Mom Owned and Operated

Breaking the Orgasm Gap with Angela Griffith

Rita Suzanne Season 6 Episode 74

In this episode of the Mom Owned and Operated podcast, Rita Suzanne and Angela Griffith discuss raising a family, running a business and remembering yourself.

A challenger of the status quo and a disruptor of what has always been, Angela Griffith is known as The Christian Sexpert to her thousands of social media followers. She has dedicated over 20 years to the study of human sexuality and God's design for sex. Her passion is coaching women to discover a healthier relationship with their God-given sexuality.   

Angela's relationship with Jesus started at age 19 and while she wasn't raised in purity culture, she did get a heaping helping of it at college after her salvation experience. She has a unique perspective on how purity culture impacts marriages.   She uses social media as a way to change the narrative from inside the house.  She sees the damage of purity culture but knows that God tells us He wants us to have abundance in all areas of our lives – including sex. 

She is a sex and intimacy coach and uses her social media platform to provide the sex education you wish you had received.  She has created multiple products designed to improve the sexual and non-sexual intimacies in your marriage.   She will have you reaching for pearls to clutch, make you laugh, make you blush, and make you search your Bible, asking, “Is she serious?  It really says THAT?” 

She and her husband have one child.  She is a leader for the international women’s ministry Natural Christian Mommas, a homeschool mom, a lover of all things glitter, and ready to set you on a new path with your husband, telling you to, “Go have good sex!”

You can connect with Angela on her website, on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

Send a text message! Email, if you want a reply though. ;)

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P.S. You can find more interviews at momownedandoperated.com and learn about working with Rita at ritasuzanne.com/apply/




Speaker 1:

Hi, this is Mom Owned and Operated. I am Rita, Suzanne, and today I have my guest Angela with me. Angela, please tell everyone all about you, your business and your family.

Speaker 2:

Hi, I'm Angela. I'm the Christian sexpert. I talk all about sex and intimacy, primarily in Christian marriage, but you don't have to be a Christian to follow me. In fact, about half of my followers would claim no particular faith at all, but they all tell me that this is the sex ed they wish they would have gotten. I have been married for over 20 years. We have one nine-year-old son with some extra needs that I also homeschool, on top of being a sex and intimacy coach and influencer and public speaker.

Speaker 1:

I love it. I love it. I always feel like anybody who homeschools on top of running a business is just like so amazing, because it's so much work and, as we all learned from being home with our kids during COVID, like it's so crazy. So how do you manage doing all of those things, especially, you know, with a son that has some extra requirements?

Speaker 2:

Um, and as I have scaled it, I've always prioritized, um, you know, my family and I've made sure that the business fits around, um the stuff that I have going with my family. My husband is a truck driver. Um, he's home most nights but he's actually as we're recording this. His truck broke down in another state yesterday and we don't know when he's going to be home. Oh no, um, it could be today, it could be next week, who knows? But because his job, he'll randomly be home on like a Tuesday. He won't have a load.

Speaker 2:

And so that's great because, depending on what I've got going on for the business, either you know we're going to take off and we're going to have a family day at the zoo, or because you know, with homeschooling we have that flexibility, or if I have meetings scheduled for that day that he's off, he can take my son out of the house, they can go on an adventure and I can have all kinds of quiet, focused time to do administrative stuff on my website or whatever. I do a lot of work after my son goes to bed at night. My husband goes to bed early because of his job. A lot of times he has to get up at one and two in the morning. So I do a lot of working on my business from like 930 to one o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 1:

I feel like a lot of moms do that. They do the juggle during the day and then they hustle on their businesses at night. And you know, it's just so sometimes can just be so overwhelming and just. But you know, we we just make it happen because we want to make our businesses work Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. It's kind of I have found. So I also have ADHD and I've kind of found it's just kind of pushing from one dopamine hit to another, you know. So I really struggle with the like more mundane things like working on my website, but if I have a big dopamine push of like a video popping off on my socials, I try and really funnel that dopamine into doing the mundane things that I've been procrastinating. So really figuring out that pattern was helpful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yes, definitely. So what inspired you to even start your business, especially because it's a little bit controversial?

Speaker 2:

It's a lot controversial, come on Sex and Christianity. It's a lot controversial and that's why I started. It was because I saw the damage that purity culture did to women and to marriages, and I see the damage that certain teachings within the church are still doing the obligation, sex message, the orgasm gap and I knew that. You know, my faith tells me God has better for us. God wants us to enjoy sex, god wants us to be having good sex, and so it was really like there is better and I want to help women and men as well, have better marriages, better sex.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, cause I? I know some women who've been married for a long time who, just quite honestly, they don't even orgasm with their husband anymore, or if I have ever, and it's a very one-sided relationship.

