Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go. Hey man, thank you for listening to my interview with Sam Joelman about why we objectify ourselves, especially as men In the journey of freedom from porn. We often focus on how we objectify others, not realizing that we can also objectify ourselves. In this interview, sam talks about what that means, why we do that, and then what healing and repentance looks like. This was such a gift of a conversation. Then. What healing and repentance looks like. This was such a gift of a conversation. It was also very convicting for me, because the truth is, sometimes we're not kind to ourselves.

Speaker 1: 0:51

In this episode, you might become aware of the ways that you settle for being used rather than being loved and cared for. Sam is a counselor, he's a great friend and he is the author of the book. Is a counselor, he's a great friend and he is the author of the book the Sex Talk you Never Got Reclaiming the Heart of Masculine Sexuality. Over the past year, many of you have bought this book. We gave it away at the Husband Material Retreat. To every person who attended and for those of you who have loved it, would you please consider writing an Amazon review for Sam. It would mean a lot.

Speaker 1: 1:24

I think you're going to get a lot out of this interview. It was mind-blowing for me to realize that I'm not only tempted to objectify others, I'm tempted to objectify myself. You're going to find out what that means how to heal from it. Enjoy the episode. I am excited to be back with my friend, sam Joelman. Sam, welcome back. Thank you, drew. It's such a privilege to be here. It's great to see you, even though I see you in church, like every week.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Yes, you playing your accordion. Have you disclosed all the instruments that you play?

Speaker 1: 1:58

No, people don't know about that.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Okay, am I allowed to disclose your multi-talents? Piano, accordion, bass guitar, other things.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Acoustic guitar is also an option, but I prefer to not sing because it's so much multitasking.

Speaker 2: 2:16

Well, I think you're the only accordion player that I've seen and I appreciate an accordion in church worship. Thanks, it's not for every song, but in general.

Speaker 1: 2:23

I think I appreciate an accordion in church worship. Thanks, you know it's not for every song, but in general I think we need more accordion. That's right, sam. It's been almost one year since the sex talk you never got was published. As you look back on the past year, what?

Speaker 2: 2:40

stands out to you. What I'm most blown away by is the conversations with men out of this book. And getting emails, getting one-on-one interactions with men, is just that, how much men want to have this conversation, how much they want to find the heart of their sexuality, not just the body arousal, but also the heart of desire. And what I've been blown away by is just how men get it and my publisher, you know we had a couple of conversations. They weren't so sure. Are men going to resonate with a book on beauty, sensuality, the lover right? Is that something they're gonna be like? Oh, I'm not going there, or that doesn't resonate. But men get it Like. They want that conversation.

Speaker 2: 3:34

Men want to be more than animals. They want to be honored as more than animals. They don't wanna just be animals with urges sexual urges, right that can barely control it. They know there's more to barely control it. They know there's more to who they are. They know that they're capable of intimacy. They know that they want to be good lovers. They want to reclaim this lover heart, their sensuality, their capacity for beauty, their ability to be intimate.

Speaker 1: 4:02

Thank you for giving us permission to enjoy our sexuality.

Speaker 1: 4:09

Yes, you were made to be aroused, amen. And if you guys want to hear more about that, go down to the link in the show notes where you can find my interview with Sam from a year ago. Today we are going to talk about one of the ways that we avoid our lover hearts, one of the ways that, maybe, we treat ourselves as less than human. The concept of objectifying ourselves is a new one for me that you taught on at the Husband Material Retreat. Yes, what does it mean to objectify yourself?

Speaker 2: 4:48

You know, in very basic terms, to objectify yourself is to see yourself as an object, to see yourself only as a means to an end. So it's using any part of your body, your being, your existence, to accomplish something. And only you know to see yourself sort of as a tool of accomplishment. So I'm here to make money, I'm here to accomplish, get the job done right. I'm pushing my body, my existence to just function to accomplish something.

