From Sexual “Purity” to Freedom and Self-Love: Mattie Jo and Amber

“From Sexual “Purity” to Freedom and Self-Love: Mattie Jo and Amber”

a Girl Boner podcast transcript

August/narration:

Love one another. Help, don’t judge, your neighbor.

It’s wild how these tenets of Christianity get lost in certain supposedly Christian communities. And skewed in really harmful ways.

Growing up, I remember asking this cool, young youth pastor how I could support a queer friend when he came out as gay, and I wanted to support him.  I’m not going to share what she said – it was just so heartbreaking. That same pastor told me that masturbation was a sin, but boys do it anyway. And that sex was only for married couples, who had to be a man and a woman. There are so many layers to these problems.

I recently spoke to two women who are working to change that. Because yes, these things still happen. And I’m so grateful for their work.

Mattie Jo Cowsert and Amber Cantorna-Wylde both grew up with a lot of influence from purity culture and conservative evangelical beliefs. Both women suffered as a result, found their way to much happier living — including in the sex and relationship department. And, they’ve authored books about their journeys.

Mattie Jo’s soon-to-release book is called “God, Sex, and Rich People:  A Recovering Evangelical Testimony.” Amber’s latest book, published last year, is called Out of Focus: My Story of Sexuality, Shame, and Toxic Evangelicalism.

When I spoke with them about their sex and pleasure experiences, their faith and more, I was struck by similarities and differences. One common thread? They are all about love and acceptance.

First, Mattie Jo’s story.

[encouraging, acoustic music]

Unsurprisingly, Mattie Jo’s earliest memories around sexuality were heavily influenced by the church.

Mattie Jo:  I always had an awareness of it because growing up in the church, my dad was a pastor.

Being raised religious, there was such a heavy focus on marriage. And like what it meant for a boy to like you and to be the pretty girl at school, but I don’t think I like tied that into sex until fifth grade.

I moved to a town that was pretty impoverished. which was like not that different from where I was before, but like, the poverty was different and like the kids were sexually active and we’re talking kids. There was a girl in my fifth grade class pregnant. You were pretty much guaranteed to see at least a third of the high school girls pregnant. That’s when I really started hearing about sex.

That was also around the time that I was going through a kind of a growth spurt, beginning symptoms of puberty, and boys were starting to comment on my butt and my looks, right? So this was when I sort of became aware of it.

My oldest sister had a purity ring. She got a purity ring on her 15th Christmas. But she also had a boyfriend that she was sleeping with. I would defend her. People would be like, “Oh, she’s the pastor’s daughter sleeping with her boyfriend,” this was a big thing. And I would defend her at school and whatnot. And then my other sister one day was like, no, it’s true. Like Chris is having sex. And I remember sobbing. Like I was masturbating very young…when I was 5. But I don’t think I connected it to sex.

August: Cause that doesn’t make a baby.

Mattie Jo: Exactly! I knew that it made me feel good. I remember watching some scary movie with my older cousins and there was a sex scene and I remember feeling something similar to what I felt whenever I would masturbate. So I knew they were connected, but I didn’t know why.

I had an understanding that this moral ethic was very hard to abide by. And I wanted to believe that like me and my sisters, we were gonna do it. Or we were not gonna do it, rather, you know what I mean?

August/narration:

Mattie Jo and her sisters would not have sex before marriage – no matter how many of their peers were having sex. They would be the exception.

Mattie Jo: And then when I found out my sister was not the exception. I was devastated. What does that mean for me? What does this mean for my other sister? If she can’t live up to it, will we be able to?

August/narration:

And doing whatever she could to stay aligned with her faith community was growing increasingly important. But also? So were boys.

Mattie Jo: I knew that I was a very sexual person by like 5th, 6th grade. I knew I really liked boys. I was, you know, the youth group version of “slut”-shaming is calling girls “boy crazy.” I was the boy-crazy one.

And so when I discovered this whole culture of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that because you have this relationship, it changes your heart and therefore it changes your entire outlook on life and it changes your actions and it changes your entire life’s purpose.

