How I Got Started Helping Catholic Wives with Sex, with Ellen Holloway

Ellen Holloway interviews host Sarah Bartel about how she got started helping Catholic married women improve their sex lives. She also interviews Sarah about her My Delight course for Catholic women. They talk about what happens inside the course and who the course is for.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the My Delight podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Bartel, and it's truly my delight to have you here. I'm a Catholic sex and marriage coach and a moral theologian, as well as the creator of the MyDelight online course for Catholic married and engaged women, which helps women enjoy lovemaking with their husbands. So many good Catholic women struggle with their love lives in marriage, and I want you to know that you are not alone. Just a heads up that since I do discuss intimate topics with candor and detail on this show, you might want to listen with earbuds in if you have kids around or if you're in a public place. If you'd like my free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic, Engaged, and Married Women that covers nine skills for body, mind, and spirit, you can get it from the show notes or download it at canafeast com. Welcome to the my delight podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Bartell, and I am joined by my friend, fellow Catholic sex and marriage coach, Ellen Holloway. Ellen is the host of the Charting Towards Intimacy podcast and course creator at vinesinfullbloom. com where she is. Offering the Orgasm Course for Catholic Women, and I'm really, I always have such a great time talking with Ellen about these things but this episode is going to be a little different because Ellen, who's so good at interviewing, since she has her wonderful podcast that's been running so long she's going to interview me about how I got into taking over. Yes. Right. It's like a podcast takeover, if you will. So I'm going to allow Ellen to interview me about how I began doing this work and yeah, what, what we do inside my delight. Yeah. Oh, I'm excited. This is fun. I love interviewing. All right. So Sarah, let's just start off with how did you get in to this work of talking to married Catholic women and engaged Catholic women about their sex lives? Like, how did you, how did that start? I did not foresee that God would lead and call me and equip me to become the Catholic sex lady or one of the Catholic sex ladies. Cause Ellen, I hope that you also are proud of the title of being a Catholic sex lady. And that there will be many others are, and we see, we have friends also who are, who are working in it, isn't it? It's just like a unique path for each woman who's called to this. For me, I see the beginnings of it years ago. Goodness, almost 20 years ago when I was in graduate school. Yeah, that is actually a solid 20 years ago when I was in graduate school studying moral theology. And my specialization is in marriage, family, sexual ethics, and bioethics. So I got used to speaking about sex, you know, in public with you know, in the seminar room, and reading scholarly writings, and discussing this early. So that really helped me develop a confidence with speaking, frankly, about sex. Yeah, in public spaces then later as my husband and I developed our own marriage ministry after years of in person ministry in our local area at parishes and at the archdiocesan level we went online to bring great, you know, marriage ministry resources to those who couldn't always attend a retreat in person. And we've been doing this for a few years, really enjoying it really. So gratified to be able to work with couples and help them grow in their, their skills and communication and renew their joy. And then one young woman emailed me in our ministry emails, and she said, our marriage is really great. My husband and I are, we're each other's best friends, we communicate really well, we have a lot of joy with each other. There's just this one area that's not working. I said, what do you mean it's not working? And as we corresponded more, I realized that she was struggling with massive anxiety and shame. around sex and this was affecting her physically and her ability to come together with her husband. By this point it was after the pandemic and As you know, as many people know, there was a massive mental health crisis during the pandemic and that affected our family as well. We had a child in our family who struggled with debilitating anxiety and depression during that time. And in praise and thanks be to God, we found the right resources. We figured out what was going on with her and were able to help her make a full recovery. But part of that was working with our local children's hospital which offers an anxiety clinic for parents and children to do together online. And I learned a lot of skills for helping our daughter work through her anxiety. And I thought maybe I can use some of these tools I learned and help this young woman with managing and calming her anxiety around lovemaking with her husband and also just teach her the truth that, you know, God, that it's okay to be sexually aroused and to experience pleasure and lovemaking. This is God's will and God's gift for us. It's part