Good Desires

Sexuality in the Creation of Self

“Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.” —Proverbs 31:10

Rachel was a keen observer of others, attuned to the unspoken dynamics around her. Even as a young girl, she noticed the fractures in her parents’ marriage. She sensed her mother’s unhappiness—the toll that childrearing and keeping the household afloat took on her. She also felt the quiet disapproval her father harbored toward her mother. His judgment and discontentment rippled through their home.

She deeply wanted to be good. When she heard at church that the most righteous girls set aside personal ambitions for the sacred roles of wife and mother, Rachel took it to heart. Righteous women, she was taught, served selflessly and cheerfully—without complaint and without the expectation of external accolades.

Rachel’s inclination to accommodate others became second nature. She rarely expressed or even allowed herself to fully recognize her own desires—especially if they conflicted with someone else’s.

As Rachel entered the Young Women program, the messages continued: the virtue of sacrifice, the sacred roles of wife and mother, and the importance of sustaining a future husband in his priesthood responsibilities. But perhaps most formative were the lessons that linked a woman’s worth to her sexual purity. To be “morally clean”—untouched by sexual sin—was not just a virtue but an important measure of desirability. Hoping to be chosen by a worthy young man, she resolved to push aside these emerging feelings.

When Rachel met Dan several years later, they fell in love quickly and married in the temple within the year. Having absorbed the message that a career wasn’t really compatible with the higher callings of wife and mother, Rachel cut short her training as a dental hygienist to start a family. It wasn’t the decision to stay home or have children that left Rachel in a vulnerable position—many women choose this path out of their own desires and sense of agency. The issue was that for Rachel it wasn’t really a choice. She believed this was the only acceptable option for her. And because she needed so much for others to see her as “good,” her embrace of the prescribed path wasn’t an act of personal conviction so much as an effort to earn the approval of others—church members, her family, and even God. She didn’t consider a different path; in fact, she didn’t even allow herself the space to imagine one. For Rachel, obedience and external validation were strong motivating forces behind her choices.

But nineteen years and six children into marriage, Rachel felt as though she were disappearing in her own life. Her husband had recently been called to be the bishop of their ward, and this required her to do even more of the childrearing in isolation. She was used to managing many of these demands on her own, but now Dan was gone most Sundays and several evenings each week while she put in untold hours of thankless, behind-the-scenes work. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding between them that she was there to support his life.

Though she disliked feeling a step down from Dan, she was accustomed to self-doubt. In fact, her own beliefs and desires were not very clear to her most of the time. Dan, on the other hand, was very opinionated and even condescending at times. When Rachel sometimes voiced her frustrations about his dismissiveness, Dan would make an effort to take her perspectives and desires more seriously. But in the end, it was usually Dan’s judgment that prevailed. Rachel, prone to second-guessing herself and drawn to the reassurance of Dan’s apparent certainty, slipped easily into a dynamic where his preferences quietly took the lead.

Because Dan appeared to be the steadier of the two, Rachel leaned on him for reassurance and a sense of mattering. But offering that kind of emotional support wasn’t something he did well. He felt the pressure to make his wife happy, and yet making Rachel happy never really worked. She was anxious and empty much of the time, and Dan was often frustrated by her self-doubt and needy disposition.

Being insecure himself and needing to see himself as stronger than his wife to feel like a man (a message he had internalized), he never sincerely challenged Rachel’s inclination to defer to him. He had no vision of a collaborative marriage—no real understanding of how a couple might contribute their differing perspectives and gifts as equals towards a shared goal.

It is perhaps no surprise that Rachel struggled with sexual desire. Although Dan often told her that she was beautiful, these reassurances most frequently surfaced when he wanted to have sex. His compliments were indeed genuine, but she didn’t feel desirable. While it was clear that Dan desired sex, it wasn’t obvious to Rachel that he desired her. And that distinction affected her desire. Rachel knew she mattered to Dan—she filled an important role in his life—but it wasn’t clear that he genuinely liked her for herself. And the truth was, Rachel wasn’t entirely sure who that was. Uncertain of her own identity, she couldn’t imagine she could be truly compelling to anyone.

