March 12, 2025
The Neuroscience of Intimacy
347: The neuroscience of desire meets biblical wisdom in this candid exploration of marital intimacy through the lens of Solomon's ancient love poetry. Our pastoral team uncovers how this 3,000-year-old text reveals surprising truths about what makes marriages thrive physically and emotionally today.
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Chapters
00:00 - Introduction to Song of Solomon 4
02:10 - Husband's Duty to Initiate Affection
03:47 - Common Intimacy Struggles in Marriage
08:17 - The Art of Romance and Preparation
15:18 - Words vs. Physical Touch in Communication
20:07 - Overcoming Porn Addiction Together
27:41 - The Leaving and Cleaving Challenge
41:15 - Rewiring the Brain and Sexual Attraction
49:34 - Marriage Beyond Physical Attraction
Transcript
WEBVTT
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and welcome back to pastor plex podcast.
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I'm your host, pastor plec, and joining me in studio is none other than the motas.
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They have ezekiel and one on the way over there.
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What do you do, brie?
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Like end of july end of july and I also have pastor Holland Gregg from the Eastside Community Church.
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Hello.
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Pastor Holland welcome.
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And then I also have Jordan Smith Excited to be here, Forensics expert Just keeping that going.
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Well listen, I think it's true and.
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I believe in your forensic skills, all right, so we are talking about Song of Solomon, chapter 4.
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And, holland, I think you preached this back in the day at Eastside in the 2020.
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Back in the day, indeed, and this is where we talked about sex, and so if you've got young ones around, we're going to talk about sex.
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So this is where you get them away from your screen or put your headphones on as you watch.
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So, listen, we've been talking about God's design for sex, and one of the things that we made note of is that God's Word has everything we need for life, godliness, salvation and sanctification, for having sex and also for parenting.
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I throw parenting in there because I think sometimes parents are like where's the part of how to be a good dad or how to be a good mom?
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The Proverbs is a great place to start for that.
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Solomon is great to work on your marriage.
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Proverbs is great to work on your parenting, and so I bring that up because we're getting into the scripture and it is very graphic of Solomon's description of his bride, where he goes over her eyes, her hair, her teeth, her lips, her cheeks, her neck and then to her breasts, and he is enjoying every aspect of his wife, and what I said there is that the groom initiated affection due to his bride, which I got from 1 Corinthians 7.3, where it says let the husband rend to his wife the affection due her.
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Or, as ESV says, the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, which I thought was sort of funny because conjugal rights seem a little bit not quite as intimate or maybe just seem a little rougher than affection.
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I was just like that's sort of odd.
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Anyway, the reason why I bring that up is Jesus loves the church and husbands and wives are to represent the picture of Jesus and his church, render the affection first.
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It is the husband's duty, job, obligation, role and responsibility to render or to give his wife the affection that is due to her.
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Have you guys seen that be something that men push back on in your premarital marital counseling?
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That you guys have seen?
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Yes A lot Definitely, and how have you seen that?
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What do you mean by that?
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You've had a lot of couples come through some re-engage where they're really talking about the intimate stuff of their life, and it seems like the men go passive here and the women are the ones that are really rendering the affection due.
00:03:26.159 --> 00:03:29.508
Well, yeah, the men are all like, like, oh, our sex life is great, no complaints.
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and then when we split off men and women, it's all complaints from the women no, I don't want you to get into any specific person, but generally, what are some of the complaints that you've heard?
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um that he just though she's ready for bed and he's just feeling up on her expecting something there's no like there's no preheating, there's no, there's no preheating love and there's no sweet talking.
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It's just straight to the point, and then the woman will feel either obligated or pressured, or the men feel rejected.
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Right.
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And that's essential.
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I think that what you have described is how most of the marriages I've coached initially start off is that the man does not think about sex until he's in the bedroom, because men are like waffles, women are like spaghetti, and so women are sort of thinking, oh, if he wanted it, he would be talking about it all day, and men are like if it's not in front of me, I don't see it.
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And I think that's part of the problem, especially into marriage, because you've forgotten the art of the romance, because something happened.
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What do you think?
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Holland?
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Yeah, sounds good.
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I agree.
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The art of, did you say the art of the romance?
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The art of the romance, the art of the romance, yeah, yeah.
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The groom in Song of Solomon, a master of the art of the romance.
00:05:01.848 --> 00:05:03.879
Yeah, he is the master of the art of the romance.
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Masterful with his words, masterful with showing affection, communicating desire, communicating expectations.
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Yeah, puts a lot of men to shame, yeah, but you know, is meant to be a model A couple of things I saw here is that and this might be helpful, I think, if you understood the wedding day and why that probably felt like a microwave moment is because the woman has been preparing for the wedding day.