Speaker 2: 5:22

You know, the opposite of treating yourself as an object would be to see yourself as a creature right, worthy of care. You're the image of God, you're the artwork of God, you're part of God's creation and, like every other part of creation, you're worthy of care. You and yourself are not just a means to an end, you're an end in itself. You bear the glory of God and you're meant to be treated with care. You're meant to have encounter, intimacy, relationship. Do I need to be a means to an end? At some level? You know, as a primary breadwinner in my home, yes, we're not saying that's bad, but if you only do that, and I would say you know, as men, there is a temptation right to kind of disregard your body, disregard your spiritual life, disregard your well-being. You know we call it survival mode. Right, I'm getting through, I'm getting a bunch of things done, I've got my to-do list and that just kind of drives existence and I don't stop to encounter how am I doing? When have I stopped and just cared about my well-being? So that's objectifying yourself.

Speaker 1: 6:42

One of the reasons why we don't often think about objectifying ourselves is because it's so normalized in our culture and it's not a new thing Like this has been happening forever. What are some examples of how men historically have objectified ourselves?

Speaker 2: 6:59

You know, we both live here in Colorado and it's interesting. You know, in my camping trips and travels, vacations with my family, it's not uncommon to find yourself in a mining town, right? Even some of these old ski towns are old mining towns and it's been interesting to walk around and notice, you know, there's the common buildings that each mining town has, along with the jail right, the post office, the jail, and then two other buildings that are like ubiquitous, like common in every town, which are a saloon and a brothel right. And so you think about these mining towns. You know these guys are doing backbreaking work to mine for gold or etc.

Speaker 2: 7:55

And what's given to these men to care for their bodies, right. What's given to these men to not objectify themselves? A saloon and a brothel right. There's not much else when they're off the clock to do. And so it's basically again ways to numb yourself, right With alcohol, or get sex as release, but not relationship, right.

Speaker 2: 8:22

Again, objectifying others, right? Do you see how it starts to roll downhill? So now they're objectifying women and again, I'm not excusing these men, but in part because they lived such an objectified life themselves. So you know, even there, historically right in our state, is this profound example of the culture of men being driven to be objectified and therefore objectify, and I think that carries forward to today. So we just don't have a culture of men that knows how to bless our bodies well. Even the gym rats, right, the guys that are pumping iron, talk to some of those men and a lot of times there's not really an attunement to their own bodies. They're pushing themselves to injury, sometimes right Again. Why To try to get the appearance right? Why are there mirrors at so many of these gyms? It's image, not self-care, or at least it can cross into that. I'm not saying everybody there is doing that, but we need to recover that in our masculine culture.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Amen. For so many of us with work being on screens and computers, it's like our little digital mining town. Yeah, going from the labor of work to the digital next door website of porn.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Right, and you know even our what could be considered a type of play watching a sports game baseball, football, basketball Again, I think that can be pleasurable and leisure, but, in the words of Dan Allender, that's still a form of vicarious play. Right, it can be fun and it can be bonding, and I'm not trying to diminish that, but the question still remains are you just watching other people play or do you have places that you go play Pick up basketball, throw the football in the backyard with your kids, go golfing? Right? Do you have places that you actually do let yourself play, not just watch it on your favorite sports teams?

Speaker 1: 10:52

Mm-hmm, it's convicting. Objectifying myself is essentially treating myself as a means to an end, something to be used yes, instead of someone who's worthy of care. Right Instead of someone who's worthy of care, right.

Speaker 2: 11:10

And you know we often think of objectification in terms of lust, right, which is I'm objectifying somebody else, meaning I'm seeing them as a means to an end, my own sexual gratification, my own sexual fulfillment, right, I don't care who they are, I'm just using their form, their body, you know, for fantasy or for actual sexual acting out, or, you know, in pornography I'm using this person, I don't know who they are, but I don't care, they're an object. You know, we know objectification in those terms as lust, but you know, to think about it outside of the realm of sexuality is when you abuse somebody, again as a means to an end and not for genuine relationship and encountering and knowing and relating to I think there's even a spiritualized objectification of being used by God.