of our holiness because she really grew up in this household that was so rigid and very religious, but the only message around sex was that it is a huge sin before marriage and don't do it. And she just associated that, you know that sense of prohibition. It made her really. feel anxious about being sexually aroused in marriage. So I offered to work with her and I told her you can, you know, let's do a series of coaching calls and if you find a benefit, great. And if not, we'll just, I'll give you a total refund. No problem. This is just an experiment. Well, the experiment worked. Thanks and praise be to God. She made huge progress. And then I thought, well, I wonder if anyone else would like help in this area. So I put it out there on social media. At the time I was active on Instagram, and I asked our Instagram audience I'm thinking of creating a course. to help Catholic married and engaged women learn to enjoy making love. Would anyone be interested? What would you want help with? And there was a huge flood of responses, huge outpouring of interest, of people saying, yes, I would really like that. And so I decided, okay, let's just put something together and try it and see if it works. And that was the beginning of my delight. So it was, it's been about two and a half years now that I've, and now I've helped over 200 women through the course and it's just been such a rewarding, joyful thing to work with women specifically in this area of their marriage. Yeah, it's just, I know Ellen, you feel it too. It's just really rewarding, right? To help someone improve in this area. Yeah. Oh, who is the, my delight course for then this is for Catholic women who want to live their Catholic faith in their sex and marriage, you know, in their sex life and in marriage. So they want, you know, have a, a will to follow church teaching, you know, to avoid contraception. And NFP, but but these are Catholics and, faithful. And yeah, they could be engaged women. The women in the course could be newly wed. They could have been married a few years be, you know, somewhere in the middle years of marriage with a few kids homeschooling or not, or even I have a lot of women come through the course who are in perimenopause or postmenopause or retirement age, and they still have a lot of learning and growing and benefiting that happens in the course. It's never too late. I've had a woman in her seventies in the course. That's fantastic. Oh my gosh. I love it. Okay. So tell me a little bit about what happens in my delight. What would someone expect if they sign up? Yeah. So I will just share that. One of the beautiful things that happens inside my delight is that we create a safe place that is a sisterhood of like minded Catholic women. Who are all in this together and they support each other pray for each other are encouraging I always ask God to send me like the best women yet in the course like just a wonderful group a wonderful cohort and he always follows through and I just find these just beautiful women who really are kind to each other Really accepting and affirming so we have weekly group coaching calls just for women only during the three months that the course runs, as well as recorded lessons and a workbook that women work through on their own time at their own pace. And then interspersed among that, we also have guest experts like you, lovely Ellen, and other friends and experts come in to address specific topics, whether it's perimenopause or betrayal trauma. Or we have a medical expert come in and we have this wonderful doctor who comes in and talks about. I'm going to be talking about libido and, you know, female libido and how to, how to nourish and work with libido. So yeah, it's just, it's really a delightful, if I dare say mix of, yeah, the guest experts. It's group coaching and coursework that women do at their own time. And women have the option to get the premium level of membership in which they would also, in addition to all that, get lifetime access and three one on one individual coaching calls with me. And we can just get so much done in those individual calls to work on that woman's specific challenges, roadblocks, and issues and help her have a great transformation. Awesome. Okay. So tell me a couple of like glory stories from alums. I love that. So I like the idea of glory stories calls to mind saints. You know, we my, my kids, we listen to these glory stories, saint stories that holy heroes puts out and they are wonderful, but really this is part of, you know, like St. Irenaeus says, the glory of God is the human person fully alive. And I think we can adapt that to the glory of God is, you know, a woman fully integrating her sexuality in her whole life. In a holy way, that is something glorious and beautiful. So I don't think it's an exaggeration or reach to talk about glory here. Don't you think like great lovemaking is one of the glorious mysteries in married life? You know, honestly, like sex is one of the most deeply human acts that we can do because it involves our soul and our body. And we as human persons, we are a soul body union. We are unite. Unique in the fact that we have this soul body union, right? Angels have a soul, but no body animals have a body, but they don't have an