll look in the sauces, I know it’s a sauce of some kind.

I wandered around the store in a fog, unable to remember anything from my list. My list was still on the fridge because I forgot about it when I saw my husband’s text. The red stuff? Who knows. Wait. I know what the bottle looks like! It has to be here. I finally found it next to the mustard. Ketchup.

This is the energy I found myself in again last night. I wandered the grocery store looking for stuff to make enchiladas. I had a sudden craving for them earlier when coming home from a day out with the kids. They’re 18 now, so I dropped them off and told them I was going to the store.

Aldi is about a mile from my house, so not a lot can happen between my house and the store. But half a mile from the store, there was a woman sitting in the grass in a small field next to the storage place. Dozens of cars drove by her. I turned around and doubled back to see if she needed help. A gold jeep had stopped and someone was talking to her.

I was at the stop sign waiting for my turn to turn when they pulled away. She had turned them away. Her hair was a mess, and from the opposite corner of the street I could see her face was swollen. She had no coat and I knew she was in serious trouble. My car told me it was 45 degrees out. She would be very cold soon if she wasn’t already freezing. It looked like she hadn’t been there long, but it wouldn’t take long in this weather.

I turned and pulled up into the grass and parked. Walking cautiously to her, I sat down in the grass with her and offered, “I don’t want to bother you, but do you need anything? It’s cold out here.” I treated her like she knew what she was doing and in total control of the situation. I noticed her right ear, speckled with blood wanting to surface (I looked this up later, it’s called Petechiae). Someone had hit her, hard. I acted as if she was waiting for a friend to pick her up. Her car had broken down somewhere and this was a meeting spot.

She told me she was fine, in that voice that says of course she’s not okay but she wants me to go away. “OK, good, I just wanted to make sure.” She noticed a police car at the stop sign and panicked. She grabbed my hands and begged me not to say anything to him. She made me swear not to tip him off. I nodded with the best smile I could find, “Of course, we’re just friends having a chat in the grass, not weird at all.” A slight wink to put her at ease and I turned to the officer.

He got out of the car and came over to ask if she was okay. I stayed quiet other than to tell him, “My butt’s cold, but that’s all.” I kicked myself for that one later. He was compassionate, and understanding. If she didn’t want the help, he wasn’t going to force it. He mentioned a passerby had called them. He said he was only doing his job, but should she change her mind and decide she wanted help, he would come right back.

When he left, I got up and went back to my car. I grabbed a blanket from the backseat I had put there for winter, for the kids, and for emergencies. Then swiping the box of tissues from the front, I went back to her. I wrapped the blanket around her and set the tissues in front of her. I sat down again, “Here, take this, it’s so cold out here and you can use this while you wait for whoever left you here.” I acknowledged the reality of her situation hoping it would bring her out of her shell to tell me more.

It was getting colder, and I was beginning to see her situation unfolding. I took a deep breath and made myself comfortable. Whatever cold I felt was nothing next to what she was up against if she didn’t get out of here before dark. I asked her name. She told me, saying, “I’m an attorney. I know what to do.”

“Of course you do, wow, I never got so far in life, a lawyer… that’s impressive! You must be so smart and disciplined.” She looked up and into my eyes, stunned. It was like no one had said anything kind to her in decades. She burst into tears. I touched her knee softly, asking if it was okay that I do it. She cried harder and asked for a hug.

“Oh gosh of course, that I can do.” I held her tight until she was ready to let go. She smelled like she had just come from the salon. I noticed her nails recently done, in different colors, but missing a couple on each hand. She had fought back. Her toes too, each painted a different color and scuffed badly. She had no shoes. I asked her about this.

“He has my car. He has my phone, and my shoes. They’re Uggs, you know, they’re like boots.” I asked her what kind of car, cautious of the fact that whoever had done this to her could be back. I kept a peripheral eye on the road, visible for about 15-20 seconds in each direction. I mentally assured myself I could get back to my car before he was a threat to me, if I had to. For now I was focused on her.