So she did what her mother told her the night before her wedding: “Have sex when he asks and take care of his needs.” This approach made sense to her in a way—Rachel liked being needed by Dan and accommodating him sexually was one way to do this. But it also served another purpose—it made sex less intimate. By approaching sex as a marital duty, Rachel could avoid exposing her eroticism and even her heart. It gave her a way to shield herself from the doubts that gnawed at her—the questions she harbored about the depth of Dan’s love and desire for her.

Although Rachel found some safety in this approach to sex, it also left her unsettled. The truth was Dan seemed to always get what he wanted. And the more she gave, the more it felt like she faded into the background—unseen and unacknowledged by the very person she was giving so much to. In time, this left her feeling used and resentful, turning sex into something she largely endured. She was puzzled by women who claimed to enjoy it—how could that be? For her, the whole experience felt more like a chore, something to get through rather than enjoy.

Instead of confronting the growing disconnects and unanswered questions in her marriage, Rachel poured herself into motherhood—a role that felt far more certain and enjoyable. She channeled her energy into her children’s lives, finding real joy in their growth and accomplishments. Her children loved and relied on her, and this not only felt good, it gave her a deep sense of purpose. The marriage, while not very intimate, functioned well enough to raise a family. It simply lacked the closeness and attraction that Rachel had once anticipated in marrying Dan.

Rachel’s approach to marriage is one that is common among my female clients: Women devote themselves almost entirely to parenting and church service, with little connection to an identity beyond these roles. They value their husbands as providers and spiritual leaders, but the emotional and sexual intimacy in the marriage is limited. For many, sex is approached as a duty—a marital responsibility—rather than an expression of desire or a reflection of their investment and pleasure in the relationship.

While church messages about women’s roles have expanded somewhat in recent years, many LDS women still find themselves shaped by a culture that emphasizes obedience to prescribed gender roles over the deeper spiritual work of becoming whole—of cultivating and offering our distinct gifts to the world.

It matters what our spiritual objectives are because they significantly influence who we become. Most of us look to the communities we belong to (family, church, and the larger society) for cues about what it means to be virtuous, what it takes to succeed, and what is possible for us as men and women.

We need expectations and cultural standards. They offer structure and guidance as we begin the work of forging a sense of self early in life. But if they are too rigid or exacting, if they pressure excessive conformity, they can actually interfere with our ability to grow into individuals—into the creatures we were meant to be. As Christ said in the Gospel of Thomas, “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

In other words, fulfilling the measure of our creation not only allows us to contribute to the body of Christ—to the collective of the church and humanity—we also forge a peace with ourselves as we develop and share who we are. This requires a broader view of what it means to do God’s will—one where the highest moral values extend beyond rigid gender scripts or narrow notions of obedience.

Our inherited ideas about gender and sexuality, while often helpful as a starting point, can just as easily hinder our ability to know ourselves, make authentic choices, and create truly intimate marriages. What follows are some of the meanings around womanhood and sex that clients and research participants received that measurably limited their ability to be at peace with themselves, to integrate their sexuality, and to create intimate marriages.

“Because you are a woman”: Messages of Ideal Femininity

Despite recent shifts in lesson manuals and temple ceremonies towards greater equality, most adult Latter-day Saint women have been raised in a tradition that taught them to look to and depend on men. Because priesthood authority is conferred upon men, they are positioned to preside over meetings, families, and even marriages. Rachel understood this to mean that her voice carried slightly less weight in their shared decisions, since her husband—through his priesthood—was presumed to have greater access to truth. Beyond that, Rachel had internalized the idea that she should suppress her own preferences and desires whenever they conflicted with her responsibility to support her husband as the spiritual and temporal leader of their home.

Rachel—like many Latter-day Saint women—learned that the ideal woman willingly sets aside personal aspirations to care for her husband and children. While motherhood is unquestionably a sacred and meaningful vocation, for many women, this framing meant that desiring anything beyond it was selfish, or even a sign of spiritual weakness. As a thirty-something workshop participant recently said to me: “I don’t even know how I learned it, but I’ve always known my job is to be a support for my husband and kids.”

My client Audrey did not pursue a college degree and instead married when she was twenty years old. Shortly after the birth of their fourth child, Audrey’s husband admitted he had developed a close connection with a female colleague—and that one evening, after work, they had shared a kiss. Understandably, the revelation sent Audrey and their marriage into crisis.