I was like, Oh, that’s exciting. Maybe I won’t then become a “slut” because that’s the track I’m on. I literally thought that in sixth grade, because I was so excited about boys.

August/narration:

And she was totally immersed in these ideas.

Mattie Jo: All of my friends were from church, right? It was like all these surrounding schools. We all went to sort of the same church and that’s where my social life was. I was in church More than I was at sports events and I was playing three sports. It was so much a part of my life And so that was very heavily influential when everybody around you is sort of speaking the same language, doing the same thing.

It’s very easy to develop a faith when you have peer pressure. Like a lot of people, their peer pressure was to drink and to have sex and to party. My peer pressure was how close can you be to Jesus Christ, you know?

August/narration:

By the time Mattie Jo went to college, her Christian faith wasn’t just part of her identity, she said. It was her identity.

Mattie Jo: I wore a purity ring with pride. I was a virgin. I didn’t really date in high school. I had like one boyfriend, but he lived really far away, so that was my workaround to not like, be tempted, I guess.

And then by college I thought for sure I’ll just meet my husband and we’ll get married and we’ll go from there.

August: So by that time did you have your own sexuality practices? By then you probably knew what masturbation was, that it was sexual. Did you allow yourself to do that?

Mattie Jo: No, for a long time. I think I didn’t masturbate for like two years. And I remember the day I finally did, and I journaled about it. I was like, oh, no!…I think I was like a junior.

August: Aw…so you felt shame.

Mattie Jo: Yeah. But you know, interestingly enough, my mom is not the stereotype of a pastor’s wife. My dad is not the stereotype of a pastor. When a lot of people hear evangelicalism, they’re like, Oh, so your parents are Trump supporters? Not at all. It was a big point of crisis for them. Because they just felt like, how can you follow this faith and follow this person? It just didn’t make sense for them.

And then my mom, though she wanted us to wait until we were married because she thought that was better than what she had done, which she had a lot of sex and partied in high school. She encouraged us to masturbate.

She was like, “This extreme thing of not dating, not kissing, how pure can you possibly be, is unhealthy.” She was pretty verbal about that. Dad thought the same thing.

Mom was like, “You should be touching yourself. Because you need to know what you like. So when you get married, you can tell [your husband],” right? But it was always “when you get married.” That’s who you’re going to enjoy this with. She told us it’s a great stress reliever, physically for your body it’s good. So she thought it was a good idea for us to masturbate. And so I then didn’t feel as bad about it. If mom says it’s okay… You know?

August: Honor thy parents!

Mattie Jo: Yeah, yeah. [laughs]And then I started kissing boys. I’d make out with some boys.

August/narration:

During her junior year, Mattie Jo had a sexual encounter with a guy in college.

Mattie Jo: And I remember really liking the kissing part. But then he wanted to go further and I didn’t know what to do. He touched me and I knew that I liked that and that felt nice. But then he wanted me to touch him and I genuinely didn’t know what to do. And that experience made me feel so dirty that I didn’t do anything again for a long time.

August/narration:

The next year, as a senior, she said she had a rendezvous with a “bad boy” from school.

Mattie Jo: He went down on me once and then I broke up with him after.

When we broke up, he was shouting at me in the hallways like, ” Oh, you taste so good,” just straight up harassment. I looked at one of my teachers in the hall and I was like, “Are you going to do something?”

And she was like, “You dated him. You chose to date this guy. You knew what a bad guy he was.” No sense of protection or anything, and then so I didn’t even try. I was like, well, if nobody’s gonna defend me here.

And then finally another male teacher saw it happening and then ended up going to the principal and he ended up getting in trouble. But like, yeah.

August/narration:

Lots of people thought it was her fault. That’s how purity culture tends to treat girls and women. Which was one reason Mattie Jo felt a sense of freedom when she went away to college.

Mattie Jo: I went to college and I liked the taste of anonymity that I had. I liked attention from the boys. So I made out with a few football players.

And then I found out one of the football players had a girlfriend and I felt really bad about that.

August/narration:

It felt like a purity wakeup call.

Mattie Jo: I was like, ugh, I gotta, I gotta stop this, like if I want to meet my husband. Because I always thought that my purity was this bargaining chip with God. Like if I’m pure enough, God will reward me. That’s really how I saw it.