She asked me to call her phone. He would have it. He would come back for her if I called. I tried. He didn’t pick it up. She asked me to send a text. I asked her every step of the way to tell me what she wanted me to say. I knew it was important for her to make as many decisions as possible. I couldn’t do this for her. I offered her the phone to try again herself. Someone answered, but insisted she had the wrong number. She began to get angry (she needed to be angry), “This is my phone! I’ve had this number for 15 years, it’s my number, I should know it!”

She recited her phone number while reading it on the screen, gasping at the one wrong digit. She quickly ended the call, embarrassed. I did my best to comfort her as she tapped in the correct number. But again, no answer, no response to text. Defeated, she wiped her eyes and I decided I needed to take a break myself and regroup.

I’m taking a break writing this because comments are pouring in on TikTok and instagram right now. So many other women are telling similar stories. I need to rest my heart and come back to this. For those who’ve had this kind of nervous system upset, there are emotional flashbacks here. It’s PTSD. Sitting there with her, talking about it afterward, it all brings back what happened to me and I need a break.

And because I have done so much work to heal, I knew I needed to take a break from her too. I wasn’t going to be able to help her any more if I didn’t take care of myself. So I told her I was going to go do my grocery shopping and come back to check on her. “If he comes back before I do, keep the blanket. You have my number now, you can give it back to me tomorrow.” Still treating this like a friend who’s cold and nothing more, I got up and went to the store.

The same thing happened again that happened five years ago with the ketchup. I couldn’t think of what to get. Despite having a shopping list in my phone now, I hadn’t noted anything on it. This trip had been an impulsive one. I wandered around for a few minutes, but recognizing my dissociative state, I decided to head back to the car. I rested in the car for a few minutes, assessing my own mental state, deciding I could handle this. I drove back toward the storage place.

When I pulled up, I saw nothing but the box of tissues sitting in the grass. I thought he must have come back for her, but pulled around the corner and parked to make sure. As I made a move to get the box of tissues, I saw the colorful Mexican blanket of mine off to the side behind a small haystack. …

Follow me on Threads for more of these conversations in real time.

“Emotional manipulators often say they have a ‘bad memory’ to avoid taking responsibility.”

On threads, I’m confronted again by my own “bad memory” and now I’m talking about it again. I don’t like to talk about it publicly. It’s a level of vulnerability that I’m still not healed from and might never be. I’ll always be vulnerable to people who need me to accept their truth instead of mine. I’m working on holding my mind with grace in moments when I can’t remember or when my memory contradicts someone else’s.

But there’s something healing in sharing these things. I don’t know the science behind it, but I can point to a feeling in my body when it’s happening. When I share something that gives someone clarity they didn’t have before, I can feel my shoulders relax. A warmth runs through my chest and arms that feels like laying down in a hot bath. I feel seen and embraced by an unseen part of myself. Internal validation swells to push me forward to keep on speaking or writing.

There are three parts to my experiences with my memory:

* Memory Loss

* Memory Replacement

* Premonitions (stay with me for that one)

Memory Loss

Last year I met up with an old friend on Marco Polo. It’s an app for leaving video messages back and forth, “Marco Polo” style. I was excited to see him. I had only good memories of him. He was a TikTok mutual who was part of a group of friends who all came to know each other through our content.

We exchanged a few pleasantries in a handful of videos, when he brought up a story of us that I didn’t remember. He talked about a particularly spicy moment between us, but didn’t go into detail. He seemed nervous, but also protecting us both in the event these videos ever made it public. I appreciated his discretion. What little he did say didn’t spark a memory for me.

He gave more detail to the event, but I still couldn’t remember. I apologized for my bad memory, but I told him I believed him and I likely lost it with other memories over the years.

He didn’t reach out again, and when he didn’t respond to my video, I knew I had hurt him. I felt terrible. This memory meant something to him and from his perspective it meant nothing to me. If it had been important to me I would have remembered. I couldn’t join him in a shared moment of nostalgia. I felt like an outsider in my own life. I imagine he felt rejected.

On top of memory issues, I’m also healing a wound that causes me to feel shame when I reject someone I care about.

This is a case of memory loss because the memory isn’t there. This shows up in all kinds of situations. My kids will often refer to something from the past and hard as I try, I can’t pull it up. If memories are filed away in file folders, the file is missing. Sometimes I can see the file folder, but it’s empty. I can recognize that something was there, I just can’t see it. There are no pictures or video, no sounds or smells, nothing to remember.

