What challenges do single Catholic women face as they strive to live chastely while waiting to be married? Maria Spears Mumaugh is a musician and mindset coach and co-founder of The Intentional Single, which helps single Catholic women thrive in the years of dating and single life as they prepare for marriage. She shares with Sarah the struggles single women face regarding porn use, feeling "touch-starved" (and what to do about it), navigating appropriate boundaries while dating--AND not developing rigidity from purity culture.

They chat about fears dating women have about their boyfriends' (or future husband's) porn use, and how to address this likely possibility.

Join in this fun conversation about thriving as a whole woman and laying a great foundation for your married sex life WHILE being single and dating.

The Intentional Single

Maria Spears Mumaugh's book The Mirror

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)

"It's a marvel how resilient we are." This episode cannot take the place of individual therapy, but it CAN educate and encourage you about the possibilities for healing from past sexual trauma in order to enjoy lovemaking in marriage in this conversation rooted in hope and resilience.

Suppose a wife cringes when her husband touches her shoulder in a certain way and suggests they go to bed early that night. She wants to run away. She definitely does NOT want to head upstairs and engage in intimacy, even though she loves her husband. When she was younger, someone abused her sexually, and this whole realm of sexuality still feels terrible for her. If she works with a good therapist, what steps will she learn to take to go from wanting to run away to tolerating that touch on her shoulder... to eventually enjoying it, and even heading upstairs with some enthusiasm? That is what you will learn in this episode.

Sarah is joined by Dr. Mario Sacasa, LMFT, a popular speaker, retreat leader, and course creator. Mario is the host of the Always Hope podcast and has served on the faculty of Notre Dame Seminary, Divine Mercy University, and the Institute for Priestly Formation. He brings an incredible combination of knowledge, spiritual insight, and practical steps to this important conversation.

Sarah and Mario talk about the importance of communication between husband and wife when there is a history of past sexual trauma for one or both of them. In this episode, you'll hear some of the topics that the couple would benefit from addressing, as well as how that communication can help the other spouse understand the patience and gentleness that are needed as the healing spouse goes through their process. Right at the end, Mario asks Sarah a moral theology question about real-life imperfect outcomes that could occur during this process.

Find more great conversations with Dr. Mario Sacasa on dating, marriage, sexuality, and the misunderstood virtue of hope on his Always Hope podcast!

Dr. Mario's Dating Well course takes young adults by the hand and guides
them through the challenges of the modern dating scene.

Dr. Mario's course on Overcoming Stress and Anxiety, produced by Good Catholic Media, offers information and skills to beat anxious thoughts.

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)

As we mourn the death of Pope Francis and reflect on his gifts to the church during his papacy, this is a great moment to recall his (surprisingly traditional!) teachings on sex in marriage from Amoris Laetitia, The Joy of Love.

In this post-synodol apostolic exhortation from 2015 that capped the Synod on the Family, Pope Francis makes four main points about married sex:

1. The church teaches that sex is meant to be a good! It is a gift from God enriching joy in marriage, not just a "necessary evil" to be tolerated because it is the means of procreation.

2. But sex is often distorted and misused. (This ties into porn culture.)

3. Obligation sex is not church teaching. (This relates to a mistaken idea of "marital debt.")

4. Let's not be squeamish and disdainful of the body and sexuality. (This relates to purity culture.)

Read Amoris Laetitia for free on the Vatican website here.

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)

Opening with "birthday cake" analogy, this episode focuses on different ways to heal from sexual wounds, abuse, regrets, and harmful messages that a woman may have suffered. These harms can bind her up and keep her from experiencing the fullness of freedom, connection, joy, and delight the the Lord intends for her in marital intimacy. During Holy Week is the perfect time to bring all these wounds to Jesus, to lay at the foot of his Cross.

Therapies that can help heal emotional wounds from past sexual abuse:

• Internal Family Systems (this involves "parts work," taking care of the younger parts of yourself)
• Lifespan Integration Therapy
• EMDR

Deliverance Prayer

• Unbound / Heart of the Father Ministries (you can request an online prayer session, or search an in-person team near you)

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)

Catholic pelvic floor specialist Veronica Stephens returns to discuss how pelvic floor issues can show up in married life. So many challenges can be addressed through pelvic floor work, including painful intercourse, incontinence, constipation, and possibly even erectile dysfunction (ED). (Yes, men can get pelvic floor help as well!) A healthy functioning pelvic floor also prepares a mother for better birth, and postpartum recovery for issues like diastasis rectii can be helped with pelvic floor work.