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It's been an agreed-upon day, she knows it's coming, the day of she's fully engaged, thinking about all that, her dress, she's wearing it, for the way that it's going to eventually come off.
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I mean, there's all of that that goes into it.
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And the guy, he just shows up and he's happy to be there and doesn't understand the amount of preparation and work that's gone into this day.
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So then afterwards, whenever couples are married, the man does not realize the work that goes into getting the woman prepared for sex and so he shows up just like he did on the wedding day, not knowing there's a lot of other factors that help the woman get preheated, and I feel like that's the problem.
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And so also we need to have husbands and wives kind of think.
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Remember they're just like Jesus in the church and so we love, the church loves Jesus, because he first loved us.
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And so men, knowing that example of initiating affection and initiating all that, just like the husband is seen here, that becomes imperative kind of um.
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Parse this out is the calendar helpful in getting a woman ready, uh, to get preheated for sex?
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Is that helpful for you to like know when that date is coming?
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for me?
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No, I think just looking at my calendar and seeing sex on there is really weird.
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No, but like, if he, yes, you don't write sex on the calendar.
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What you do write is hey, we're going to this restaurant or we're going and spending, oh like planning date night yes.
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Then yes, but.
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I also think like the calendar is very literal, like if you know when you come home from work, you want something like you said you come home from work, you want something like you said make a little comment before you leave.
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Text something nice throughout the day, don't text can we have sex tonight?
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right, like be more romantic, more words um, because talk to me about the more words, because I I think men don't understand more words, because in general we think words are just a means to a straight end of communication, and for a woman it's a lot more.
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It says so much more than just I want sex now.
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Yeah, I can't.
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Can I say something real quick?
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Well, I thought of this earlier, but when you were talking about the wedding night and it seemed easy from the guy's perspective.
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If you think about it, the wedding day is probably one of the days where the man is the most romantic in a relationship like you write your vows yep, you dance, you look into each other's eyes.
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So, to the woman's side, it's like everything she wants you know, but then the next day we're not.
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We're not doing the same thing, you know, we don't?
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there's no.
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There's no.
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Uh, first dance there's no.
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Uh.
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Giving you know, feeding each other cake?
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there's no speak for yourselves yeah, we feed each other cake daily, daily in my house.
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Yeah, that's good but?
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but imagine if you had a systematization, systematization, systemized.
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A system.
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A system, thank you, a system where you understood there were certain expectations that went along with it, because a groom didn't make up the whole wedding.
00:09:03.832 --> 00:09:06.302
He's like you know, know, we should probably have a first dance.
00:09:06.302 --> 00:09:09.938
That was like it's more like hey, what song are we gonna do for our first dance?
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You're, you're not, you're not asking what, you're asking how, whereas I think for the rest of your lives you're like I don't know, what do you want to do?
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And that, I think, becomes the problem for relationships, because it feels like to the woman she's wanting spontaneous love and joy.
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That looks like it's coming from the heart and he's just like just give me the plan and I will work the plan.
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Would you guys agree with that?
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yeah yeah, going back to the words thing, though, I can't speak for every woman because every woman's different.
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But for me, when I feel appreciated, or I feel like he sees me, um, or I just hear it like compliments, that automatically makes me like, even if he's simply doing it to truly appreciate me and has no intention of sex, I'm more likely to initiate because I feel connected.
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I feel like, oh, he sees me, he values me.
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When you walk past your wife in the kitchen and smack her butt and that's your way of indicating you want something we're never going to pick, I will never pick up on that.
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I think you're just being a dude.
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Let me write this down.
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Because I feel like you're just like oh, let her know.
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You just shattered many universes with that statement right there.
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You just destroyed a lot of men, I feel like if you're like, oh, preheat the oven, let her know, give her hints.
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A lot of men, those will be their hints.
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That's not the hints that us women want.
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So what is the hint?
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That you want Words.
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Words, got it Okay.
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So as he gently taps your bottom, as he passes you, you need him to say what does he say?
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Fill in the blank, help him out.
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I don't know, I can't give you an exact, but to me, if it's just a constant touching of boobs and butt, I think you're simply a dude.
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I don't think.
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I'm just laying it out, I'm being real, all right.
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No, I appreciate that we are real here at the Passerplex podcast.
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To me that's not being romantic, that's not uplifting your wife Like that's not.
00:11:16.240 --> 00:11:17.807
So what you're saying is just coming up.
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So one of the things I talked about is that seven second kisses, because that is one of the ways that you can induce saliva transfer and, uh, saliva transfer over time builds up testosterone in the woman, which makes her arousal to be way easier.