I honor their experience by affirming that I believe their story, but I don’t have the picture of it. I can’t remember it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. There’s one difference now though. I no longer assume your reality is the ONLY one. I stopped telling myself I’m wrong about a situation. Instead, I assure myself I’m only missing information. In most cases I can trust this person not to lie to me. In rare cases when I believe someone could be manipulating me, I can release their truth as theirs. I can hold that what they believe is valid, even if it’s not my experience.

From there I can move forward with love. If one of my kids tells me I said or did something hurtful in the past, I can apologize even if I don’t remember. I can confirm their experience and encourage my own self-reflection later to make sure I don’t say or do that again.

If I suspect someone may be manipulating me, I would play investigator. Rather than accept their memory of events as I would have in the past, I would inquire to know more. I would invite them to tell me everything. If I care about this person, I want them to feel heard. In the course of their story telling I can pick up on the truth of the situation and call their attention to it. From there, we can either talk about why they tried to manipulate the situation, or I can walk away. If I can’t trust a person to be truthful with me and own it when they’re not, that’s not a relationship I feel safe in.

Memory Replacement

But what do I do if I have a completely different memory of the event? This happens only rarely, but when it does, it can be scary. One of my more memorable experiences was right after dropping out of college. I was working as a store manager and my boss was writing me up for leaving the safe open when I closed the night before.

The thing is, I had a crystal clear memory of closing the safe. I had a ritual of patting my palm on the door of the safe after turning the dial. This is how I was able to sleep each night, seeing that image in my mind of closing the safe, turning the dial, and patting the door.

But here was my boss, whom I had no reason to disbelieve, telling me I hadn’t done that. He was just as sure as I was, that he had arrived in the office that morning with it wide open. What to do now? I accepted his memory as more recent and more valid. I took the write-up and vowed never to let it happen again. But I took that memory with me. I could no longer trust my memory to tell me the truth. I could never be sure I had closed the safe.

In this situation, I opened the file for that memory to find something different inside it. Something else was in place of the files I was told should be there. And now I couldn’t trust my files, my memories, to be real.

I began to study memory and I read about how the brain can replace memories with others that feel better. I concluded that my mind must have replaced the open door with a closed one. My subconscious was aware of the consequences of my mistake and protected me from it.

It didn’t start with that incident though. Somewhere in childhood, something traumatic had happened, maybe several things. My mind formed a habit of creating replacement memories to protect me from the real ones. Over the last few years I’ve been uncovering some of those real ones. It’s been painful, but healing. I’m hopeful that with more healing, my mind won’t need to protect me from anything anymore.

Premonitions as Memories

Now what about when a memory is different from the reality in front of me, but later becomes true? I open a file in the cabinet marked “Past” to find something that not hasn’t happened—yet. It appears to have been taken from the cabinet marked “Future”, when a few days to years later, the “memory” enters my reality.

I’ve talked about this a few times on TikTok. It’s an odd phenomenon I picked up on shortly after I got married. It’s when I remember seeing something that doesn’t exist, or an event that hasn’t happened. A newscaster passed away? I remember seeing his funeral on the news a few months ago. I swear, there used to be a Best Buy on that corner. A month later, there’s a sign saying a Best Buy is under construction and coming soon.

This one throws me still because I’m just getting used to it. It’s not to be confused with Déjà Vu, which is a feeling of having experienced something before. This is a very clear memory of it, including imagery, sound, smells, just as you would see with a legitimate memory. I don’t feel like it happened before—I know it did.

All my life I assumed I just had a “bad memory” as I’ve been talking about, but this shows up differently. Unfortunately, it’s not until after the event happens that I’m able to recognize it as a premonition. I never know in the moment that it’s not a memory but a vision.

I came across a comment that resonates with me. Sue Frantz describes how this happens for her partner in Memories of the Future (Association for Psychological Science).

