Sexual Struggles Women Hide: Drs. Juli Slattery & Joy Skarka

Ann Wilson: Hey, we just wanted to give you a heads up before you listen to this next program because today's conversation on Family Life covers some pretty sensitive, but but really important subjects that may not be suitable for younger ears. So just use some discretion when listening to this next broadcast.
Dave Wilson: And let me add this. And if you do listen with your kids, talk about it after with them.
Ann Wilson: Yeah. Right. This is an important conversation to have with maybe older kids, just depending on what you're thinking. But we just wanted to give you a heads up.
Dr. Juli Slattery: You think about the way our conversations about sexuality have changed over the last maybe 15 or 20 years. We've had to get deeper theologically.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Mm.
Dr. Juli Slattery: All the questions about not just pornography, but addressing trauma, what do you do with trauma, LGBT kind of questions. Just telling people the rules and telling them to live by these rules have not been enough. Like people are like, where's God in this?
Dr. Joy Skarka: Mm.
Dr. Juli Slattery: And so I think one of the good things to come out of a lot of the brokenness we experience is that we've had to go to the scriptures and we've had to bring this before the Lord and grapple at a deeper level.
Dave Wilson: Welcome to Family Life Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.
Ann Wilson: And I'm Ann Wilson and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.
Dr. Juli Slattery: We have two doctors in the house and I'm a little giddy about these two.
Dave Wilson: And it's not us.
Dr. Juli Slattery: It's not us.
Dave Wilson: Like our listeners don't they do they know that.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. We have Dr. Julie Slattery and Joy Skarka who have written a book together. And it's not a book. It's an 8-week You guys describe what it is.
Dr. Joy Skarka: It was fun to write together. It was an 8-week curriculum, a small group study. You can go through it in a discipleship relationship or by yourself and or with a friend. So 8 weeks of great content.
Dave Wilson: About what?
Dr. Joy Skarka: About freedom from pornography. So I'd like to describe it. It's the book I wish I had when I was struggling back in the day as a young college student.
Dr. Juli Slattery: And the title is Her Freedom Journey, A Guide Out of Porn and Shame to Authentic Intimacy. It's interesting that you both have your doctorates. You work together. And how did this come about? Cuz Joy, we want to hear that whole journey you've been on. But Julie, you're here. How did you guys get together?
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yeah. Hey, there's power in prayer and sending emails. Julie was coming to Dallas and I had some friends there and I went to visit them and I sent out an email saying, hey Julie, I'd love to meet you and pitch myself to work for you.
Dr. Juli Slattery: But you're not just like this typical, hey this girl out of nowhere. You're in Dallas Theological Seminary and at the time were you getting your doctorate?
Dr. Joy Skarka: Right. So I was finishing my doctorate, studying sexual shame, interviewing thousands of women and I had this dream to one day work at Authentic Intimacy. So I just prayed for it.
Dave Wilson: No, why why Julie? Why Authentic Intimacy?
Dr. Joy Skarka: There's not any other ministries like it.
Dave Wilson: There isn't. There really isn't.
Dr. Joy Skarka: There there's similar, but you know, there's a lot of ministries focus on one specific thing, like affair recovery, porn recovery. But I love that Julie is big picture and covers all the things and really gets to the root issue of intimacy and the focus.
Dr. Juli Slattery: But you guys had never met.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Mm-mm.
Dave Wilson: Julie, did you go, oh I want to meet this girl or was that a weird thing?
Dr. Joy Skarka: I had never met her before.
Dave Wilson: Yeah.
Dr. Joy Skarka: And it happens every now and then that if if I'm traveling somewhere, somebody will reach out and just say, hey I'd like to meet you. Usually they don't send an email ahead of time. They just show up in an event and stand in the line to say something and but she was really proactive in reaching out and just saying, hey can I have 15 minutes of Julie's time? And so I'm like, all right.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Did she give her credentials of what she was doing at the time?
Dr. Joy Skarka: I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. I know.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Hard to remember.
Ann Wilson: Whoa, you didn't even throw it out.
Dr. Joy Skarka: I might have. I probably focused on So Sex and the Single Girl, one of Julie's books, was such a game changer for me. I probably started with that.
Dr. Juli Slattery: I think you did. Yeah.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yeah, just saying how God had used that book in her life and journey and
Ann Wilson: So Julie, what did you think when you guys met? Did you think, hmm there could be something here?