So I did this little purity seance with my Bible study leader where I wrote down every guy that I’d ever made out with. We tore it up and prayed over it and I was like, “I’m starting anew. I won’t do that anymore.”

August/narration:

Then she met the guy who’d be her boyfriend for the rest of college.

Mattie Jo: You know, I definitely thought we were gonna get married. My faith was deepening with him while also, in some ways, unraveling because I was in the theater department in college. Many of my friends were gay.

The LGBTQ+ community was sort of the catalyst for me questioning a lot of this. Because I was like, how are my friends that I love more than like anybody in the world and they’re so lovely and they’re clearly adding so much good.They’re going to hell because they’re gay? Why would God make them this way? And I was just like, I don’t think the church is right about this one. But I still held on to purity.

August/narration:

Or at least she tried. For example, with her boyfriend.

Mattie Jo: We did not have penetrative sex. We made all the boundaries, like, we can’t lay down together, we can’t have the door closed in his room, I can’t stay the night.

We tried, but at the end of the day, we were just really attracted to each other. So we got very close to having sex one night. We were both naked and I was like, this is it. This is it. Like, I’m going to do this with this person that I love.

And then he kind of had a panic attack. And was like, “You have to get out, you have to get out.”

The shame and hurt I felt. I didn’t even feel disgust with myself. I actually was confused because I didn’t feel that. And I felt like this was just good. Like this is what it was supposed to be. We were in love. We should be sharing this.

Then the next morning he came in and he laid down with me And then he shared with me that he got off to porn after I left the room.

What I felt bad about is I knew now his view of me had changed. And I had gone from being this lovely, human, fully rounded person to now just a stumbling block.

And he was never going to be able to see me as a human being as long as that version of me had been like introduced into his psyche.

August/narration:

She said it was the Madonna/whore complex in full effect. Where women are either “pure” and non-sexual, or 100% about sex and dangerously tempting to straight men. A stumbling block to their own pious living. Mattie Jo felt she had shifted from one to the other in a snap. And it affected her for a long time.

Mattie Jo: I just didn’t think that guys could see me as a good, full person if we were having sex.

I think for a long time I harbored a lot of anger at him for that. But now looking back I’m like well he was just a victim of it all in the same way that I was.

That is unfortunately far too common in Christian communities because men are so fucked when it comes to their sexuality. They are taught that as long as a woman is sexual, she is an object. And they can’t marry your full personhood with your body. And so they just isolate the body and the person. And so they would get off to a person on a screen where there’s no relationship, right? Because it keeps them an object.

August/narration:

Sometimes that’s the only way they can seem to get off — or even get physically aroused — given the shame they feel about sex with a living, breathing person.

Mattie Jo: And that is so common in christian communities.

His sexual relationship with himself is so messed up that it’s leading to this very bizarre and erratic behavior that if he just had a healthier sexual relationship with himself, he would have no problem making love to someone he loves.

August/narration:

Once the couple broke up, Mattie Jo’s life changed dramatically.

Mattie Jo: Because as long as I was on this path that I was supposed to be on, which was to become a wife, get married, be able to have sex without fear of going to hell by the time I was 22 or 23, everything was gonna be fine.

Us breaking up made the reality of me moving to New York City to become an actor to pursue acting, a reality because even though that’s what I really wanted and in many ways, I feel like God really took care of me.

God was like, I am going to pluck you out of this situation because you will carry on a path that is not meant for you in order to live out these beliefs that are not actually divine. They are purely cultural.

August/narration:

Once she was in New York, another reality set in.

Mattie Jo: I was like, I’m probably not going to get married, especially after I moved to New York and I realized like, oh, no one in their early 20s in New York City wants to get married. What? Like I was truly surprised.

all these finance bros were not trying to get married and I was like why doesn’t anyone want to be my boyfriend?

August/narration:

Plus, she was an actor.

Mattie Jo: And that’s gonna be a lot of instability for the next five, ten years probably. Probably not the time to figure out who I want to marry.