My partner and I have coined the term “anticipatory nostalgia” to refer to her tendency to project herself in…

“How are you so warm?” His cheek resting on my chest, he marveled at my softness as I listened to him share a childhood memory about his Dad and a Brooks & Dunn song. I had my phone out and was playing songs in the candlelight and I had just put on the Kacey Musgraves version of Neon Moon. We were in and out of the sheets all night, me relishing being relished with consent for the first time in decades, and he clinging to something I couldn’t see.

I could feel a wave of buried pain trying to surface there in the dark, but I tried not to probe and just let it come naturally. It never did. He always caught himself before it started to rise too high and he’d start kissing me again to push it back down.

This was half of our relationship, these long Saturday nights that turned into long Sunday mornings, diving into each other, coming up for air to talk, and then getting lost in each other again and again and again until it was time to go back to our separate lives. The other half was long nightly phone calls about everything we could think to talk about until one of us fell asleep.

It was his bedroom half that was most authentic though. It was in the dark, when he was physically vulnerable that he became emotionally vulnerable. He poured his heart into mine for hours every other weekend and pulled back in daylight as if it never happened.

When we broke up, I asked him about it. I told him how differently I saw him in bed, how raw and real. “It’s a disconnect,” he said, “I don’t know if it’s healthy or not.” I felt for him. I had been practicing authenticity myself after a full life of autistic masking. I never wanted to go back to holding it all in and pretending to be something I’m not. I knew what he was feeling, and I also knew I couldn’t do anything to help him but be my most authentic self as a model.

Reflecting on our time together in the following months, it occurred to me my ex-husband had likely experienced something similar, as did many of the angry men in my comments. They all talked about this “need” of theirs to have an “emotional connection” during sex.

For five years I’ve had men telling me how important their emotional connection is and how “sex is the primary way” they get this need met. I’ve had fun with them over the years, teasing, “How in the world then, do you connect with your mother??” Unfortunately, this incestuous implication isn’t enough to stop them. They’ve been conditioned to believe this so strongly, they literally take it to their graves. A man will die alone, believing his wife never loved him because her libido dropped off and he was never able to get her back.

It’s no help when psychologists agree with them because they’ve experienced the same patriarchal brainwashing that sets the desires of men on a pedestal above the needs of women to feel safe and connected outside the bedroom. Psychology only sees the surface. It sees a hurting man, identifies his self worth issues, and determines that his wife is failing to perform sexually. But the real problem is deeper than that.

The real problem is men being taught to stifle themselves emotionally, making intercourse the only way they can safely release emotion. So although science does seem to say men primarily connect emotionally with sex, science has yet to say this is natural or normal. In fact, many men are not conditioned in this same way. Many men are fully capable of connecting with all kinds of people emotionally without ever touching them. They’ve been taught to hold their emotions. They’ve built emotional stamina and sex only enhances the experience.

I’ve experienced this myself in a dream state. You can read more about this in my post entitled “Channeling Men” from March of this year.

When I’m enjoying sex with someone, I’m enjoying the whole person. I’m feeling their feelings and holding their energy intertwined with mine. If a man is experiencing this with me, it’s going to be doubly overwhelming for him if he’s not well practiced in feeling his own. If he can’t hold himself, he’s not going to be able to hold me in that experience. It will elate him for a moment, but he won’t be able to sustain that feeling without repeating the experience because I’m the one who gave it to him.

My ex was over the moon after sex. For 24-48 hours I had a joyful loving husband. His whole personality shifted, literally overnight. He became the man I married, the one I was promised on our wedding day. But he would slowly decline over the next few days. Like a kettle, the bubbles rolled and I knew I needed to get him in bed again before it whistled. He wasn’t getting that release of his emotions if he wasn’t f*****g me.

I tried to connect with him emotionally over the years, but Christianity repeatedly taught me that men don’t “do” emotions like women do. Men are more logical, critically thinking creatures and need women to help them feel emotion through sex. I believed I was the one stifling his emotions every time I went to bed without sex. That’s a lot of f*****g pressure!

With Navy Guy I had healed all of that, so I was able to lie there in the dark with him, feeling empathy, but without any sense of urgency to help him release anything with my body. I gave him the space to say anything he wanted to, and he opened up to me more than any other man had. But it wore on him after a while. I got the feeling he had never exposed himself to a woman like that before and he felt shame for letting himself get too close to me. He lamented afterward that he felt like he was clinging to me and he needed to stand on his own. I agreed.