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yeah, I did. I mean, it was great talking to her even just just for 15 minutes and I had do have people every now and then who will say to me, like I've always wanted to work with you or work for Authentic Intimacy and I never say no. I always just say, we'll see what God does.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah.
Dr. Joy Skarka: That was the last contact we had for 6 months or so and then we had a job posting at Authentic Intimacy and Joy got in touch with me and said, hey do you think I would be good for this? And I was like, you are so overqualified for this particular job posting, but she's like, I want to apply anyway. And it was a part-time job. She was so qualified. We're like, we'll hire you full-time to do more than this job was posted for. So
Dr. Juli Slattery: And you got to tell what had been happening in those 6 months.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yeah, so my late husband and I we prayed every night for that job or a similar. I think it was just sexual wholeness, some similar job and God opened the door.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Well, we need to get into your journey, Joy, of even you guys writing about this. And
Dr. Joy Skarka: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Juli Slattery: I just said before we got on air, Joy, I 'm not sure we've had a woman talk about this openly about a struggle with porn on the air before. So thanks for being so vulnerable. Like I think this is something that there's a lot of people, women that are struggling and they're not talking about it. So for you to be out there and share your story, well done.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Well, thank you and thanks for being willing to have the conversation. Many people aren't willing to.
Dave Wilson: Yeah. So what's the story? Let's go back. Let's get into it. Yes.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yeah, give us take us back. Yeah. So yeah, so as a fifth grader, I first saw porn which that's the average age is 11 years old.
Dave Wilson: Has it always been, Julie, that young or has it gotten lower?
Dr. Joy Skarka: I believe it's gotten lower in terms of the norm, but yeah, you still will hear stories like I know you had shared and on a previous broadcast like three or four.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah. Yeah. Oh wow.
Dr. Joy Skarka: So yeah, there are all kinds of stories, but as pornography is becoming more normalized, almost every kid is going to see it around at least by 10 or 11.
Dave Wilson: Yeah. And when you were 11, are you talking like digital? Was it a magazine or
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yeah, so this would have been like when laptops were just a thing and I can picture that old Dell computer, my friend opening it, showing me the site.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Oh, so your friend showed you this.
Dr. Joy Skarka: My friend did it. She came over and just showed me and I mean, I had no idea what it was. I just felt like, oh something just feels wrong. I remember shutting my bedroom doors so my parents wouldn't know. But it wouldn't impact me till decades later. It just It definitely awakened sexuality and curiosities in my life.
Dave Wilson: So that was it. Just that one time.
Dr. Joy Skarka: That one time. And then fast forward to college. My third day of college I was date raped on my campus which is very common, sadly.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Is it?
Dr. Joy Skarka: Very common. As a freshman in a new state, didn't have any friends. Such a nightmare. And porn became my coping mechanism. It started out as a sex education which is really common for women that we talk to. That you just google your questions cuz you don't have a sex ed, your family doesn't talk about it and that leads you to pornography. And so it became my education and then my coping mechanism and spent a good year plus just pretty stuck in that spot.
Dr. Juli Slattery: And where were you spiritually at the time and what were you where were you growing up spiritually?
Dr. Joy Skarka: So I grew up going to church, but it wasn't They didn't understand the gospel. And actually, fun fact, I went to Cru, a a Cru event, a campus meeting and heard the gospel and I remember going up to my leader afterwards and saying, so I don't have to earn his love. I don't have to be perfect and try and have it all together. It's a gift. And that's when it started clicking, started getting discipled. Really grew my passion for college students. So if I wasn't working with Julie, I'd probably be working with Cru. So
Dave Wilson: Well, you're here at Cru and you are
Dr. Joy Skarka: I know. At Cru.
Dr. Juli Slattery: But you still had this little secret. Have you told anybody, even your discipler?
Dr. Joy Skarka: I did. We had a women's event at Cru and a brave woman went first. And I'll never forget. I can picture her being brave. You could hear a pin drop. I mean, the silence in this room of like 30 50 women. And I just remember going up to her afterwards, telling her I'd been struggling and this relief, like I'm not alone, other women struggle too, we can talk about this. I had only heard men talk about it up until this point. And it was just so freeing to start that journey. So I started to get discipled by her, started going to counseling, all these things different things to work on finding healing and freedom.
Dr. Juli Slattery: And when you are talking about this 8-week curriculum, this is what you mean like, I wish I would have had that.