Speaker 1: 12:10

Yes, I heard Michael John Cusick say that God's ultimate goal is not to use us because that would be abusive. His ultimate goal is union with us. Isn't that refreshing, that's so good, that's awesome. And yet the ways that we use or abuse ourselves can be really subtle. How do you know if you're objectifying yourself?

Speaker 2: 12:32

Yeah, great question. I think there are two ways that you can kind of do an assessment. One would be kind of life assessment, kind of reading your life, you know, and that could be as simple as like how often are you kind of off the clock, literally? You know in our day and age where we work from home and we have laptops and phones, that we often give access to our employers you know employers access to our personal phones, so like anybody can text me at any time, right, and sometimes there's expectation of I'm going to answer an email at nine o'clock at night, and so you know, just a life assessment could be how did you have downtime? How often are you off the clock? How often are you out of the getting things done mode? And again, I'm not saying that getting things done is wrong. We have to. My dishwasher has to be filled and emptied and filled and emptied, like several times a day, and so those are necessary parts of life.

Speaker 2: 13:30

But where are you leaving kind of that fallow ground? Where do you have what would be more like a restorative rest time? Where do you play? Where do you leave time for personal growth? Where do you leave time for relationships? When was the last time you saw a friend? When was the last time you saw a friend? When was the last time you exercised your body?

Speaker 2: 13:52

In my last 24 hours did I do anything that allowed me to be a creature and encounter God or have relationship? When did I have a relationship? More than hey, how you doing Good, you Good, right, something like that would be a life assessment. The second thing would just be felt experience. You know what is life feeling like? Are you tired, are you spent, are you burnt out, are you stressed? And again, there's such a thing as good stress, right, like accomplishing tasks, going after things in life. We're not saying having any of this is bad. We're just saying if it's the only mode you live in, that's where you're objectifying yourself. But it can be as. One thing for me is when I know I'm irritable with my wife, my kids, other drivers. That's a sign that I know I'm spent. I'm now seeing other people as being in the way of my life. Right, that pull of even objectifying other drivers like get out of my way. I can notice that irritability in myself and that's usually a sign for me internally of like I need a couple minutes to pray. Right, it doesn't have to be like, oh, you need a week off, maybe you do, maybe it is that. But it can be as simple as like taking five minutes breathing, feeling the chair you're sitting in and just remembering like I'm a creature that's loved. I am complete and whole right now. I don't need to accomplish anything. I'm loved right here.

Speaker 2: 15:32

So you know, just that felt experience. Assessment of like. Are you burned out? And you know, I think even just you know, maybe this is kind of a combination of both would be do you find yourself doing dissociative activity to try to get rest, when you know to try to be off the clock doom, scrolling Instagram, whatever, being too much on your phone Pornography use would fall into that right. Are you doing things that are more dissociative, non-relational, and it can be alcohol or other things you know, just sort of like numbing, eating. Those sorts of things can also be a felt kind of a felt sense of like whoa, I'm kind of trying to binge time off. I'm not actually doing restorative things, I'm just doing kind of checkout things. Those can be the triggers or the clues of like you're probably using yourself too much.

Speaker 1: 16:36

This is a big paradigm shift for those of us who have become aware of how we objectify others to now think of how am I objectifying myself?

Speaker 2: 16:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:47

And how am I mistreating my own body, not just someone else's body? I know this has been a very personal journey for you. Could you say more about that?

Speaker 2: 16:56

Yeah, a year ago I threw out my back. So the week before the launch of my book, the Sex Talk you Never Got, I threw out my back and my muscle sees up to the point that I couldn't sit Like I was flat on my back and the assessment was from my physical therapist. This is all induced by stress and a lack of self-care, so I'd quit exercising self-care. So I'd quit exercising. I'd kind of thrown my whole body into the task of launching my book and in a way that just was not humanizing, and my body talked back to me, as it will, to say hey, remember, you're a creature, you know we need care. And so it was a painful learning lesson. It was a painful learning lesson and it came with the grief of like, how did I? I wrote a book on blessing your body and the lover within, and I threw out my back. Talk about needing to smoke what you sell. As I said, practice what you preach.