Living in New York City, I was sort of constantly accosted by all of the ways this absolute truth I had been told was really just culturally true. It didn’t translate outside of a very specific culture.

And then it was a spiral from there. It was like, well, if this isn’t true, what else isn’t true?

August/narration:

That’s when her sex life would change wildly, too. First, she went on a deep dive into scripture research, in search of the answer.

Mattie Jo: Once I really really went down that rabbit hole, I was devastated because I was like, intentionally or not, they have withheld so much information from entire congregations. Really big information that changes shit.

I got to the point where I was like, I don’t even know if I believe Jesus is the Messiah. That reality is going to change everything about my life.

Because my entire life is founded on the belief that Jesus is God. And if I don’t believe that anymore, who am I? And that was really when I said fuck it all and I quite literally fucked it all. Like I just went on a rampage.

August/narration:

A sex rampage, without discretion. Because the religious community she grew up in taught nothing about healthy sexuality.

Mattie Jo: All you learn is don’t have sex with someone unless they’re your husband. You don’t learn, How do I want to feel when I have sex with someone? Do they make me feel comfortable?

I was sort of mimicking what I thought popular culture was doing, which is you get drunk and then you have sex and then you laugh with your girlfriends about it the next day.

For like a solid three years — in New York City, I had a lot of sex that I don’t remember. Sometimes because I wasn’t sober, but sometimes I was dissociating. I just would leave my body and I would have no memory of it the next morning.

One guy was thanking me for what an amazing experience it was. And I was like, wow, I don’t have any idea what happened. So I must have been putting on some sort of performance.

I didn’t know who I was and I didn’t know how to identify myself. And all I was doing was sort of reacting to these old beliefs. I had really low self esteem. I didn’t think that I was worthy of anybody’s attention because I was no longer pure. I was like Oh, I’m not desirable. I’m not valuable without these pillars of purity and Christianity.

August/narration:

Mattie Jo started sleeping with one guy repeatedly, and the relationship was not a healthy one. In her book she calls him Fuck Boy Monster.

Mattie Jo: He just was super disrespectful to me, super emotionally manipulative. And I mean, I slept with him for years because I was like, well, at least I can practice sex with him, with one person versus continuing to raise my number.

So I’d rather sleep with someone multiple times who is not nice to me than maybe sleep with a bunch of different people and really glean something from all of those experiences and so I was just blacking out with all of those experiences and sleeping with him repeatedly. Like it was just a mess.

August/narration:

Finally, Mattie Jo realized things needed to change. She was talking to a friend…

Mattie Jo: And I had this moment where I was like, “I don’t think I’m over my college boyfriend.” So much of my identity was still wrapped up in like how he treated me, how our relationship went, how we ended. And I was still defining myself by that.

August/narration:

She dove into self help books, reading books by Brene Brown and Glennon Doyle. She made a vision board, and started using affirmations.

Mattie Jo: So I really started to change what am I saying to myself? What am I allowing in? What am I putting out? What words am I saying? And life started to get a lot clearer. I started to like myself a lot more. I started to get in tune with my body, to meditate.

August/narration:

She started getting a lot of clarity in her life. Then, she met a guy and fell in love.

Mattie Jo: He actually ironically was very religious, but he was from eastern Europe and so his sort of pursuit of purity did not look the same as the American version.

But my experience with him allowed me to slow down and see how do I want to feel with a person? How do I want them to feel about me?

August/narration:

The sex was different, too.

Mattie Jo: We just basically did everything except penetrative sex. So I was like, wow, this is amazing. Like I had not done that much foreplay ever. Sex was not an end goal. It was this really fun, exploratory terrain.

August/narration:

What unfolded next, though, was traumatic.

Mattie Jo: Then, my boyfriend, he goes back to Romania, where he was from. We break up. And I am feeling so good because I’m like, I have this clarity of my life. I’ve just gone through this amazing relationship. I was ready to get out there and date in New York City. And then the first guy I met I experienced date rape with him. That changed everything.

August/narration:

She did the one thing she could think of to do. She reached out to Planned Parenthood to get tested for STIs.