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So would you be excited about seven second kisses from your husband?
00:11:39.072 --> 00:11:57.436
yeah, and we've done that before oh awesome uh, someone told us a long time ago that the best thing they did for their marriage was make out every night yeah with no expectations of anything else, just make out every night and that alone it's exactly resulted in a better sex life for them yeah, all right, so.
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So so, kissing, kissing, uh, without expectation of sex, even though how can I put this?
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Of course, the man has such pure intention just to love her in the moment, but there is probably a hope that this will lead to something more All right, so let's talk about that.
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Is it okay to have non-sexual touching, with the hope that sexual touching will come later?
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Yeah, but I think that can't be your only.
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I don't want to like put you on the spot, but a big thing that we worked through is he thought him walking past and touching or walking past and giving me a kiss was initiating or letting me know.
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But when you do that every single day, I don't know that.
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I think that's just who you are and what you do.
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So I think, if, if, yeah, I don't know like you need to make it.
00:12:53.403 --> 00:13:18.086
I think she might be a words of affirmation, girl, I don't know like okay to me there's nothing special in that, if oh wow there are days where he's rejecting me, but he was still being physically well, he was, word with words, rejecting you but being with his, his hands, very accepting correct, but then still didn't like that wasn't a day that he wanted to have sex.
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So I'm like how am I supposed to differentiate when you're giving me hints and when you're just?
00:13:23.869 --> 00:13:27.163
so it would it be fair to say pablo, you're always giving hints.
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There's never a time that's not hoping for something more that's exactly right okay, so it's pretty universally true, yeah, yeah yeah, I think what men are trying to do is is always preheat, and so I think this might be where it might be helpful to help your husband out by saying, if you're wanting sex, that's not getting you that I need.
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But then, of course, I feel like the spontaneity is a big thing for women to feel like it's not for another purpose, it's for like the genuine just wanting to be with you.
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Yeah, so I think that's really really difficult to pull off, but I do appreciate that you shared that.
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I think we I think we give.
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I think you've talked about this.
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We give what we want, right?
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So brie is a lot better at giving me compliments and telling me how good I look and like I could literally care less.
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I actually don't like it when she does it okay, and that's a hint to you.
00:14:24.183 --> 00:14:25.546
Yeah, sure, and then don't like it when she does it.
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Okay, that's a hint to you.
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Yeah, sure you don't like it when your wife tells you that she's attracted to you.
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No, I mean, yeah, why?
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But in her words it's like oh, you look good today.
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I'm just like, okay, what?
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do you?
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say then, of course, what do you say then?
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I mean, what am I?
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A piece of meat?
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Right, I feel used.
00:14:48.890 --> 00:14:50.091
Oh, my God.
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No, but then for me, what I would want from her is for her to just come up and touch me, and so, naturally, that's what I do to her.
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Oh right but she doesn't really want that.
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She wants me to give her compliments.
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Right, there you go, and so.
00:15:06.241 --> 00:15:09.994
So it seems like the pattern that solomon's laying out here is lots of words.
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He's got a I think, as a pastor mo said an arsenal of words at his disposal of compliments and arsenal of compliments and he is just boom, boom, boom, boom and he's talking about everything that you can possibly see, which I think is speaks to how a man is.
00:15:24.461 --> 00:15:35.936
He's he sometimes men speak about like they're possibly see, which I think speaks to how a man is Sometimes men speak about like they're in their box of their wife right now, and so he's just going off everything he can possibly see and he just lists it off, which is actually a great technique.
00:15:35.936 --> 00:15:47.005
He's not sitting there going to go like, and I cannot wait to spend the next 15 years with you thinking about strolling through the park of our one day happiness he's talking about right now.
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I'm really into you, I see you, you're beautiful to me, I'm excited about you, and that is what's.
00:15:53.485 --> 00:15:56.544
That's what preheats her to a point where she feels seen.
00:15:56.544 --> 00:15:56.946
Is that?
00:15:56.946 --> 00:15:57.528
Is that true?
00:15:57.869 --> 00:15:58.090
Yeah.
00:16:02.302 --> 00:16:24.312
I think for me, the reason why the knowing he wants me, for me to truly connect, is important because of a porn addiction as well, because I don't know when it's oh, you just need your fix so you don't go to something else, and when it's truly like I want to be intimate and connect on a deeper level with you.
00:16:24.893 --> 00:16:25.134
Okay.
00:16:25.419 --> 00:16:38.912
And I think if a guy initiates the same way every single time, then the women feel like they're being used for the same thing, or the reason for the sex is the same thing every single time.