Speaker 2:

There is a massive orgasm gap in this country. So let me pull up my statistics so I'm talking about them correctly. So we've got 95% of men orgasm during a sexual encounter with their wives, versus 49% of women will orgasm during a sexual encounter with their husbands. And that doesn't make any sense to me, because we are the multi-orgasmic creatures. Men orgasm once and then. They need hours to recover. But we can go again and again and again. There should be no orgasm gap, because it should be a five to one women to men ratio.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. What do you think is causing the gap in those situations?

Speaker 2:

There's a lot of reasons. So we know that research shows us that evangelical women have a almost twice the rate of sexual dysfunction than non-evangelical women. Or put it another way, women who grew up in purity culture will experience sexual dysfunction at almost twice the rate, as someone who did not. So sexual dysfunction for women could look like things like vaginismus. Vaginismus is a condition where if anything tries to enter the vaginal canal, it involuntarily spasms and closes up and makes it incredibly painful. There are some women who cannot even use tampons because of vaginismus. So that's one of the leading problems with the orgasm gap.

Speaker 2:

Other things include, you know, religious trauma. Things like you were taught. Well, men is just for sex. Women don't really need to enjoy it. I even saw that there was a Christian sex therapist this week who said women don't really need to orgasm. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Me, in the year of our lord? On Beyonce's internet, 2024, a sex therapist is saying women do not need to orgasm. No, that is no. And then that's a whole other thing. I can go for hours on that. One reel it in. There's also things like a lack of education. A lot of my coaching calls I get on with my client and I say okay, do you know how to orgasm? And they're like well. I'm like okay, do you know where your clit is? And they're like well. And I have to bring out my model, lovina Von Trapp, and show, teach this 34-year-old woman where her clit is.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And so you know there's a lack of education. So if she doesn't know, her husband certainly isn't going to know. And there's things like the average man takes about 5.4 minutes in order to orgasm. On average, about 80% or more of women need 14 to 20 minutes of direct clitoral stimulation in order to orgasm. You are not going to get that 14 to 20 minutes of direct clitoral stimulation from the missionary position, which is the go-to position for most couples. And so now the couple thinks that she's broken because five minutes of poking does not get her there Right, and that's not. She's not the problem. Neither one of you are providing her the stimulation that she needs in order to orgasm. So there's a lot of factors that can lead into the orgasm gap. Lack of education is one of the biggest.

Speaker 1:

Right, I think, and then become, and then I think that creates a disconnect between the couples right and then neither one are really putting forth the effort in order to make anything happen.

Speaker 2:

Well, and then she's coming to me and saying well, I just have a low libido, what kind of herbs can I take? And I'm like babe, why would you be interested in having sex if you're not orgasming? Why should you want to have sex if you're not orgasming? And you know, then we get into the obligation, sex messaging. Well, my husband really needs it. Does he, though? Is he going to explode if he goes for a week without an orgasm, and that pressure of the obligation is going to further suppress any libido that exists within her body.

Speaker 1:

Well, she doesn't have to cheat on her, so then she feels obligated to do it because of that more. So then is he going to right Like, explode, right exactly.

Speaker 2:

Because you know, like the first thing that people say is if they find out that he's cheating or he's using pornography as well, are you giving him enough sex? No, that has nothing to do with it. Bad men, of bad character are the ones who cheat. Rate of orgasm has no effect on cheating. If you look at the studies, it's bad character.

Speaker 1:

It's moral, right it's. Your morals are definitely messed up. Yes, I know because my second husband we got divorced because he cheated on me, so I am so sorry. Yeah, that was horrible, but yeah, it was the same thing. And there was a disconnect in our sex life too, because he was extremely selfish, did not care about anybody but himself, and I think that goes in in line with a lot of men as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so my, my, one of the pillars of my business is healthy women in safe marriages do not turn down good sex for no reason, and so if a couple is having a sexual disconnect, I want to look at that phrase and see where the disconnect is happening. Healthy women so is there some sort of depression, anxiety, purity, culture, trauma? Is there some sort of hormonal imbalance? Is she pregnant, nursing, postpartum? You know all of those things in safe marriages.

Speaker 2:

So do you feel safe with your husband? Is he, you know? Do you sense that he is using sex to prep up his ego? Is he using sex to achieve intimacy rather than engaging in the intimacy that is necessary for good sex, right? So we know that intimacy?

