My Delight with Sarah Bartel

Here's the episode with all the things married women wish someone had told them when they first got married.
Maybe you've been married a while, and no one ever told you. It's not too late to learn!
Maybe you're a newlywed, or about to get married. You're in a great place to learn good habits early, before you settle into practices in your marriage that work against good lovemaking--practices that are unhelpful, harmful, or even sinful.
If you want help unpacking these Ten Truths further, you can learn more in The Wedding Night and Beyond: The Catholic Bride's Guide to Sex in Marriage. This is good for engaged women, newlyweds, AND wives married decades who never learned all this at the beginning (which, let's be honest, is probably most women!).
https://canafeast.com/weddingnight

Other resources mentioned in this episode

The Catechism of the Catholic Church  2363
The Ohnut by the Pelvic People (device to reduce penetration depth to prevent pain)
The Obligation Sex Series by Sheila Gregoire (excellent blog article series by an Evangelical Christian author/speaker)
A Closer Look at Sexual Coercion (straightforward article on a hotline website)
My Delight podcast episode "Marital Debt is Not Church Teaching"
My Delight podcast episode "What is Sexual Coercion?"
 🔥 Free Guide to 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit for Improving Intimacy for Catholic Wives 
https://canafeast.com/MyDelight-9-Skills
🤔 What is Allowed for Catholics in the Bedroom? Find out in the 19-page "What's Allowed List" ($10)
https://canafeast.com/mydelight-whatsallowed

MORE RESOURCES
Free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Women: 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit (for married and engaged women)
Do you want to know what is allowed for Catholics in the bedroom? The "What's Allowed List" answers 20+ questions about what is licit and illicit. ($10)
Model-free lingerie! Get 10% off with my affiliate link for Mentionables.

Your brain is your most important sexual organ.
As you go through your days, weeks, months, and years, you need to make space in your brain for relaxation, creativity, fun, and pleasure... if you want to have those in lovemaking.
You have to learn to periodically value other things more than productivity.
-Connection
-Rest
-Play
-Delight
A woman in a chronic stress state is not going to be able to enjoy sex very much. 
In this episode, Sarah shares some examples for how you can slow down and connect with yourself ....and with your husband!... in order to create the foundation you need for good lovemaking. 
 🔥 Free Guide to 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit for Improving Intimacy for Catholic Wives 
https://canafeast.com/MyDelight-9-Skills
🤔 What is Allowed for Catholics in the Bedroom? Find out in the 19-page "What's Allowed List" ($10)
https://canafeast.com/mydelight-whatsallowed

MORE RESOURCES
Free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Women: 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit (for married and engaged women)
Do you want to know what is allowed for Catholics in the bedroom? The "What's Allowed List" answers 20+ questions about what is licit and illicit. ($10)
Model-free lingerie! Get 10% off with my affiliate link for Mentionables.

When Megan Gephart first signed up for the My Delight course, her husband was deployed. She and her husband were both active duty military, and they wouldn't be together for months, but she was decided to use the time while he was away to start work on herself before.
Years later, Megan is still seeing the fruits unfold in her marriage. 
She shares her story of the tremendous changes she made.
🍍 She decided not to push through pain any more--and to finally talk to her husband about it.
🍓 She realized her pleasure mattered just as much as her husband's--which led to even more more honest, open communication than she'd ever had before in her marriage.
🍇 Now creating time to be together is a big priority. Hear the story of the weekend getaway that was like "heaven on earth"--though events, tensions, a nursing infant, and a big NFP decision leading up to the weekend could have derailed it.  
🫐 She went from avoiding intimacy and avoiding non-sexual touch to finding her way to turn towards and actively choose connection. 
🍒 Listen to Meghan share the genius shift her therapist suggested that is helping non-sexual touch go SO much better in her marriage now!
Megan and her husband are now preparing a new adventure with military orders to Germany. She shares how they are being intentional about preparing for this new adventure (and all the packing and tasks leading up to it), while continuing to communicate closely about prioritizing their marriage, improving their love life ever more, and preparing for the years when they'll be that loving, affectionate silver-haired older couple sitting on their porch swing!