Sarah and Veronica discuss how tension throughout the whole body can affect the pelvic floor, as well as how our breathing impacts pelvic floor tension.

Veronica opens up about how her own personal journey with physical fitness helped her grow closer to God and find spiritual meaning in helping others optimize their overall health.

Find Veronica Stephens at https://www.renewedresilience.net

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)

Before you can effectively to anything else to improve your love life in marriage, you have to get the porn out.

Sarah shares 10 resources, programs, and tips to help husbands get free, to help wives heal from betrayal trauma, and to help married couples rebuild their intimate life.

If you wanted to redecorate your living room, but there was a fire in it, you'd have to put out the fire before you start thinking about paint colors and rearranging the furniture. Afterwards, you'd also have to clean up the scorch marks and care for burns. In the house of your marital intimacy, you need to get the porn out first in order to establish safety and authentic emotional intimacy. The distortions in assumptions about how sex should work then need to be corrected. (God made women's arousal curves much slower and longer than men's, but women in porn are paid to fake being aroused quickly.) Emotional wounds from betrayal trauma need to be healed, and the couple needs to establish their intimacy anew from the ground up.

4 Resources to Help Husbands Get Free from Porn:

1. Sexaholics Anonymous, a 12-step peer support program

2. Programs like Pure Desires, Naked Truth Project

3. Strive: 21-Day Porn Detox, a Catholic program with Matt Fradd

4. CSAT counseling (Certified Sexual Addiction Therapists)

*BONUS TIP: Install device-protecting software like Covenant Eyes

3 Resources to Help Wives Heal from Betrayal Trauma

5. Hope's Garden, a Catholic ministry online that includes a coaching option

6. Coaching with Catholic coach Casey Allison

7. Bloom for Women and Bloom for Catholic Women

3 Tips to Help Post-Porn Couples Restore Authentic Intimacy

1. Talk to each other during lovemaking. This roots both husband and wife's mind in the present moment. Hearing her husband's voice is very connecting for the wife and distracts her from negative thoughts, worries that his mind is going back to memories of porn.

2. Specifically, the husband should reassure his wife out loud with words during their lovemaking time together that he's thinking only of her, that she is beautiful, her body is amazing, she is the one he chooses for life, he loves being just with her, etc. She is likely to need LOTS of reassurance.

3. Husbands, tune in to your sense of smell, which porn cannot recreate. Listen to Catholic psychologist Mario Sacasa, Ph.D. discuss this in Always Hope, episode 144: Unlocking the Secrets to Marital Intimacy.

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)

What do newlywed and engaged women need to know about their pelvic floor as they enter into marital intimacy? Sarah is joined by Catholic pelvic floor specialist Veronica Stephens of RenewedResilience.net. They cover the basics of what a healthy, functioning pelvic floor should be able to do, as well as a few of the problems that can arise when the pelvic floor doesn't function properly--problems such as incontinence, pain during intercourse, and constipation. Veronica shares her unique path to her profession, from her beginnings as a theology major at Christendom College to finding her way to physical training and pelvic floor certifications to help women. Sarah and Veronica discuss the mind-body connection by which a woman's beliefs and memories about sex affects her vaginal muscles.

Veronica Stephens is at RenewedResilience.net

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)

Sarah and her amazing friend Ellen Holloway of the Charting Towards Intimacy podcast share 7 tips for engaged women preparing for their first time after the wedding. They chat about setting expectations for yourself and with your husband-to-be, what essential items you are going to want to have on hand, butterflies in the stomach, the supreme importance of FOREPLAY, being like a flower, lingerie, and having fun.

Ellen Holloway's Free Foreplay Guide for Catholic Women

Ellen Holloway's Charting Towards Intimacy podcast

Ginger and Peach Catholic-owned model-free lingerie boutique

Mentionables Model-free lingerie (10% OFF CODE: BARTEL)

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)