Men have been leaning on women for so long that women are in two camps now: those who fully believe it’s their responsibility to keep men afloat, and those who see men as an enemy who is barely tolerated. A big part of what I do here is to bring women to the center, and men too, when they’re receptive.

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Social images for sharing

Leading up to the election last year, I listened to black women talk about sitting out of protests. They said it wasn’t safe. It was the first time I’d heard them talk about this. They reminded me of my privilege as a white woman. Working through my emotions around it, I felt shame for never having protested before. I also had grace for myself because no one had shown me how or why it was important. And, I felt sadness, empathy, because I had in my lifetime nothing to protest.

Growing up, I had nothing to stand up for. I had none of the systemic struggles non-white people did. But I had immediate struggles within my home. In moments when I began to stand up to the world around me, adults shot me down. My needs were selfish, they said. They were minor inconveniences compared to “starving children in Africa”.

The church too, confirmed my needs as selfish—sinful, in fact. The only one worthy of my fight was Jesus, or a fellow Christian if they found themselves in hot water. For instance, if one of my peers was being called racist, I had a duty to stand up for them. I needed to stop people from “overreacting” to something as well-meaning as “I don’t see color.” What was only punishment for our behavior Christians saw as persecution for our beliefs.

Within marriage, the story continued. The church at large placed significant value on a man’s comfort within marriage. They deemed my needs selfish and sinful again. I was married now. My priorities had to change. I was not a woman, I was a wife.

When I began to speak up on TikTok in 2020, I was a 43-year-old little girl who had been conditioned to let everyone else make decisions for me. They decided what I wore, what I believed, the news I listened to, and the way I raised my kids.

But as I began to awaken, I expanded my news to NPR, and PBS when the kids had a show on. I pulled back at church on Sundays, sitting while others stood. I planned groceries in my head instead of listening to another sermon. Then I made excuses not to go, and I paid closer attention to rainbow flags and people who identified with them. I compared their love to mine and started to see patterns.

The so-called liberals were intent on helping people exist safely in the world. They sacrificed themselves for their community, even when it wouldn’t benefit them. It was similar to the mission trip my church took to build a church in Mexico, but without the tourism and the proselytizing.

The only hate I saw was anger and frustration with people like me trying to stop them. They hated the way Christianity wanted to control everything. Christians loved Jesus and hated suppression. Liberals loved people and hated oppression. But it would be a few more years before I could articulate that.

In 2020, I was beginning to stand up for myself. I was learning about boundaries for the sake of my kids who were struggling. Their dad was growing angrier and his entitlement was harder to hide as I became more aware of it all. I couldn’t stand up for my kids back then because I couldn’t stand up for myself yet. My head was in such a fog, I couldn’t see them. I didn’t see how they were suffering because I was suffering too. I honed in on survival and had no peripheral vision.

Abuse and oppression cause trauma—and micro traumas—which cause PTSD and C-PTSD. I believe it’s a large majority of the country experiencing generational trauma. This causes them to fight each other. And because they’re suffering, they can’t see their neighbors suffering too.

It’s difficult to experience empathy when it’s not extended to you. It’s hard to walk in someone else’s shoes when yours are worn to shreds. When we can’t hold our own pain, it’s pushed out onto others. There is freedom in self-acceptance. It affords us the freedom to fight for causes not our own.

In right wing circles, it’s a bleak cult mentality. We fight for each other or Jesus, but it ends there. My fight consisted of posting a cross to facebook and thanking Jesus for making me white again today. I didn’t actually say that, but it would have been as cringey.

Adam & Eve

In the early days of my awakening, while I was still married, I wrote a blog post about Adam and Eve. I talked about how Eve didn’t exist yet when God told Adam not to eat the fruit. It was Adam’s responsibility to make sure Eve received God’s message—and that she could trust it. God’s message and Eve’s obedience to it was dependent on the relationship Adam had with his wife. Could Eve trust his word? I wrote that Satan didn’t ask, “Did God really SAY that?” What he said was, “Did GOD himself say that (or was it Adam who said it)?”