Mattie Jo: And they were like, well we can’t test you for anything for another two weeks but if you can get to Mount Sinai in the next two weeks, we’ll do it. 48 hours will connect you with a social worker, a doctor, we’ll get you all the tests, we’ll get you all the medications, we’ll put everything on file.

August/narration:

So she could take legal action, if she wanted to. They’d even arrange for a public defender. They also gave her a referral for therapy.

Mattie Jo: All paid for, because Planned Parenthood is connected to all these nonprofits throughout the city that helped put this together for survivors. I was like, “Are you serious? It’s free?”

I didn’t take them up on it right away but about four months later, I had a total meltdown. And I reached out to my brother. And I was like, “I don’t know what to do.” And he was like, “Did you ever reach out to the therapist?”

And I was like, “No no, I don’t have a problem.” I was still very much like, I don’t want my life to be dictated by this thing that I didn’t choose, that was forced on me, but I couldn’t help it. Like I had to do something.

August/narration:

Finally, she called the therapist.

Mattie Jo: He changed my life. I started to realize all the ways that purity culture still affected me day to day.

August/narration:

Her world started opening up – more so than ever before. Especially in the dating realm.

Mattie Jo: I started really dating with a lot more intention and less fear and all of that. From that point on, I had mostly really wonderful sexual experiences. I showed up differently. So I knew how to select and sift through partners better.

August: And you processed so much trauma. It’s so interesting because without the date rape, would you have even considered that that was all traumatic, that purity culture was part of your trauma?

Mattie Jo: No. I would have never called it trauma. That would have felt really dramatic. Obviously it sucks that it came at such a cost, but like, I don’t think I would have ever checked myself into therapy if it didn’t happen, if I wasn’t forced to a rock bottom.

August: Yeah.

August/narration:

Mattie Jo’s book, God, Sex, and Rich People, explores her first three years of excavating her faith, before all of that. While she no longer considers herself religious, she has maintained her faith.

Mattie Jo: I do still believe in God. I don’t consider myself a Christian, because I don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah. I think if anything, a lot of it is symbolism.

August/narration:

Fortunately, she has been able to maintain good relationships with her family — something that, as you’ll hear in the next story, isn’t always possible.

Her relationship with herself, her sexuality and intimacy have evolved, too.

August: Where are you now, in terms of your sexuality and pleasure?

Mattie Jo: So I’m partnered now. So I’m figuring out how to navigate pleasure within a relationship… Like I’ve mostly not done within a relationship. I’ve mostly been single.

It’s just different, right, when you are living with someone and there’s other obstacles to get over to have a sexual experience that feels sexy because like saying, “Can you please just vacuum,” is not sexy. And then that like leads to the bedroom, right?

August/narration:

I suppose it depends on how you vacuum? Seriously, though, I think it’s awesome that she talks openly about very real and common scenarios. Here’s another example – one I heard about a lot.

Mattie Jo: This is something that I find very difficult. In my relationship, I am the more sexually driven one. We’re so affectionate. I’m so attracted to him. He’s so attracted to me. He’s always touching my butt. We’re always holding hands.

That doesn’t mean that we want to have sex at the same time. It doesn’t mean that we have time for sex even when we both want it at the same time. It doesn’t mean that we both have similar speeds. In terms of libido, like it’s not the same.It’s so different, so individual like you were saying.

I am very passionate about dispelling these stereotypes around sexuality. I think I’m actually in the perfect position to be the one in our relationship leading us sexually, because of everything I’ve gone through. I think that makes sense that I’m sort of the one who has to like to facilitate. I feel like one thing that I learned to do really well with straight men is give them the container to completely relax and feel safe to express themselves sexually.

When it comes to sex, men are just expected to perform. Get an erection, do a good job, perform well. But what about his emotions and all of this? Well, sex isn’t supposed to be emotional for men.

And it’s like, how does he feel around you? Does he feel safe? Again, like all these questions. I feel like I’ve learned how to do that with straight men and therefore I’ve had really great sexual experiences with them. Because they can relax and they can just feel comfortable being themselves.