intellect. They don't have that soul component. And so when we engage in an act that so deeply requires opening up our entire self to another person, like we, we. Into becoming fully alive, right? I think that there is just this aspect of being fully alive in that moment of intercourse in that moment of climax, particularly that doesn't exist anywhere else in the in the realm of human action that we can do. And then if we think about even further that like fully alive aspect, sometimes those unions Create another life, right? They're so alive that it creates more life. Like I think there's just what, what St. Irenaeus said in some ways can be so pinpointed to a glorious. Coming together of husband and wife. Absolutely. Yes. Well, the catechism says in paragraph two, three, six, one, that sexuality is not something simply biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. I think that's exactly what you're saying here that, you know, as humans, unlike animals, when we make love, our soul is involved. This involves our heart, our mind. And yeah, that's why animals don't have sex problems, right? Right. This is a whole person activity for a human being, a fully human activity. So you have to have this heart to heart connection and to be communicating. And this is this is where the beautiful transformation, the glory stories occur. What women, the transformations that different women have experienced going through my delight are things like learning how to not be ashamed of sex in their marriage anymore. Learning how to learn what is nice for them and communicate it with confidence and and advocate for themselves with their husbands and feel more connected with him. Feel more on a team regarding their lovemaking. That it's not just something they're doing as a chore or a duty for him, or not something they just go get through, but something that they really look forward to and enjoy. And, you know, have more confidence around, I feel like it's more nourishing for them. I had a woman in my most recent cohort in the fall 2024 cohort who had been married about 22 or 23 years. They had some young adult children, teen children, you know, younger children at home. And she was experiencing that she and her husband for the last 10 or so years, they just, she just felt like their, their intimacy was in a rut. And it wasn't really that fun and they didn't, it was awkward to talk about. She didn't want to make him feel bad. She didn't really know what to do. So for her, just learning about foreplay and about communicating and that like, this is okay. Just that sense that like of okayness in developing and exploring, you know, where pleasure is. For the woman as well as the man learning ideas for how to be more creative and playful together. That was everything for her. She actually had three coaching calls with me because she was a premium student. By the end of the second one, she said, I'm going to give my third coaching call to someone in need in the course because we're good. I don't need that third one. We're doing so great. And also she had a conflict and you know, couldn't. I couldn't make the third one fit in her schedule, but it was just like learning some new skills and getting new ideas. That was all it took for her. So that was really fun. But I also have on the other end like an engaged woman in my last cohort. Who was really faithful prayerful, devout, oldest of a big family, and looking forward to lovemaking, but she had a lot to learn, and once she learned more about things like, you know, foreplay is needed, the arousal curve is different for women and men, the importance of calming yourself first cause I could tell she had a little bit of a scrupulous temperament. Bit of anxiety kind of rigid really focused on the rules and I had to tell her I'm like, you know what? I'm sorry. I don't want this for you But I think with this situation you're kind of set up as it is now to experience pain the first time or a few and she was She's like, Oh, really? I'm like, yeah, but you don't have to. Here's what we can do. So that it won't necessarily be painful or maybe just slightly uncomfortable once you get married and, you know, start coming together. And she was so grateful and just wrote me like, I think you have saved us. And, you know, she just really thankful and is going to share with her sisters and friends. So that was really happy as well. And then I also have women in retirement age or post menopause. who find a whole new level of intimacy and communication with their husband, appreciation for their own body, realizing they're not broken, and just finding lots of joy. So all those are glory stories, just a sample of glory stories of what is possible. And, you know, God has something unique for each woman who comes through the course. Sometimes the results happen and the transformations happen pretty quickly you know, early in those months we have together. Sometimes it's a slow release. And, you know, it works in a longer way and it's, it, women will get back in touch with me sometime after the course and say, okay, you know, now things are changing. So yeah, it can happen different ways for different women. Absolutely. So what are some of the most common improvements that you see that, that