I began my protest by standing up for Eve. In the middle of a small Pentecostal church with my husband, I made my written protest vocal. After a sermon about Adam and Eve, the pastor calling for discussion, I raised my hand. I told them everything I had written. Chairs scooted and people murmured. The pastor twisted his brow and looked at my mortified husband. This was the beginning of a million more small protests that led me out of that life.

Once out, a fire was lit, and I made my protest my platform. I wrote and spoke and cried and joked, and somehow changed hearts and minds. Men and women who hated my protest in 2020 started following me and protesting to people around them.

These men and women don’t all hold signs on street corners though. Their protest won’t make it to social media or the evening news. They correct people in comments and share informative links. They tell their story—or mine—to friends and family who find themselves in a similar position. They push the system in their unique ways, using their unique voices.

Posting and reposting is a form of protest. Singing and dancing is protest. Wearing a T-shirt is protest, as is serving at a restaurant that’s feeding protesters. Every small voice is a voice and every small act is action. Voices make a chorus and action makes a movement.

Other No Kings Protesters

* You protested if you drove by and honked

* You protested even if you couldn’t risk your job to be there

* You protested if you were sick or disabled and wanted to be there

* You protested if you provided childcare for a protester

* You protested when you reposted the videos of protests

* You protested if you left MAGA behind but were afraid to join the crowd you used to shame

* You protested when you cheered for people in costumes

* You protested if you refused service to an antagonizer or ICE agent

* You protested if you’re black or brown and it wasn’t safe

* You protested if you donated to organizers or other community groups

* You’re protesting when you put signs in your yard

* You protest even when you have social anxiety and can’t handle crowds

* You protest when you have an abusive parent or spouse who won’t let you go

* You protested if you’re a single mom with kids and no other adults to care for them

* You protest when you make sure protest content is being seen and pushed by the algorithm. Every like, comment, and share counts!

Do your best protest in the moment, as you’re able. There was a time when my protest consisted of hiding the remote to get my husband to spend more time with the kids. But it became divorce, therapy for the kids, and a whole new life helping other women do the same. And I have a long way to go still.

There is a lot more we can do. But there’s no need to shame yourself for what you’re not doing yet. If someone is telling you that what you’re doing isn’t enough, try not to be offended. Understand that they’ve just been at it longer and they may resent people who are just getting started. You can’t jump right in at their level, but you can heal the wounds that have held you back and keep going forward in that direction.

The accusation of “weaponizing sex” loomed over me my entire marriage. Every headache, backache, or just not in the mood, I worried I’d be accused. Every cold, flu, and pregnancy, I feared I would be called abusive for “using sex as a weapon” against my husband.

And then I discovered “excuses” as in, “oh well if you’re actually sick, that’s a valid excuse.” But this meant I had better make sure I was sick and not just feeling sick because otherwise I would be “withholding” sex.

But when I got to TikTok and started talking about sexual coercion as abuse, I had what I now understand was a claircognitive knowing about all of this. I knew, without reason or research, that this accusation was a form of sexual coercion. I couldn’t explain it yet, but it would later come to me through thousands of conversations with people about this so-called weaponizing of sex.

What do people mean when they say this?

So far, I can count on one hand the number of people who use this term who can give me a real world example. Very few respond at all when I probe them, “Give me an example, tell me exactly what weaponizing sex looks like.”

* Refusing Sex - most often people will describe someone who is not willing to perform sexually, someone not turned on, not aroused, not consenting. They use words like refuse and deny to describe this “behavior”. It’s bad behavior. Abuse, even. To this I’ll ask…

* Why do you feel abused when you don’t have sex?

* Have you talked to a professional about why you feel this way?

* Who taught you that sex validates you and your relationship?

* Do you think this worldview makes your partner more attracted to you or less?

* False Promises - When challenged on this point they’ll change to something like, “Well, they promise me sex in exchange for chores,” to which I ask…

* Why do they need to promise sexual favors to get you to perform basic life skills?

* Why do you withhold chores until they have sex with you?