And if they don’t come or if they can’t get hard for whatever, anxiety is going on, it’s okay. I’m like, “That’s fine. That’s fine! Let’s do it another time, when you’re ready. Do you want to talk about something?” That’s something from tuning into my own body and my own feelings, I can do that with partners better.

August/narration:

And that’s been its own learning curve.

Mattie Jo: I remember one session with my therapist. I was telling him, like, I have a hard time telling men what I need in the bedroom. And he was like, ” well, what would you have a hard time saying if you were going to give me an example?”

And I was like, uh, and I was kind of quiet. And he was like, okay. So like from a spectrum of like basic clitoral stimulation to like. being swung from a ceiling fan, where does it fall? And I was like, definitely closer to the clitoral stimulation. And he was like, “well when you came into this, office today, you went on like a whole diatribe about your singing voice, and like raising the soft palate and the larynx. You can talk about the anatomy of your throat very comfortably. What makes your vagina, vulva, clitoris, what makes any of that different?” And I was like “Oh my God. Great question.”

I was embarrassed by it. And I thought like, if I express this, he’s going to think I’m difficult. And some men will be that way. You don’t fuck those guys. Right? If they show that, you say, okay, I’m done.

We’re so afraid to even share it when in reality, most of my experiences when I’ve said, hey, can you do this, they love it. They love that. That shows that you’re with someone who’s excited about your pleasure.

Sponsor fun:

Did you know that sex toys can make orgasms last longer? They also make Big Os more likely, if you’ve struggled in that department. Whether you use a toy alone or with a partner, I highly recommended having at least one you love in your pleasure toolbox. If you want to stock up on toys or your favorite lube, you can get free  — always discreet — shipping on orders over $75 at The Pleasure Chest. Simply head to thepleasurechest.com and search by category, for vibrators, strap-ons, kink accessories and more. Again that’s The Pleasure Chest at thepleasurechest.com.

August/narration:

Now, Amber’s story.

[encouraging, acoustic music]

Amber Cantorna-Wylde says her childhood was, in many ways, quintessential. One full of happy memories.

Amber: Whether that was summer trips that we took back to Montana to see our relatives or the traditions that we held around the holidays.

I have a lot of fond memories around things in the fall, specifically. like the great pumpkin dinner and things that we would do to gather people.

August/narration:

Amber had the same group of girlfriends from second grade through high school. And they really looked up to her. Which was cool in some ways, but it also brought a sense of pressure.

Amber:  Even in the elementary years, there were certain things where I was kind of expected to be that role model and expected to kind of lead the way for the other girls in terms of behavior and etiquette.

Over time it kind of wore on me, the pressure of trying to uphold the family name of what my dad did and who my mom was.

August/narration:

Her dad was an executive at Focus on the Family, a Christian fundamentalist organization founded in the 70s by James Dobson, based in Colorado Springs. Her mom was well-known in the homeschooling community.

Amber:

And I started feeling like I was, was wearing a mask a lot and not able to really be who I was. Because I was always trying to uphold who I was supposed to be.

August/narration:

All of that impacted Amber’s mental health – something she wrote about in-depth in “Out of Focus.” Her mental health took a turn for the worse when she endured abuse, then had a pivotal conversation with her mom.

Amber: When I was young, I had an incident of what we now know as like child on child sexual abuse. my neighbor was being abused by his babysitter and then kind of passing on those sexual acts to me.

Of course I didn’t have terms or language around what that was and what was happening. You didn’t talk about those things.

I knew enough to know it was wrong and I knew enough to feel shame about it and that I was supposed to hide it. and I think I did a good enough job to kind of suppress those memories until I was nine years old when suddenly it all came flooding back to me.

August/narration:

Amber gathered up her courage and shared that vulnerable information with her mom.

Amber: She ended up basically brushing it under the rug and being like,” well, kids experiment that happens sometimes.”

That moment of invalidating my feelings really set the precedence of how our relationship developed from there on out, because I learned that my feelings didn’t matter. really impacted my ability to trust my mom. And I don’t think that we ever were really able to prepare that.

August/narration:

At 13, Amber took her purity vow and, like Mattie Jo, started wearing a purity ring. She told me she was always searching for someone who could see past her smile to what was really happening: that she was crumbling underneath.