Dr. Joy Skarka: This is what I wish I had. Yes. Because so much I found was more behavior changing than getting to the deeper root issues which through Julie.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Julie, when did that change? Cuz it's always been behavior for years and years. And now yeah, decades. I can remember when that all it was. Hey, just put these things on your computer, don't look, shield your eyes. But now we're saying, no there's more to it than that. When did that start?
Dr. Joy Skarka: I don't know when it actually started to shift, but I think a lot of it is people just not finding help by the behavior approach. And then also, if you think about the way our conversations about sexuality have changed over the last maybe 15 or 20 years, we've had to get deeper theologically. All the questions about not just pornography, but addressing trauma, what do you do with trauma, LGBT kind of questions. Just telling people the rules and telling them to live by these rules have not been enough. Like people are like, where's God in this? And so I think one of the good things to come out of a lot of the brokenness we experience is that we've had to go to the scriptures and we've had to bring this before the Lord and grapple at a deeper level. Some of what has come out of that and all these conversations is really getting to the heart of God and also getting to where are the strongholds, where the enemy is camping out in our lives and we can't change even if we have the desire to.
Dave Wilson: Yeah, Joy, when you dove in, what did you find? I mean, you tell you said you were exposed to it as 11 year old, but what was else what was at the root?
Dr. Joy Skarka: So it was a lot of finding healing from that sexual trauma I mentioned. A lot of healing from that, a lot of anger and bitterness towards God of how did that happen? Was it my fault? Just all these big theological questions.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Did you ever tell anyone about that?
Dr. Joy Skarka: I did and I got some bad feedback from bad reactions. So that doesn't help either.
Dave Wilson: Like what? Like it was your fault?
Dr. Joy Skarka: Why did you go there? Why did you let that happen? I mean, close people that I loved dearly said that and it really just creates a lot of shame. I mean, even looking back at high school Joy, I could just see the shame already forming then just about being a sexual being that I didn't know that that was okay and that God designed it. It's just how to steward it. What do I do with these desires? No one was talking about this for a young single me.
Dave Wilson: Was it ever talked about in your home?
Dr. Joy Skarka: It was not. No. So I first heard about sex from a friend and I was grounded from going to the friend's house. That was the response. So it just wasn't handled. And the shame Yeah, so just I can look back and see that shame cycle and it just deep root in my heart.
Dave Wilson: Boy, I mean, this isn't where I want to go today, but Julie, how would you coach parents about that? Like they've got 11 year olds, 6 year olds, 15 year olds in their home and many Christian homes are a it's a they won't talk about it. If they say anything, don't do it, you know. But there's not really a a healthy environment in the home. How would you help parents?
Dr. Juli Slattery: Before you answer that, Julie, I 'll say the same thing that you said, Joy. I led a small group of young women, probably 12 women. Half of those women they had been date raped. I was shocked. Are you saying that this is happening more often than we realize? Yeah, I think there was a Time magazine article several years ago that reported about 25% of women on college campuses experience unwanted sexual contact.
Dr. Joy Skarka: That's a lot.
Dave Wilson: It is.
Dr. Joy Skarka: But those are just the people reporting it.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yes.
Dr. Joy Skarka: And there's no You don't want to report it with all that you have to go through.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Because you'll hear things like, well why did you go? Yeah. And so Julie, I'd like to get to Dave's question. As parents and Joy, you're a parent, you have two kids, how do we prepare our daughters for that? And our sons, really.
Dr. Joy Skarka: I think one thing we have to acknowledge when we talk about our parents, when we talk about church culture, they were doing the best they could. And there really weren't the tools and the conversations and the knowledge available to prepare parents for these conversations. And so starting with a lot of grace and because I think it's easy to look back and be like, oh man, every like my parents messed up or my pastors messed up, but they weren't trained. And here's what's really key. You can only pass on what you already have. When I 'm talking to parents, one of the first things I encourage them to do is they need discipleship in this area because if you are awkward, you've got your own shame, you don't know what to say and you
Dr. Juli Slattery: What you can probably do as a parent.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yeah. I mean, it's just I mean, I've said it before, it's easier for me to talk to 1,000 people about sex than talk to my own kids.
Dave Wilson: I agree.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Because there's it's just awkward. It is.
