The Patriarchy Hurts Men Too (Part Deux)

Practicing sex therapy in the Bible Belt means I spend a lot of time translating.

Not translating English into another language, exactly. Translating between shame and longing. Between religious vocabulary and nervous system reality. Between what someone was taught to fear and what their body has been trying to tell them for years.

So when I came across Sam Jolman’s The Sex Talk You Never Got: Reclaiming the Heart of Masculine Sexuality, I read its premise with interest. Jolman is a therapist who specializes in men’s issues and sexual trauma recovery, and the book is explicitly written from a Christian framework. It is biblically-based, and meant to help men move from shame, confusion, and sexual struggle toward innocence, awe, joy, and a more integrated relationship with desire.

I am a secular sex therapist who works in a place where Christian sexual ethics, purity culture, abstinence messaging, pornography panic, marital duty language, and gender-role expectations often shape the emotional lives of my clients long before they meet me. That makes Jolman’s book interesting to me—not because I share all of its theology, but because it names something I see every week.

Many men did not receive sexual formation. They received warnings, silence, “don’t get her pregnant,” “don’t look,” “don’t touch,” “don’t be gay,” “don’t be weak,” “don’t be creepy,” “don’t want too much,” “don’t want the wrong thing,” “don’t ask questions,” “don’t embarrass the family,” “don’t make your mother cry,” “don’t dishonor God.” Then, somehow, they were expected to become tender, confident, self-aware lovers. That is not formation. That is containment.

The title The Sex Talk You Never Got lands because many men technically did get “a sex talk.” But it was often not a conversation. It was a warning label. Some were told the mechanics of reproduction and nothing about pleasure, consent, intimacy, arousal, emotional vulnerability, or communication. Some were taught that lust is dangerous, but never taught how desire differs from entitlement. Some were taught that pornography is bad, but never given language for loneliness, stress, shame, fantasy, compulsion, or avoidance. Some were told to be “leaders” in marriage without being taught how to tolerate rejection, listen to feedback, regulate insecurity, or ask what a partner actually enjoys. Some were taught that women are temptations, then wondered why they struggled to experience women as full human beings. Some were taught that their desire was inherently predatory. Others were taught that their desire entitled them to access. All of these messages distort sexuality.

In the Bible Belt, I often meet men who are caught between two inadequate scripts. One script says, “Your desire is dirty, so suppress it.” The other says, “Your desire is natural, so satisfy it.” Neither script teaches maturity. Neither teaches reverence for another person’s autonomy. Neither teaches embodied self-respect.

In therapy, I am less interested in helping a client changing sexual desire than in helping him develop a mature relationship with it. Can he notice desire without being ruled by it? Can he distinguish attraction from obligation? Can he hear “no” without collapsing into humiliation or resentment? Can he ask for what he wants without coercion? Can he tell the truth about pornography, fantasy, infidelity, erectile difficulty, trauma, compulsive behavior, or fear without drowning in self-contempt?

From a secular perspective, I do not need to share Jolman’s theological conclusions to appreciate one of the book’s central correctives: men need more than behavior management. A man’s sexual life is not just a list of behaviors. It is a history.

It includes what he learned about masculinity. What he learned about women. What happened to his body. What was praised. What was punished. What he saw too early. What no one explained. What he was mocked for wanting. What he was told he should want. What he did to survive loneliness. What he used to numb grief. What he confused with power. What he still does not know how to ask for. Sexual behavior is rarely just sexual behavior. It is often attachment behavior, anxiety behavior, grief behavior, trauma behavior and identity behavior.

Because Jolman’s book is written from an explicitly Christian frame, I would expect some readers to find its language healing and others to find it complicated. For many men in my office, words like “purity,” “lust,” “God’s design,” “sexual brokenness,” or “worship” are not neutral. They may carry years of fear, control, exclusion, or spiritual abuse. For others, those same words may be meaningful, stabilizing, and restorative. Here, religion is not merely a private belief system. It is often family structure, social belonging, political identity, marital expectation, and community surveillance. A man may not simply be asking, “What do I believe about sex?” He may also be asking, “Will I lose my family, church, marriage, or sense of self if I tell the truth?”

So my secular reading of a Christian book about masculine sexuality is necessarily double-sided, but I appreciate any sexual ethic that moves men away from shame, secrecy, entitlement, and fear. Naturally, I become cautious when sexuality is framed too narrowly through male-female complementarity, marital destiny, or religious identity in ways that may not fit LGBTQ clients, nonreligious clients, single clients, divorced clients, mixed-faith couples, sexually-traumatized clients, or clients whose healing requires distance from the church. The Sex Talk You Never Got is not the book I would have written. Its theological commitments are not mine. Its language will likely resonate deeply for some readers and require careful translation for others, but I am glad for any serious attempt to move men beyond shame-based sexuality.

Shame has never made a man more whole. Honesty, grief, embodiment, consent, accountability, and tenderness have.

When a man begins to understand that his sexuality is not a monster to be caged but a part of himself to be known, formed, and ethically lived, something important changes. He becomes less divided and more free.