Amber: At 13 years old, I didn’t know any different. I didn’t know any better. that was how I was raised. It was what I was supposed to do as a good role model. It was what I was supposed to do to please God. And of course I wanted to please God because that was who I was.

It was this big coming of womanhood ceremony at my 13th birthday where all my family and, you know, relatives were there and my friends. I, Signed on the dotted line as covenant and had this purity ring that my dad put on my wedding finger that I was supposed to wear until the day that I got married to a man.

August/narration:

Amber bought into those ideas for a decade, until she fell in love with her female college roommate. That is when she had what she’s called her “epiphany of horror.” Because gay was one thing she was never supposed to be.

Amber: In a way, my ability to come into who I truly was, you know, as a queer woman was stolen from me because not only did I not have queer the exposure to the queer community or the vocabulary to put with what I was feeling, but I also was deeply involved in purity culture and this belief that if I just made all the right choices and pleased God with my life, knight in shining armor would come in on a white horse and sweep me off to happily ever after.

Which, spoiler alert, that’s not what happened.

August/narration:

In her book, Amber talks about three rules she learned about sex. Number one? Do not engage in sex before marriage.

Amber: And that was just expected.

They even took it a step further into like courtship and saying that, you know, even kissing before your wedding day or holding hands or any kind of intimacy was wrong.

August/narration:

When you got married, she said, you were suddenly supposed to know how to get busy with your spouse. Doing this thing that was taboo and wrong in your life until then.

Sex rule number 2 was do not touch yourself, “down there.”

Amber: I would say that was very strongly implied. I think it was more directly spoken about and taught to the boys.

Masturbation and pornography were the two big no nos for boys. Girls, I think it was more focused on purity but it was there. That subliminal message was there.

August: And like assumed that you wouldn’t masturbate.

Amber: Yeah.

August/narration:

As though female desire and pleasure didn’t exist. Sex rule #3 went like this: Do not put yourself in a compromising position where you may be tempted to go too far with the opposite sex.

Amber: That was strongly put on the females as well.

August/narration:

It was up to girls and women to “not do something stupid and end up in a bad place.”

Amber: Whether that was like, checking your car before you got into it at night or making sure you didn’t stay too late or your skirt being too short, your neckline being too low, any of these things that could tempt the boys, it was like you were responsible for their reaction to however you dressed or however you presented yourself.

August/narration:

Because Amber was gay, though didn’t realize it yet, and so deep in purity culture, she never dated.

Amber: I never even got to that point of like, do we hold hands or do we not? Do we kiss or do we not?

I just kept believing that I was doing the right thing by serving God with my life. And then I would watch my friends date and break up and date and break up and I’d be like, oh, that’s so sad for them. God must just be saving me from all this heartache because I’m making the right choices. I was just so far removed from my own sexuality and my own desire.

August/narration:

Until she developed feelings for her college roommate, Brooke. In “Out of Focus,” she wrote about a mix of emotions.

Amber: I was, on one hand, deeply in shame because, not only was I exploring sexuality before marriage, but I was doing it with a female. But then juxtaposed to that was this feeling of coming alive for the first time and feeling my body come alive in ways that I didn’t even know were possible.

So it was very complicated to experience love for the first time, but have this internal knowing based on how you were raised that that love was bad.

And I remember us questioning, frequently, like, How can love be bad? Like this feels so good. I feel so happy. It feels so right. How can this be bad? Just feeling like you’re a constant war within yourself.

August/narration:

Those complicated feelings, and the ideas that had been so deeply engrained in her for so long, led Amber to “try to be straight,” she wrote, with a young man named Darius. If she was going to be gay, she told me, it wasn’t going to be for a lack of trying — something her faith seemed to demand of her.

Amber: Well, at least I’ll say that I tried and gave it my best, right?

And so I did some online dating, basically, is how I met Darius. We kind of saw each other for, you know, a short period of time.

I ended up giving him my, my male virginity, you know, like the, the piece that was like built up to be the gold.

August/narration:

And yet, with Darius, it seemed like…no big deal.