Speaker 2: 18:08

And so it's been a year of recovering my workout routine. So I'm back to CrossFit. My body feels like a golden retriever that's gotten back into being able to play. It's weird to find the voice of my body again and it's interesting to notice in the workout, like my body's ready to go and it wants to be worked out and thankfully, my back is back, so to speak. It's healed. And, yeah, your body will talk to you, your life will talk to you. You know, back to the life assessment. Things will stop working. Relationships will start to talk back to you and say, hey, where are you? I don't feel like you're here. Or your body will say, hey, you need to think about us.

Speaker 1: 19:14

I love that concept of your body talking, listening to your body. Sometimes we talk about the importance of listening to your body but sometimes guys have trouble with that.

Speaker 2: 19:25

You know, I wish that I had had the presence of mind to say body, what are you saying to me? And that's sometimes a practice, literally I will ask clients to do in session, actually regularly. You know, what are you? Just, what are you feeling in your body? Can you put your hand on that place and can you ask your body what it's saying to you? What does your body want to say to you? That can feel somewhat subjective and like what, but you're trying to get out of your head. You're trying to listen to what's my body saying.

Speaker 1: 19:56

I love the question. If that feeling could talk, what would it say?

Speaker 2: 20:01

Yes. And so then, listening to what your body is saying to you, trying to follow that, trying to honor that.

Speaker 1: 20:08

So, instead of just pushing and working hard and trying to get things done using my body, actually develop a relationship with my body. Yes, that's humanizing.

Speaker 2: 20:23

Yes, and even you know it may not be. We're talking about physical activity, right, mine was very much talking to me about needing play and physical activity and the joy of a workout. For some reason, my body likes CrossFit, I don't know why. You know I'm not the 20-year-old with his shirt off pumping iron, but I'm there and I have fun. But you know, it could be like other times, like loneliness. It could be a dream you have. That is kind of haunting and asking like is there?

Speaker 2: 21:06

something I'm not listening to in my daily life that needs to haunt me at night. Or it could be you've acted out with porn, or you're waking up from being a bit hung over, you had one too many drinks. You know, there's probably a place for some confession, right, but I think it's so easy to move on and just say, well, that was bad behavior and confess it as sin, and I move on and I would say don't waste those moments, don't waste your sin, so to speak, right as like stop and say, well, what did I really need? What was I trying to accomplish? As you say so well, drew, right, pornography is not a problem, it's an attempt at a solution. I mean, it is a problem in so many ways, but it's experienced as an attempt as a solution. And so, to help you start to read, what was I really needing or wanting that was driving me towards this that I struggled to embody well, or to listen to well, to engage those needs.

Speaker 1: 22:08

Sam, you talked about repenting. How do you practically repent from objectifying yourself?

Speaker 2: 22:16

yeah, there's this like sweet spot you have to hit in repentance. This is true of probably all sin, but particularly here. You know, there's the sweet swap between self-hatred and self-pity called self-compassion. And so self-hatred, you know, is the I need to beat myself up, I need to be mean to myself in some way, and the horror stories of, like, church fathers that, would you know, maybe even castrated themselves or threw themselves into thorn bushes, right, that is self-hatred. It is a harming of the body, not a coming home to it.