Follow Megan Gephart's work supporting Catholic women entrepreneurs and professionals with coaching for strategy, operations, and sustainable growth at Apostolic Fruit. 

She also co-hosts the Apostolic Fruit podcast with her business partner, Anna Saucier.

 🔥 Free Guide to 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit for Improving Intimacy for Catholic Wives 
https://canafeast.com/MyDelight-9-Skills
🤔 What is Allowed for Catholics in the Bedroom? Find out in the 19-page "What's Allowed List" ($10)
https://canafeast.com/mydelight-whatsallowed

MORE RESOURCES
Free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Women: 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit (for married and engaged women)
Do you want to know what is allowed for Catholics in the bedroom? The "What's Allowed List" answers 20+ questions about what is licit and illicit. ($10)
Model-free lingerie! Get 10% off with my affiliate link for Mentionables.

Most marriages have one spouse who is more interested in sex, and another who is less interested. This is desire difference. While this is normal--most marriages have a desire difference one way or another--it causes a lot of tension in marriages.
Sarah brings on her husband, Nathan, to talk about understanding desire difference from a husband's point of view at a deeper level. Beyond just physical libido, he shares about the yearning for connection with their wives he hears from men he's worked with who have the higher desire. He also shares what it's like for the husband who has the lower desire.
Understanding is key, and so are actionable skills that couples can use to help navigate the different factors at work.
Sarah and Nathan point some paths forward to creating more connection--including not making sex the only source of connection in the marriage. 
They discuss the importance of recognizing the wife's mental load, and how the wife and husband can work with that. 
Affirmation and gratitude, non-sexual touch, empathy, and curiousity all help husbands and wives grow closer, feel seen, feel like they matter to the other, and grow in their unity and emotional connection.
Catholic husbands interested in Nathan's free Desires Differences workshop can join here through March 12th. Replays of past calls are available.
Desires Differences Workshop:
https://canafeast.com/desire
 🔥 Free Guide to 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit for Improving Intimacy for Catholic Wives 
https://canafeast.com/MyDelight-9-Skills
🤔 What is Allowed for Catholics in the Bedroom? Find out in the 19-page "What's Allowed List" ($10)
https://canafeast.com/mydelight-whatsallowed

MORE RESOURCES
Free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Women: 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit (for married and engaged women)
Do you want to know what is allowed for Catholics in the bedroom? The "What's Allowed List" answers 20+ questions about what is licit and illicit. ($10)
Model-free lingerie! Get 10% off with my affiliate link for Mentionables.

When we fast, we can expect a pattern of five spiritual attacks--whether the fast is from food, behaviors like scrolling, people-pleasing, or other comforts.
The enemy works in our false attachments: to things, to false gods, and to false comforts. He likes to get us to put something above God in our life, and that creates disorder.
Fasting restores order.
It puts God back as the center of our life.
Of course the enemy will pursue our soul when we do this. 
Learn his tactics, learn that this is normal (you are not failing), and then learn how to gently and lovingly restore proper order after an attack. 
Denise Jelinek joins Sarah to break down the play book for each of these five attacks... and shares what to do about them.
They touch on authentic self-care and tie it all in to 
Join Denise in fasting from the scale and finding peace with food this Lent in her beautiful and deeply transformative 63 Surrendered Program! 

Ash Wednesday Sale: Get it for $1 a day (coupon code: Lent63)
Join here: https://weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com/

 🔥 Free Guide to 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit for Improving Intimacy for Catholic Wives 
https://canafeast.com/MyDelight-9-Skills
🤔 What is Allowed for Catholics in the Bedroom? Find out in the 19-page "What's Allowed List" ($10)
https://canafeast.com/mydelight-whatsallowed

MORE RESOURCES
Free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Women: 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit (for married and engaged women)
Do you want to know what is allowed for Catholics in the bedroom? The "What's Allowed List" answers 20+ questions about what is licit and illicit. ($10)
Model-free lingerie! Get 10% off with my affiliate link for Mentionables.