Amber: I remember feeling so deceived and so let down by the religionI had been raised in. Cause I was like, I’ve waited all my life for that? It just felt so meaningless to me.

There was such a drastic difference between this whole sexual experience that I had with Darius and the simple kiss that I had with a woman that it was obvious in my mind like the light bulb was coming on and like something is different here.

August/narration:

That was a turning point that helped her embrace her sexuality. Some time after, as you may recall from Amber’s coming out story in a past episode, she told her parents about her identity. Devastatingly, they disowned her.

Amber: They compared me to murderers and pedophiles. They said, “we feel like you’ve died. How selfish of you to do this to our family.” my mom even took a list of the traits that I had written that I was supposed to want in a husband and kind of threw them at me.

It was like, “Can you tell me if you met a man with these characteristics, you wouldn’t want to marry him?”

August/narration:

They backed Amber into a corner with accusations she was not equipped to deal with, she said, then asked her for her house keys back so she couldn’t freely stop home for visits.

Amber: And so our whole relationship just took a very swift turn and it never recovered.

We had a period of maybe a year and a half to two years where we had very awkward interaction. It just became more and more toxic. There was a point where my dad just drew a line in the sand and was like, I’m done.

August/narration:

That was October of 2014. They haven’t spoken since. Amber went on to find an affirming faith community in Denver, where she could love God and be accepted as her true self. She credits that for saving her life.

Amber: When I talk to people who are considering coming out, it’s one of the biggest things I recommend is if at all possible to build that community up ahead of time. So you have them to lean on through the process because it just makes such a difference when you don’t know what the outcome is going to be, to know that you have a community to lean on.

August/narration:

Since then, Amber has healed and grown so much, in all areas of her life.

August: What can you share about your journey with sex and pleasure, since kind of your healing process began?

Amber: I think that’s been one of the most beautiful things about the journey is taking off all that shame. Because it wasn’t only shame with my sexuality, it was shame about so many aspects of life.

And so to be able to finally come out of that, and to let go of certainty– which was kind of the bedrock of like, we are right and everyone else is wrong– was really, really scary. But I think it was also one of the most freeing aspects of the process was to be able to, allow space to wonder and to doubt and to question.

And I think that started with my faith. That affirming faith community that I found allowed space for those things that allowed space for questions and for doubt and for wonder. Then in time opened the door to do it with sex and with different aspects of life as a whole.

To this day, that’s probably one of the things I’m most grateful for is just that unburdening of shame. And the freedom to, to talk about sex and to talk about all these different aspects of life without shame riddled to it, without shame attached and know that it’s okay to explore and it’s okay to talk about and it’s okay to ask questions and it’s okay to wonder or to try new things.

But when you start talking with your friends and having conversations about sex, it strips the shame and the power out of it. And you realize like we’re all experiencing similar things and it’s very normal.

August/narration:

And she wants others to experience similar freedom and healing.

Amber: I think one of the biggest things I always tell people is to love who you are. You are worthy of love and belonging. Allow yourself the space to wonder and to question and to explore and to try new things without feeling riddled by shame, without feeling like there’s something wrong with you or there’s something broken or there’s something that needs to be fixed or hidden away.

Embracing who you are and embracing your sexuality, because it’s a beautiful gift to the world. And it’s a gift to you.

[encouraging, acoustic music]

August/narration:

Mattie Jo’s advice for you all might just help you do that.

Mattie Jo: To the best of your ability, tune into yourself and get really good at like internal excavation.

Because I just think so often in our journey, we have a thought and we just take it as truth, without really investigating it and like pulling it apart. And I think being able to do that, learning how to do that, was so helpful in my having quality dating and sexual experiences.

August/narration:

Amber saw her chance to write her latest book as a gift — one that gave her the chance to rewrite her story following her first memoir, from years ago, and infuse it with the years of growth and learning and advocacy she’s cultivated since. Learn much more and order her book via ambercantornawylde.com.

To start deconstructing messaging you received around purity, religion, sex and relationships, Mattie Jo suggests visiting the resource guide on her blog, where you can also explore her stories. Sign up for her blog and get updates about her book at mattiejocowsert.com.