00:16:39.091 --> 00:16:54.589
Okay, but let's talk about that, because I did talk about sex, specifically orgasm and all that that that means In the last part, last verse, god says eat, drink, eat, friends, drink and be drunk with love.
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God is pleased by sex and joy within his design.
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I talked about how there's a hugging neuropeptide, a jealous neuropeptide, a jealous neuropeptide, the dopamine reward neurotransmitter.
00:17:13.201 --> 00:17:14.383
That all explodes in the brain as you have sex.
00:17:14.383 --> 00:17:14.943
And what dopamine does?
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It creates desire, pleasure, desire to do it again.
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Oxytocin is a bonding.
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You feel like this is my person.
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I'm one with you.
00:17:23.520 --> 00:17:29.202
A vasopressin that's released is a mate-guarding neuropeptide which makes it.
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This is my person I'm supposed to be guarding and jealous of and I want her to be mine.
00:17:34.266 --> 00:17:34.486
Okay.
00:17:35.528 --> 00:17:38.948
What we talked about is that so cool, it is wild how God wired the brain.
00:17:38.948 --> 00:17:42.121
It's so cool and what I said what wires together fires together.
00:17:42.121 --> 00:17:56.737
And what we talked about is how the brain has a neuroplasticity that allows it to conform to desire and enjoy monogamous relationship with your spouse, okay.
00:17:56.737 --> 00:18:08.996
However, what porn does is it messes up the neural pathways and creates new neural pathways, and you bond to pixels instead of a person, and that's a problem.
00:18:08.996 --> 00:18:26.673
And so what we said was that you could, and the problem, when you don't have oxytocin and vasopressin bonding you to your spouse, you then need a harder and harder and harder pornography so that you can have the dopamine reward happen.
00:18:26.673 --> 00:18:46.711
And so what we said was like God can redeem, through the grace of God, but also the way he designed the brain to conform through oxytocin, through vasopressin, through the dopamine neurotransmitters, to enjoy the wife of their youth again.
00:18:48.060 --> 00:19:01.353
But to your point, this is where I think it's hard for men and this is the part I need you to be super honest and vulnerable and all the things Because it might be that he's needing to have sex with you so that he can overcome a porn addiction.
00:19:01.353 --> 00:19:06.981
It might be that he's having sex with you because he wants to have sex with you because you're his wife.
00:19:06.981 --> 00:19:21.692
How does a man who has had a porn addiction, be vulnerable about that, lead through that when it's so hurtful and so what's the right word?
00:19:21.692 --> 00:19:31.998
You probably give a better description traumatic even to experience not being enough, I guess, or the feeling that it's about you and not about his issue.
00:19:31.998 --> 00:19:39.257
Yeah, how is a husband to communicate to his wife in a way that doesn't take away from the marriage?
00:19:39.277 --> 00:19:44.891
Does that make sense, I think first he needs to fully invite her into the battle with him.
00:19:45.372 --> 00:19:45.973
Yeah.
00:19:51.755 --> 00:19:52.798
How did Pablo do that with you?
00:19:52.798 --> 00:19:55.559
A lot of long conversations about where his addiction stemmed from.
00:19:55.559 --> 00:19:59.981
A lot of reassurance on his part that it has nothing to do with me.
00:20:00.342 --> 00:20:00.561
Yeah.
00:20:00.761 --> 00:20:06.663
Because it never does have anything to do with the spouse, even though it sure feels like it.
00:20:06.703 --> 00:20:07.284
It feels like it.
00:20:07.364 --> 00:20:07.503
Yep.
00:20:07.503 --> 00:20:12.970
Um yeah, the daily check-ins.
00:20:14.185 --> 00:20:15.068
What are those daily check-ins?
00:20:16.291 --> 00:20:20.551
Um, he will like, before we go to bed, he'll let me know how he did that day.
00:20:21.066 --> 00:20:22.592
And how hard is that for you now?
00:20:23.133 --> 00:20:24.309
Oh, it's not hard for me at all.
00:20:24.611 --> 00:20:24.832
Really.
00:20:24.832 --> 00:20:37.306
So you've gotten to a point because you understand that it's not about you and it's his issue, so that when he says, yeah, there's this girl I saw at the gym, or this ad popped up on my phone and you're, and how do you handle that?
00:20:37.968 --> 00:20:38.650
I pray over him.
00:20:38.829 --> 00:20:40.756
And you pray over him, and you pray the gospel over him.
00:20:40.935 --> 00:20:45.194
Yeah, and then we assess if there was anything he could have done better.