Dave Wilson: It's intimate. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Joy Skarka: So if you don't get your own healing and address some of your own questions and you're like, hey give me the book or give me the script, it's not going to go well. You're not prepared for what might come out and the kinds of difficulties your kids might encounter. So that's a very very important first step is for you as mom or dad to really go through your own healing to be able to have a safe place to process your own questions and your own experiences so that you're not bringing that into the conversation. And then we could do a whole another show someday on what is that discipleship process look like from toddlers all the way through. But one thing I'll just say, we have to keep in mind that in today's day and age it's not a matter of if my kids are going to encounter something or stumble or get into sin, it's when and what. Being prepared for that as a mom or dad, you're like, I so want to protect my kids from this. And there are preventative conversations you can have and boundaries, but also preparing your yourself for the fact that someday my my kid is going to see porn. Someday I very likely might see inappropriate text messages on their phone or DMs. You know, someday my kid might come to me and say, I'm really struggling with being a boy or a girl. And so just being prepared that that's not the end of the story, that that's your kid really coming to you and asking for guidance and discipleship.
Dr. Juli Slattery: It's really good.
Dave Wilson: I mean, that very fact makes you as a parent go, I got to be discipled in this cuz I want to That's so depressing. It I want it to be if, not when. But it is a win. And then parents think, okay then when it happens, I'm not going to know what to do. I'm either going to just do nothing or I'm going to farm it out. Thank God for what you're doing, discipling us parents just to help and even grandkids cuz we're now we're doing it with grandkids.
Dr. Juli Slattery: I know. Well done, women.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Well, even having sons, talking to our sons, Julie, you have all sons. Even what's appropriate with a girl, like I can't even imagine some of these boys and girls that are in college. And for you to end up in that situation, it affected you so much and it does all of us. So I'm really glad you guys have helped and put this out. But Joy, how did you meet your husband?
Dave Wilson: Yes, so in Dallas Theological Seminary we met in elevator. I held the door open for him. It was like a movie.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Wow. So I mean, after the elevator was it instant we're going to date?
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yeah. For him it was.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Did he know like he met you and he's like, this is my girl.
Dr. Joy Skarka: So he said to me later, we were supposed to go to this luncheon. He said, I decided I wasn't going to date right away. So I went and sat with a random guy for the luncheon and he said he turned out to be the most boring man in existence so I should have sat with you. That's what he said to me, but I think we started dating a couple months later.
Dr. Juli Slattery: The redemptiveness of God.
Dr. Joy Skarka: I mean, I could write a whole book on redemptive love, God and husband.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Because keep going with that journey. How long were you guys married before you
Dr. Joy Skarka: Well, well before she even gets into that, I know some pieces of her story that are just really cool.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah.
Dr. Joy Skarka: So you were nervous about your husband Zach or your boyfriend at that time finding out about your struggle and and you had already been very public about helping women and and
Dave Wilson: So other people knew.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Oh yeah, so my story is all over the internet.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Oh, even before you went to seminary?
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yes, so I started blogging in like 2013. I was on YouTube. All the things.
Dave Wilson: So somehow Zach didn't know.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Well, he didn't know me until we met and then
Dave Wilson: And then when you met him I mean, he didn't
Dr. Joy Skarka: Well, before our first date he had read over 200 blog posts I'd written. So he was well researched in me.
Dave Wilson: And what did he say? How did he respond?
Dr. Joy Skarka: He said he fell in love with me when he saw my heart for other women. We even we speak at events and women line up and one of the things they say to me is, I'm over this now. I've found healing and freedom, but will a man ever love me when they hear my story? And I'm able to say, you know I was there. I I believe that lie. And yeah. Zach was different.
Dr. Juli Slattery: And he gave you a new title too. You got to share that.
Dr. Joy Skarka: He did. So I started this journey. I'm speaking about porn and someone said to me, you sure you want to be known as porn girl? I mean, who wants that title? And I'm like, no I don't want that title. And Zach said to me, you're not porn girl, you're freedom girl. And it became my new thing. Yeah, cuz why have my identity be in my past struggle? My identity should be in who Christ made me to be.
Dave Wilson: Yes. You're new. And how I
Dr. Juli Slattery: The old is gone, the new is come.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yes.
Dave Wilson: Wow.
Dr. Joy Skarka: So yes, his love was very redemptive, very healing in many ways.
Dave Wilson: Did you get married in while you guys were in seminary or after?