* Punishment - Some will call it punishment when a woman is angry with her husband and is very naturally turned off to sex now. Men will say, “You can’t just withhold because you’re mad.” They fully expect a woman to still “give” him sex despite being mad and if she doesn’t do it, she’s punishing him. She’s weaponizing sex “against” him. The same questions from above apply, and also…

* Do you know that it’s normal for someone not to desire someone sexually when they’re angry with them?

* Do you really want her to “do it anyway” even though she’s not feeling intimate?

* Are you able to enjoy sex when you know she doesn’t want it?

What experts mean

From Clear Vision Psychotherapy:

* Withholding sex as punishment: One partner refuses intimacy to manipulate or punish the other, creating a power imbalance.

* Using sex as a bargaining chip: Sex becomes conditional, offered only in exchange for favors, gifts, or certain behaviors, which reduces intimacy to a transactional act.

* Manipulating emotions through sex: Using intimacy to smooth over conflicts or avoid addressing deeper issues can leave the partner on the receiving end feeling confused and emotionally manipulated.

Notice how they’re saying the same thing but from the other perspective. In the other perspective sex is the default and not having sex means something is wrong. We have a long history of prioritizing the person who wants sex and scolding or pathologizing the person who doesn’t.

How we blame ourselves

We’re so conditioned to believe sex is something we do to show love and not share love, we gaslight ourselves to believe we’re weaponizing sex.

The CHADIE foundation posted an anonymous story from a woman who “weaponized sex” in her marriage and she describes “putting conditions” on their sex life.

If I wasn’t happy, we weren’t going to be intimate or have sex.

She was hurting her husband by pushing him to perform at work because she was unhappy in the marriage, but sex was genuinely something she didn’t want to do. She wasn’t weaponizing it. She simply didn’t want it.

This is where people believe sex is being weaponized—but it’s not. She doesn’t know she’s allowed to not have sex when she doesn’t want to. She promises sex because it’s what women are told to do. She’s told to offer sex another time if she’s not in the mood now. So she extends sexual olive branches in moments when she hopes it will make things better. Society doesn’t allow her to address the fact that she’s not happy in the marriage and even tells her more sex will make it better. When it doesn’t, she acts out in other ways.

Sex has been weaponized against her, and in the end, she turns on everyone around her in self defense.

What’s really happening?

Very few women are deliberately trying to hurt their partner and using sex to do it. Most often, “punishment” is only anger and frustration killing her desire. Even if she was previously in the mood, she can no longer be aroused now that there’s a hindrance like an argument or other libido killer at play.

Women aren’t “using” sex to get things from men. They’re making a bid for attention knowing sex is the only way to reach him. When sex is repeatedly made to be a thing she has to do for him, she learns—much like Pavlov’s dog—that to get that sweet affectionate man back, she has to perform sexual favors for him.

She learns that his mood is determined by her sexual generosity. The more often she does it, the less angry he is and the more pleasant her home. The more sexually satisfied he is, the less often he yells at her and the kids. If she just gives him a quick b******b, maybe he won’t be in a bad mood tonight.

Men encourage this

Despite their complaints, men are not actually against women performing sexual favors in exchange for other things. Men tell women, wake your man up with sex and he’ll do whatever you want for that day. Here you can see me calling this out on Threads.

This isn’t coming from women. They’re doing what they think men want. The trouble comes when she changes her mind and decides she doesn’t actually want to have sex. Many women don’t understand their own libido, so they don’t know this manipulative behavior from their husband is the very thing turning them off. They feel guilty when he accuses her of “weaponizing” sex.

How to talk about this responsibly

Having talked about this since 2020, I’ve moved through different phases of healing to arrive at a healthy place to discuss this, so here are some tips as you move in these conversations.

* Remove gender - I try to use they/them pronouns as much as possible to keep the conversation neutral. Most often, it is husband against wife, but wherever it makes sense, I remove he and she from the conversation.

* Focus on a non-sexual outcome - This seems counterintuitive, but as we talk about sex, there’s a much bigger issue at play. Sex is only a small part of our intimate connection with another person. Ultimately, we’re not talking about two people having more sex. We’re talking about two people who once didn’t need sex to enjoy each other. They did once enjoy their partner’s laugh, and long talks on the phone. Try to get back there. If someone is continuously pushing for sex, this is likely someone abusive, for whom sex was in fact the reason they got married.

