I met Eryn-Faye when I was on The Drew Marshall Show this summer; she has two passions–first, to serve the Lord, and secondly, to help couples experience true intimacy in their marriages. I’m delighted to welcome author and Christian passion coach Eryn-Faye here today.
I didn’t grow up dreaming of being a Passion Coach®. When my teachers asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I didn’t write about speaking to couples who were feeling alone and isolated in the most intimate area of their relationship.
Unbeknownst to me, God had a different plan.
When Eric and I first got married, we had what I like to describe as an average or normal sex life. We had our good moments and our bad moments, times when everything just clicked in the bedroom and times when it was disastrous, bursts of creativity, and periods of boredom.
It was all of these things, that is, until I gave birth to our daughter Riley. It took fifty-three hours to deliver her.
In response to the pain and discomfort of intercourse (not to mention the myriad of other challenges that accompany a newborn), we quietly slipped into a sexless marriage. We weren’t sure who we could talk to, and we certainly had never heard of other couples facing what we were. Our communication skills, which had always been excellent, became strained. It was around this time I watched a segment on The Today Show featuring a woman who addressed sexual intimacy. As I listened to her speak, it dawned on me – had I known this woman when Eric and I were struggling after Riley’s birth, things might have been easier. She could not have healed my pelvic floor more quickly, but she could have helped me find some workarounds. More importantly, she would have talked to me. She would have been a safe person to open up to.
In hindsight, I find this revelation deeply disturbing. I was a pastor’s kid married to a church elder. I ran in Christian circles, had Christian friends, my husband worked for a Christian organization. To put it mildly, we were smack-dab in the middle of the proverbial Christian ghetto. And yet there was no one we felt safe enough to approach when we were struggling. I had remained quiet and alone with my turmoil until this lady appeared on my TV screen. Somehow, she broke through my shame.
In that moment, I felt a nudge. A nudge to share my story with other ladies. I had a picture in my mind of standing in someone’s living room, sharing about the importance of the Three Cs – commitment, communication and consummation. I could see myself talking to these women about the value of healthy connection in marriage.
As my coaching business developed with clients from all over North America, I began to notice a disturbing trend amongst my Christian clients. The rudder of their sex life was fear. Everything they did or did not do was directed by fear. As I began to unpack this pattern with client after client, I realized that the core was fear they would sin. That they would be ungodly. And so they responded to that fear by doing nothing and staying silent until they ended up in a sexless marriage, divorced or in a coaching session with me.
And in the privacy of a session, woman after woman – usually in tears – would open up about her life and her secret struggle for genuine intimacy. They were there because they deeply longed to connect with their spouses and needed to find out how to do so. While they might be able to have casual conversations with their friends about sex, no one in their world was creating space for real, honest, candid and solutions-oriented conversations about intimacy. And the question they all asked was, “Am I alone in my struggle?”
God did not design us to live in fear, but in perfect love.
And this applies to the bedroom, too.
Canada’s Passion Coach®, Eryn-Faye Frans, LL.B., is a recurring guest on radio, TV and in churches across North America. Known for her personal approach and conversational style as well as her research-based foundation, she creates space for meaningful conversations about sexual intimacy. Her book, The Essential Elements of Sex: 9 Secrets to a Lifetime of Intimacy, gives couples the biblical building blocks to help their marriages grow and thrive throughout the decades together. She lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband and daughter. Find her on Facebook or Twitter, or her website. Eryn-Faye is willing to provide a free coaching session to everyone who comes to her website and fills out a request form in the next two weeks.