Disillusioned and insecure, Audrey found herself reckoning with the vulnerability of the position she had put herself in. If the marriage unraveled—if he left—she lacked the means to adequately support herself. In earnestly following what she believed was God’s will, she had entrusted her future to a man who was proving less trustworthy than she had once believed. Having married so young, she now saw how little she’d understood her own desires when she made choices that would shape the rest of her life.

In our conversations, Audrey spoke of the many messages she received as an adolescent that encouraged her toward the dependent path she chose. She referenced a conference talk that impacted her from Elder Faust praising the many sacrifices women make for their husbands and children. Elder Faust acknowledged that women often take a husband’s name and move away from family and friends to support a spouse’s career. Still more, they endure the often tedious work of raising children, and to a degree that men usually do not. While praising women’s many sacrifices, Elder Faust concluded: “You do all of these things willingly, because you are a woman” (emphasis added).

Audrey took comfort in this talk. It felt like a recognition of the hard, often unseen work of being a stay-at-home mother. But she also understood that talks like these weren’t merely acknowledgments of women’s contributions—they were also declarations about who women should be. In other words, she internalized the idea that to be true to their “divine nature,” women willingly set aside their desires in the service of others. Lacking confidence in her own judgment, Audrey placed her hope in obedience—trusting it would bring her security and belonging. But now, beneath the betrayal of her husband was a deeper reckoning—she was confronting the ways she had betrayed herself, her own intuition and judgment, through her full surrender to others to guide her life.

Similar to the messages Audrey received, I remember Young Women lessons celebrating girls who gave up what they wanted to support the efforts of their priesthood-bearing brothers. We listened to stories of women sacrificing career aspirations for the sake of marriage and childrearing—decisions that were held up as expressions of faith and devotion. And these messages were strongly reinforced by prophetic counsel to women at the time to leave the workplace and return to the more noble calling of homemaker. An LDS-themed pop song at the time put a fine point on it: “Mom you gave up your Ph.D., just because you loved me . . . .” These messages deeply shaped how many Latter-day Saints—including myself—understood what it meant to be a righteous woman in the Church. There was only one legitimate way to fulfill that role, and it left little room for variation.

Again, motherhood is an exceptionally important vocation. Women often make considerable sacrifices for their children, setting aside both short-term pleasures and long-term aspirations to ensure their children’s well-being. What’s more, we all depend upon and benefit from this kind of care, even as these sacrifices are too often overlooked and undervalued by society. The support and recognition by our church leaders of women’s significant contributions to families and society is indeed important.

However, when self-denial is framed as the measure of feminine virtue—the defining trait of a righteous woman—we compromise women’s ability to know themselves and choose their paths deliberately. Equating virtue with self-denial fosters women’s unnecessary dependence on others—especially men—to define their identity and worth.

And when religious instruction emphasizes motherhood and wifehood as expressions of spiritual obedience, we limit women’s ability to know their hearts and minds and potential beyond these roles. Our narrow framing of womanhood not only limits self-knowledge, it also encourages economic and psychological dependence, ultimately undermining women’s agency and strength. Yet, as Russell M. Nelson said, “we need [women’s] strength!” and we need women to “rise to [their] full stature, to fulfill the measure of [their] creation.” Women cannot do this if they believe deference and dependency are expressions of humility and virtue.

The explicitness of these gendered messages has softened significantly in recent years, and we see more references to the value of women’s voices and contributions outside of the home. Yet, much of the adult membership of the church continues to understand themselves within these traditionally defined dispositions. Adult Latter-day Saint women fill my workshops looking to understand and undo an orientation to life that has yielded self-doubt and limited their ability to create an intimate marriage and joyful life.

We can absolutely value motherhood while still affirming individuality and the importance of personal choice in the pursuit of a moral life. If we want women to truly cultivate an inner strength and spiritual depth, we must place less value on compliance and more value on agency and integrity. We may have heard that obedience is the first law of heaven, but think of it as an initial law—the starting place of a moral self in the world. It is a significant mistake to identify this early inclination as the pinnacle of virtue.

Cultural messaging that encourages women to surrender their own judgment in the name of faith, or their desires in the name of selflessness, hinders the self-trust we all need to be at peace with ourselves and integrate our desires. We can value sacrifice for the sake of others without teaching women to deny their desires. We can teach the value of learning from wise others without encouraging women to reflexively defer to men. When deference becomes the default virtue, it undermines women’s ability to know their own souls and make choices they can stand by.