Dr. Joy Skarka: 10 months dating, 10 months engaged.
Dave Wilson: And then how long married?
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yeah, we were married 8 years and then he got brain cancer and he died a year later. I got to walk him home to eternity and that's the biggest honor I could ever do. Halfway through his cancer battle I got diagnosed with breast cancer. We had to separate for a lot of it. His parents taking care of him and one of our toddlers, my parents taking care of me and one of my toddlers and he still sent me encouraging texts every day that he could, every day he mentally could.
Dave Wilson: Wow.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Very redemptive love.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Beautiful, redemptive.
Dave Wilson: To get even more personal cuz I know there's women especially that are thinking, okay if I've had a sexual trauma or I'm bringing even a porn struggle, whatever, into my marriage, how did that go? Like the the marriage part, the sexual part, you know, walking through sexual wholeness with now your husband.
Dr. Joy Skarka: And that could be a whole another episode too, but I mean, I won't sugarcoat it and say those things don't impact your marriage cuz they do. And I'm sure it'll impact my next marriage.
Dave Wilson: I'd love for you to elaborate a little bit because you often hear of a man's struggle and maybe a comparison. Is it different for a woman?
Dr. Joy Skarka: One of the biggest things with porn is it's so self-focused which is the opposite of God's design for covenant love where you know, you're serving your spouse and loving each other and all that and I think I in the beginning was so trained it's not let's invite this person in who And just some history on Zach and he'd be fine with me saying this is he had never struggled with porn. He had maybe saw it once when a kid showed it in fifth grade and never looked at it again. So just our sexual histories alone were different going into it. And I think a big struggle that I've had was I was the sexual broken one. And a lot of the work at AI really helped me heal from that, that we're all sexually broken. Zach and I went to a conference together back in 2020. And we were even married at this point, but I still was struggling with some of that, thinking I was the more sexually broken one in the relationship and that just further healing happened later on as we processed that.
Dave Wilson: I mean, was there something Zach did as a husband to help love you through that? Cuz when Ann and I got married, I knew about her sexual trauma. I had a perspective and we were pretty new in Jesus, like less than 2 years, maybe a year and a half. So my thought was it's her past. The old's gone and the new's come. It's done. I was that naive. Like it may have happened 20 years ago, but it's a new day and it won't come into our marriage or literally into our marriage bed. Duh, I was so naive. So when it did, I was like, what? What are you That was so long ago. How So I was so bad cuz I didn't want to walk through it with her. I just wanted her to get over it and we'd be good or I'd be good. It was very selfish. I I obviously learned. I actually read Wounded Hearts, one of the first things I read by Dan Allender. Dan was on our weekend to remember speaker team and he started handed it to me.
Dr. Juli Slattery: I think I handed it to you.
Dave Wilson: And there's a chapter for the spouse and I'm like, yeah I guess I'm the spouse and I'm like, oh my goodness. I'm so sorry. How do we walk this? So did Zach Was he able to walk with you? What did that look like? Cuz there's husbands listening.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Yeah.
Dave Wilson: They're like, what do I do? How do I How do I navigate?
Dr. Joy Skarka: I think I was just as shocked and surprised that it impacted us. So
Dr. Juli Slattery: Me too.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Yeah, cuz I just I did all the things. I went to counseling, I read all the books, we ran all the premarital, pre-engagement counseling, we did all the things. So I was so shocked that it still impacted, but I mean, his love, um his support, his encouragement, his pausing, asking good questions, never tried to be right, just tried to be loving.
Dave Wilson: Mm.
Dr. Joy Skarka: Those were the game changers and kind of let me lead. Like if there was something that was triggering, I would just so much communication there of, okay we that we can't do that or let's pivot.
Dave Wilson: The book is called Her Freedom Journey, A Guide Out of Porn and Shame to Authentic Intimacy. And we've got it at familylifetoday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes.
Dr. Juli Slattery: Before we're done today, I just want to remind our listeners that our vision at Family Life is every home a godly home. And we need your help to get there. And when you become a Family Life partner, your monthly support makes that vision actually possible.
Dave Wilson: Yeah, you'll get access to exclusive updates and events and the chance to join our partners only online community. But more than that, you're helping change the future of families. So the question is, will you come alongside us and alongside families in need?
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Dave Wilson: Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a Cru ministry celebrating 50 years of God's faithfulness as marriages grow stronger and families flourish in him.