* Err on the side of good intent - Unless I’m talking to men who are toxic and abusive, I assume everyone means well. No one is actively trying to weaponize sex and the accusation will make it worse. Healing starts with stopping the accusation and getting curious about WHY someone doesn’t want sex.

* Talk about sexual health - Talk about what actually drives libido in the first place? What makes you turned on? Do you even know? Has sex ever been pleasurable or has it always been something you did for someone else? In the reverse, has sex ever been something you enjoy mutually with someone, or is it something you get from someone? And what is sex? How do you know it’s sex and that you’ve had it? It may seem silly, but you can’t have a conversation about it if you don’t know how it all works.

Come As You A…

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This week we saw a CEO Andy Byron caught cheating at a Coldplay concert, and then we saw the internet blow up with memes and jokes making further spectacle of him. My teens even got it on their feeds and asked me if I had seen it.

Day 1-2, I watched video after video replaying the clip of the pair quickly splitting from an embrace as they realized their cozy moment was now being witnessed by the entire stadium—and beyond. But I doubt they knew in the moment how far that footage would reach and what would be made of it.

The next few days I saw more commentary, parody, and memes, including several AI generated videos, one depicting Byron threatening to sue because he’d been outed without consent, and others depicting fictional characters and brand mascots “cheating” with each other in the same way.

But yesterday, only a few days into this saga, I saw the first discussion of putting a lid on it all. It started with a facebook post from one of my old colleagues, a white Christian man, who said, “Can we please be done with the Coldplay thing now?”

And then a white woman on TikTok made a plea to drop the jokes because public shame was “chaos” and we need to stay focused on not letting America become the Soviet Union. The concern is valid in general, the country is in trouble, but it’s a stretch to apply it here, to say our political climate is threatened by a cheating CEO being publicly shamed. If anything, the public reaction to this is the result of a people on the edge of real revolution. We’re not holding back anymore and it’s a really good thing. Shining a light on the world around us and not pretending these things aren’t happening is how we make real change.

We’re not protecting a CEO anymore. We’re not sweeping him under a rug so he can get back to his big open office overlooking all the people he’s cheated (surely his wife is not the first). But this is what white America does. They tamp down events like this that involve prominent white men. Christians in particular will want to start keeping things hush in the name of “family values” because, as several comments on Facebook said, his wife and children are suffering the backlash.

But they’re not suffering backlash from the public. They’re suffering abuse, the abuse of a father and husband who destroyed his family. It’s blame shifting to put it on the public. It’s further removing the focus and accountability from this man to everyone else who is holding a mirror to him and what he did. And this is where we do injustice to women and children in these situations.

For the last few days, beneath the public cheers and jeers all over social media, have been quiet comments from women who’ve been cheated on. These women have been telling their stories. Stories about being discarded, not being believed, and never allowed the chance to really grieve the loss of their marriage properly. In most cases, these women weren’t allowed to acknowledge it was cheating because by the time they’re ready to talk about it, their husband has already told everyone, “We just grew apart.” This becomes the narrative. He didn’t do anything wrong, and in fact, she was actually a nag who controlled him, withheld sex, etc., and he had to find comfort elsewhere.

Women are forced to stuff their feelings away and never publicly acknowledge the damage their husband did. But this time, this woman doesn’t have to do that. This woman is going to be devastated for a long time no matter what the public says or does, but she has something a lot of other women never have. She has public support from millions of people who are on her side.

So I say we let it play out. Let this woman have a few minutes of vindication from the world, to validate her and strengthen her through this traumatic betrayal. Let Christians sit in the discomfort of yet another white man being atrocious and having to face himself publicly. As we say often in DV circles, “If he didn’t want people to talk about what he did, he shouldn’t have done it.”

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Music I’ve been listening to this week

For newcomers, I hope you enjoyed this post! At the end I’ll often include music I’ve been listening to or songs I’ve used in TikTok videos, and sometimes a poem from my book if it’s applicable. There’s also a chat room for each post if you’d like to engage in further conversation on these topics.