Speaker 2: 22:54

But then there is self-pity which is I couldn't help myself, I'm just struggling, so bad, right, that tends to be where we get some of that entitlement. That's actually not kindness, right, it's actually just keeping you from growing and your body, your being, wants to become more and your natural state want to grow. So you know, that self-pity place is, well, I can't help it. You know, I've had a hard life, I've had a hard day, I have a hard marriage and I just need relief and I'm I deserve it, I earned it, right. That's kind of that self-pity voice, right. But then there's this sweet spot of self-compassion which is, again, I'm a creature worthy of care and I even have a responsibility to myself, to care well for my presence and my being, and that involves personal growth. It involves attending to my needs. It involves even things like eating good food, getting good rest right. The humility of just sleep right Can actually be a form of repentance.

Speaker 1: 24:05

Let's talk about the workshop you led at the Husband Material Retreat, where you guided us into that incredible time with the men of Husband Material community, like such good dudes.

Speaker 2: 24:21

We had chocolate and strawberries and we stopped and, rather than just consume, consume right, which is what we can do. That's one of those other kind of dissociative things. It's just food, food, food, food, food, and not really stop to even taste the food. So we spent time savoring a piece of chocolate, letting the piece of chocolate melt, or savoring a strawberry and letting the kind of waves of different tastes as the strawberry passed to different parts of our tongue, right Like that practice of slow sensuality. We did smell exercises, so some essential oils. It was incredible.

Speaker 1: 25:05

How countercultural for a group of men to get together saying we want to grow and to do so through our five senses and through lying down in a field of wildflowers. Senses, and through lying down in a field of wildflowers listening to the sound of the breeze and the pine trees, I mean this is part of what God wants to give us.

Speaker 2: 25:33

Yes, and I was so moved at just the maturity of the men at the husband material retreat because they were open to returning to their bodies in a sensual way and it's not something we talk about right in our the culture of men that you know the hunter types. You know a lot of times what they say they love about hunting is it's just permission to go to the woods and sit and enjoy the pleasure of the sounds and the views and the beauty. It's armed solitude. It's what they've said.

Speaker 1: 26:19

Amazing and that's a really helpful distinction to name solitude and isolation as two different things. Isolation is putting myself in a cage. Solitude is putting my distractions in a cage, and that is connection. This connection we're talking about with God, with nature, with ourselves, with each other. That is the opposite of addiction. I love that distinction. Sam, what is your favorite thing about coming back to your body and healing from objectifying yourself?

Speaker 2: 26:52

I'm going to try to put words to some the felt experience of that because it has a definite feel and I hope that this resonates with others. But there's like a fullness of life. Life feels more experiential. I feel more present to little everyday moments of beauty or play or awe. There's like a brightness to life. I just feel like my senses are more available to both the world and to God. And then I think also that the really wonderful byproduct is, you know, the more you honor your own dignity, it's just natural and implicit that you will honor the dignity of others. And so I find that when I give myself a chance to read or pray or even just take a little extra time to enjoy a moment of beauty or savor my food, that I am able to be more patient with my family. I'm able to see little moments where my own boys are in just a moment of embodiment.

Speaker 2: 28:09

I have a son, my youngest son, who loves when I wake him up in the morning. He loves to have my wife come help him get dressed, and he's eight, so he doesn't need it right, it's not necessary, but I know it's just for connection and I think having the awareness of my own body has let me notice. Oh, that's him wanting a moment of relationship and it would be so easy to push him. No, buddy, you just got to get dressed. We got to start getting ready for school and objectify him right. You need to get in the car. You need to get to school because I need to get to work. Right. Can you start to hear? I could miss that and I'm so grateful that God has given me the eyes to see. No, that's a moment of embodiment for him. So one of the greatest gifts of this freedom is it is inherently going to help. You want to treat people with dignity, relationship, connection, you know, in a way that's just flows out of your own love and self-love.

Speaker 1: 29:19

Yeah, that's so true. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Drew. It's good to be here. It's great to have you back. Guys, if you want to connect with Sam, go to samjolmancom. You can find more links in the show notes. Definitely get a copy of the Sex Talk you Never Got. If you haven't, and if you have read the book, please review it on Amazon. And, regardless of whether or not you do all these things, always remember you are God's beloved son. In you he is well-pleased.