Speaker 2:

So sex is supposed to be the celebration of intimacy that you've already established before you've ever reached the bedroom, whereas a lot of men have been raised and socialized that, you know, real men don't have feelings. Real men, you know, don't cry, whatever, and it takes an intense level of vulnerability to experience real, true, emotional intimacy, and that is terrifying to a man who has not been raised and socialized to understand that. And so they use sex as a way to feel connected rather than doing the work that is required to feel connected so that they can have sex and have the real intimacy that comes from truly vulnerable intimacy, sex right and then going back to healthy women, safe marriages. Don't turn down good sex for no reason. Is he good in bed? Are you you orgasming, or is he just really selfish? Does he care about your pleasure and your orgasm Right? So you can pin almost any sort of sexual disconnect to one of those issues in that phrase.

Speaker 1:

So if someone is in a marriage like that and they're having some issues, what do you recommend to them? What would you say to them?

Speaker 2:

Get into therapy or coaching with someone like me who does sex coaching to help you identify where the breakdown is happening and make a plan to remedy that breakdown. So I have a Excuse me. I have a holistic health practitioner. So if I talk to you and I don't think like you, you know we established that the marriage is healthy, you are safe within the marriage and I'm like, well, I really think that this could be hormones. I have a holistic health practitioner that I will refer you to to check your hormones. Right hormones right? If it's, you guys are not establishing intimacy before you ever reach the bedroom. I hope you make a plan to intentionally work on the non-sexual intimacies so that sex becomes the natural overflow of the other intimacies, because there's actually 12 different types of intimacy we can experience in marriage and sex is the one of those that is the overflow of when all the other ones are created and experienced. So I help couples make that plan to identify where the breakdown is happening and remedy it is happening and remedy it.

Speaker 1:

It's so interesting to me because I was just thinking I don't even understand why this is even controversial at all. Like you're having sex with your partner, like this is your spouse, why is this even even controversial or taboo? Or why is why are you getting like these haters or any issues at all? I don't understand that haters or any issues at all. I don't understand that Because you're advocating for women to actually speak up for themselves.

Speaker 2:

Yes, because I challenge, especially in the evangelical church. There is this messaging about you know, the Bible says do not deprive. You cannot deprive your husband. Men need sex every three days. God created men to need sex every three days, need sex every three days. God created men to need sex every three days. And those verses are being taken out of context and weaponized against women. And when I teach about the actual historical and cultural context of those verses and challenge what has been taught for years and years within the church, men suddenly think well, if she's allowed to say no to me, I will never have sex again.

Speaker 2:

Because there's this narrative, both within the church and within the larger American culture, that women just don't like sex.

Speaker 2:

And that's not true. Women are just not allowed to express our sexuality in the same way that men are. Men are expected to be this virile sexual being and his ego rests on his sexual accomplishments. Women are supposed to be these virginal, you know, not interested in sex at all until you get married. And then, once you're married, you're supposed to be the sex goddess, fulfilling his every whim, totally dedicated to his sexuality. And so our sexuality is silenced from the time that we're teenagers, right, especially in the evangelical church, 12-year-old girls are told to cover up their shoulders lest a grown man lust after them. So our sexualities have been silenced from the time that we're teenagers and just revolve around male sexuality. And my messaging threatens that status quo, because these men have created the system where women are obligated to have sex with them and they think if she has a choice she won't want to have sex with me, so I have to make sure that she's still obligated to have sex with me so I can continue to have the sex that I want.

Speaker 1:

I mean I mean, yeah, it's really sad that you know, making them step up and actually treat their partner like an equal and care about the partner's satisfaction is really like threatens them and their manhood so much really like, threatens them and their manhood so much it's.

Speaker 2:

It's and you can tell in my comments when a man is not a bad man, he just was never taught any better and he's trying to learn and do better versus the truly selfish men who don't want to have to put in the work of real vulnerable intimacy to build a safe relationship with their wife and they are just in it for their own orgasm and not having to do any work or emotional labor. You can tell the difference.

Speaker 1:

That's really sad, okay, so one thing that I like to talk about or I want to talk about is what are like to talk about or I want to talk about is what are? We're going to be just slightly away from like the actual aspects of your business and talk more about the day-to-day operations. What are some of the things that you use in your business that are helping you kind of manage everything? Like do you have a favorite project management system? Like what are you using?

Speaker 2:

So one of the big things that I talk about when I talk about the business of my business is I'm a content creator. I start when I started. I started as a content creator. I'm an influencer, public speaker, and when I first started I did not have a way of kind of indexing my content, right, because I will. I get the same questions over and over and over and it's great for me to make new videos all the time answering those same questions in a chat with a client and I just want to be able to send her a video where I've explained this thing 750 times. Right, and I didn't. I would. I would be like, oh, I just posted a video about this two weeks ago and now I have to like scroll my content and figure out where it is. So I started using Microsoft OneNote as a way to create a content index for myself.