00:20:45.194 --> 00:20:50.215
Like a lot of times it's oh, my quiet time was lacking or I didn't pray before going into the grocery store.
00:20:50.215 --> 00:20:53.669
So just asking like, okay, what can we do tomorrow so that this doesn't happen again?
00:20:53.669 --> 00:21:03.480
Wow, Um so that this doesn't happen again, wow, so that there's also some form of accountability there, and then praying over one another, and then I mean you just choose to forgive, okay, so I think.
00:21:03.480 --> 00:21:04.820
Y'all are awesome.
00:21:06.025 --> 00:21:06.586
You guys are so amazing.
00:21:06.586 --> 00:21:21.944
I think when men or a man or a woman hearing this, they'd say there is no way I could tell my wife because she would lose her ever living mind and guns would come out like violence would ensue Like.
00:21:21.944 --> 00:21:32.852
I think there's a real fear here that if I were to let her know of what's really going on in my soul, I would break her Talk to me about that and I don't know if you had that experience.
00:21:34.807 --> 00:21:50.375
Yeah, this is actually something that just happened at re-engage this last time around, because the goal of re-engage is for you to open up the one percent that you haven't shared with your spouse oh, wow yeah, and we've done it like three times now and I've just been like man, what's my one percent like?
00:21:50.454 --> 00:22:11.792
I feel like we've talked about everything you know, and then it hit me that there was like a certain type of porn that I would like to watch and I was really ashamed of it and I felt like if Bree knew that, that she would just look at me different, that she would think I'm disgusting, and mostly because I thought those things of myself.
00:22:12.886 --> 00:22:14.393
And so I got convicted of it.
00:22:14.393 --> 00:22:27.153
And then I told her about it and I told her I was like scared to say it and she like convinced me, like there's nothing that you could do that would make me look at you any differently.
00:22:27.153 --> 00:23:02.935
And then I finally shared it with her and I was super scared and she laughed because of like how how much I thought this was gonna affect us and she was like that's it, like so, um, even though it's like really scary, I think it I don't know it definitely brought us closer and it made me feel a lot more secure in our marriage because you know, something that I thought was like the worst thing about myself she is just like it's not that bad, you know.
00:23:03.738 --> 00:23:04.906
I don't know if you had something else in mind?
00:23:04.906 --> 00:23:09.597
Well, I also want to make a point that we didn't go from.
00:23:09.597 --> 00:23:18.493
Oh, I need to work through this porn addiction and invite my wife into having these conversations right away Like this was years of like.
00:23:18.493 --> 00:23:21.347
First he had to have a conversation with me like how much do you like?
00:23:21.347 --> 00:23:22.109
I struggle with this.
00:23:22.109 --> 00:23:23.353
I want to overcome it.
00:23:23.353 --> 00:23:23.993
I need your help.
00:23:23.993 --> 00:23:25.486
How much do you want to know?
00:23:25.486 --> 00:23:30.105
Because, there's some women out there who they don't want to know they just want to know did you watch porn or not?
00:23:30.286 --> 00:23:33.429
they don't want to know what led you, what temptations you were overcoming, like they don't want to know many details.
00:23:33.429 --> 00:23:35.751
So I think it's first want to know what led you, what temptations you were overcoming.
00:23:35.751 --> 00:23:44.079
They don't want to know many details, so I think it's first important to know what your wife can and can't handle, because what I can handle now is not what I could handle back then.
00:23:44.580 --> 00:23:45.541
So how did you grow in that?
00:23:45.541 --> 00:23:47.944
How did you?
00:23:47.964 --> 00:23:48.905
know what you could handle and not handle.
00:23:48.905 --> 00:23:50.167
I think it was just baby steps.
00:23:50.167 --> 00:23:58.935
Once I started to handle him, just telling me when he slipped up and reacting better to that, then I could start to handle.
00:23:58.935 --> 00:24:01.479
Okay, well, what little sins?
00:24:01.479 --> 00:24:04.122
Not little sins, but little temptations.
00:24:04.261 --> 00:24:04.501
Right.
00:24:06.846 --> 00:24:11.969
Did you fall victim to throughout the day, or I think it was just.
00:24:11.969 --> 00:24:16.654
It was a lot of personal growth within my own faith that got me there too.
00:24:16.654 --> 00:24:25.492
Um, and then counseling uh helped as well.
00:24:25.492 --> 00:24:28.398
Um, but yeah.
00:24:28.398 --> 00:24:35.412
So then, once you get to that point, whatever your wife is okay with now, you have to hold up your end of the deal.
00:24:35.571 --> 00:24:36.233
Of confessing it.
00:24:36.354 --> 00:24:37.135
Of confessing it.
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