like alums have emailed you about or have mentioned in coaching calls of like, wow, this is, this is really improved here. Yeah. Well, one of the. Areas we talk about a lot is libido and so just understanding libido more correctly. So women who have thought that they were low libido, once we talk more and they understand more about the difference between a responsive and what's blanking out, responsible spontaneous libido, right. Or just that there's desired differences in every couple. Then they're like, oh, I, I understand better now. I don't think I'm broken anymore. And now we know as a couple, you know, how to help me enjoy lovemaking. So that is a big change. Learning just to talk with their husbands more and what kinds of conversations to have, how to keep them positive. Those are big transformations that occur as well. Other times it seems like. A woman will gain the, will be empowered to start understanding how not to tolerate her husband's ongoing porn use. And I'll point her, you know, I can't help with that entirely on my own. I'll point her towards other great resources that are out there to help support her. Or couples where the husband has now recovered from porn and he's sober from it, but they're still not enjoying lovemaking. I'll give them. A lot more ideas and skills for how to make this mutually enjoyable. That's the main thing here is it's just like more enjoyment, which joy is spiritual as well as physical, right? So more enjoyment, more pleasure better communication, more intimacy in the sense of being close as husband and wife emotionally as well as spiritually. That is a lot of what happens. And then other transformations that happen are just learning how to care for your emotional heart to heart connection as a couple and then How to care for yourself as a woman. I talk I've really emphasized the importance of your own Self care, you know like your need for rest and good nourishment and finding delight and joy in your daily life as well That is really key and learning to heal your body image. Also, all of these are just examples of some of the types of transformations that can happen. Yeah. And of course, I love that. I mean, honestly, I think anyone listening. Would have at least latched on to like five of the things that you said, like, or at least like two or three of just, wow, I would really like to see that improvement in my marriage, in, in my sex life. And I think it's just beautiful what you have created and how many marriages you have been able to support. And I think so many 180s. That have happened. I mean, you told a few stories, but I've heard so many more stories that you've just mentioned to me in, in emails or different conversations that we've had of just incredible transformation. And I think just something I want to share with anyone listening. If you're, you know, considering the my delight course and you're not really sure that. There is nothing that is worth more investment than your marriage. Your marriage is your vocation. That is your primary vocation. And that is the way in which God has called you to get to heaven. Like he has ordained you and your husband to be together and, and help each other toward heaven. And your sex life is, is one of those places that You're able to, you know, I mean, really that you're able to taste just a tiny little foretaste of heaven in your sex life, but also a way that you're able to grow in, in holiness, in closeness and vulnerability and all of these, you know, wonderful aspects. And so like, this is. Worth your time and effort and money and, and everything like it, this is, this is the place where you do need to be making an effort. And so it's worth it. Oh, thank you so much, Ellen. You've always been such a wonderful supporter. I really appreciate that. And it is worth it. You know, a lot of times a woman might think, Well, I'll put myself on the back burner. I don't want to do something for me. And if it, if that is you listening to me, think about this. Think about your children, your daughters and your sons. And what kind of a message about lovemaking that you want to communicate to them. You might not be having explicit conversations. I hope you'll be having some sort of conversation. But there is just this invisible ripple effect that happens when a woman, a wife, is transformed in her marriage. Then she's able to help her. And yeah, as well as that next generation to help them, her, her own daughters and sons have a healthy, balanced, holy view of sex. That's not, you know, crippled with shame. That is. is authentic and whole and, you know, really aware and informed about how God designed us as men and women. So yeah, do it for your kids, if not for yourself, but do it for yourself. Cause you're worth it. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Ellen. It's been wonderful to be interviewed by you really always appreciate having conversations with you. So thank you so much. Always a pleasure, Sarah. All right. God bless you all. Hope this episode of My Delight was helpful for you. If you'd like my free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Married Women that covers nine skills for body, mind, and spirit, you can get it from the show notes or go to canafeast com. God bless you.