Speaker 2:

So on the left side of the screen is my sort of meta topics. So I will have topics like actually I have it up on my other screen here, so just reading through them, I've got things about like oral sex, orgasms, the orgasm gap, ovulation, hormones, parenting, bringing novelty into the bedroom, breaking down specific verses like where I talk about, like oral sex, is referenced in the Bible, the verse about do not deprive right, and so under those meta concepts I have the smaller concepts that would be within it. So like I have one that's for books. And so every time I talk about a marriage book or the book like, she comes first, that's in my like smaller concepts, and then I drop the links to my videos under those other concepts with the date that I posted it. So if a client asks me, hey, what do you think about the book, she comes first, no-transcript, and they can watch it and I don't have to answer the question again.

Speaker 2:

And the other thing that this does for me is I post videos three times a day, and a lot of times I will, because my niche is sex and intimacy. I don't record content when my son is in my house house, my husband takes our son out of the house so he does not overhear anything I'm talking about, which means at once. I have to record all of my content for the week once a week. So on Saturday or Sunday I'm recording at least 21 videos, right, and so I might record a like trending music, something with no idea how I'm going to use it. So after I record it, you know, over the next couple of days I'm going to sit down with my index and I'm going to scroll through that for inspiration, for that trending sound, and then I'm going to add my text so I can post it.

Speaker 1:

Right, I love that. That's. I absolutely love that. That is so smart because then you can share it. And back back in the day, back in the Odin days, everybody used to say all the coaches would say you know, make your, make a blog post and share the blog posts. But now that we're everybody's making content based on their specialty, it's share your content so that the the answer. You can answer all of the questions for the client or the prospect or whomever, and I think that that way of keeping it organized is structured, is brilliant and it helps you save time and keeps things organized for you in multiple ways. So I love that you shared that. Next thing is what are you listening to or reading right now? This could be personal or business or both.

Speaker 2:

I am. So I do mostly audio books because the ADHD is strong. So I am listening to Power Moves by Sarah Jakes Roberts because I will be speaking at her conference come September. She does a women's conference every fall, women Evolve in Texas. It's this year. 50,000 women will be in attendance and I am speaking at the conference and so, aside from just loving her as an author and speaker, I was like I should be familiar with her work. So I am listening to Power Moves and it has. I highly recommend everybody listen to it because she's talking about moving in power and getting rid of the things that like the beliefs and the systems that are holding us back, and it's been mind blowing.

Speaker 1:

I love it. I'm going to have to add that to my list to check out. I have not listened to it and I'm going to check it out. And again, congratulations on being a speaker, in that. I'm so excited for you. I'm looking forward to that, okay, so last question that I always ask all of my guests and and that is what are you doing for yourself? That's something that I always love to ask all of my guests, right? What are you doing for self-care for you? Because as we become moms and wives and business owners, we often neglect ourselves. So what are you doing for you, angela?

Speaker 2:

With my busy life, it can be really easy for me to and especially ADHD object permanence right it can be easy for me to forget to connect with my friends and I'll go weeks without having actually talked to one of my friends or something.

Speaker 2:

And so we also. A lot of my friends are board game fanatics, and I myself am one of them, and so there's this website called boardgamearenacom where you can play all kinds of board games online with your friends, and so a bunch of my friends and I got memberships and so we've been playing board games together online and you can play when you have just like a few minutes. But something that we will do is we will get onto FaceTime and like play in real time against each other, and that has been so amazing to. It gives us a reason, right, not like I need a reason to connect with my friends, but as busy moms, sometimes you're like I need the reason, you know. So it gives us a reason to connect, to take an hour on FaceTime together, play some board games, have that time to be in each other's faces. So that has been amazing for me lately.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I love it because I and I get that, because for me, going to the gym is that's, that's the time that I go and I see my friends, right, Like all my friends are at the gym, and so that's my reason. Right To go to the gym is to see all of them, and so it's almost like it works hand in hand the accountability, but also I get to hang out with them and it's the most fun and also gets my mind off of all of the business things and all of the kid things and all of the pressures and the stresses and all of the life situations. So where can everyone find you? Where are you hanging out?

Speaker 2:

My website is thechristiansexpertcom and all of my socials are linked there.

Speaker 1:

Okay, do you have a Facebook group or anything like that, or no?

Speaker 2:

I do not have a Facebook group but I do have a private Patreon community and I tell people that's where I teach all the spicy things I can't teach on regular socials. So things like positions, kinky stuff, role plays, toys, all of that stuff is available in my private Patreon community and that's where I have the opportunity to kind of connect with people a little bit deeper than I can on regular socials without risking losing my account.

Speaker 1:

I love it. That is so amazing. It's been such a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you so much for taking the time and jumping on this call with me.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for inviting me. It was wonderful.

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