Sexual Struggles Women Hide: Drs. Juli Slattery & Joy Skarka

Episode Transcript

FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson – Web Version Transcript

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Sexual Struggles Women Hide: Drs. Juli Slattery & Joy Skarka

Guests:Juli Slattery and Joy Skarka

From the series:Secret Sexual Struggles of Women: Drs. Juli Slattery & Joy Skarka (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:October 29, 2026

Ann (00:00):

Hey, we just wanted to give you a heads up before you listen to this next program because today’s conversation on FamilyLife covers some pretty sensitive, but—

Dave (00:08):

Oh yeah.

Ann (00:10):

—really important subjects that may not be suitable for younger ears. So just use some discretion when listening to this next broadcast.

Dave (00:19):

And let me add this, and if you do listen with your kids, talk about it after with them.

Ann (00:24):

Right. This is an important conversation to have with maybe older kids, just depending on what you’re thinking, but we just wanted to give you a heads up.

Juli (00:36):

If you think about the way our conversations about sexuality have changed over the last maybe 15 or 20 years, we’ve had to get deeper theologically. All the questions about not just pornography, but addressing trauma, what do you do with trauma, LGBT kind of questions, just telling people the rules and telling them to live by these rules have not been enough. People are like, “Where’s God in this?” And so I think one of the good things to come out of a lot of the brokenness we experience is that we’ve had to go to the scriptures and we’ve had to bring this before the Lord and grapple at a deeper level.

Dave (01:22):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann (01:28):

And I’m Ann Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

We have two doctors in the house that I’m a little giddy about these two.

Dave (01:46):

And it’s not us.

Ann (01:47):

It’s not us.

Dave (01:48):

Our listeners don’t need—they know that.

Ann (01:50):

Yeah. We have Dr. Juli Slattery and Joy Skarka who have written a book together. And it’s not a book. It’s an eight week—you guys describe what it is.

Joy (02:00):

It was fun to write together. It was an eight-week curriculum, a small group study. You can go through it in a discipleship relationship or by yourself or with a friend. So eight weeks of great content.

Dave (02:12):

About what?

Joy (02:13):

About freedom from pornography. So I’d like to describe it. It’s the book I wish I had when I was struggling back in the day as a young college student.

Ann (02:21):

And the title is Her Freedom Journey: A Guide Out of Porn and Shame to Authentic Intimacy. It’s interesting that you both have your doctorates, you work together, and how did this come about? Because Joy, we want to hear that whole journey you’ve been on, but Juli, you’re here. How did you guys get together?

Joy (02:40):

Yeah. Hey, there’s power in prayer and sending emails. Juli was coming to Dallas, and I had some friends there and I went to visit them, and I sent out an email saying, “Hey, Juli, I’d love to meet you and pitch myself to work for you.”

Ann (02:55):

But you’re not just like this typical, “Hey, this girl out of nowhere.” You’re in Dallas Theological Seminary. And at the time, were you getting your doctorate?

Joy (03:02):

So I was finishing my doctorate, studying sexual shame, interviewing thousands of women, and I had this dream to one day work at Authentic Intimacy. So I just prayed for—

Dave (03:12):

Why Juli? Why Authentic Intimacy?

Joy (03:14):

There’s not any other ministries like it.

Dave (03:17):

There isn’t. There really isn’t.

Joy (03:17):

They’re similar, but there’s a lot of ministries focused on one specific thing, like affair recovery, porn recovery. But I love that Juli is big picture and covers all the things and really gets to the root issue of intimacy.

Dave (03:31):

But you guys had never met.

Joy (03:33):

No, we’d never met.

Dave (03:33):

Juli, did you go, “Oh, I want to meet this girl,” or was that a weird thing?

Juli (03:36):

I had never met her before. And it happens every now and then that if I’m traveling somewhere, somebody will reach out and just say, “Hey, I’d like to meet you.” Usually they don’t send an email ahead of time. They just show up at an event and stand in the line to say something. But she was really proactive in reaching out and just saying, “Hey, can I have 15 minutes of Juli’s time?” And so I’m like, “All right.”

Ann (03:59):

Did she give her credentials of what she was doing at the time?

Juli (04:03):

I don’t think so.

Joy (04:03):

It’s hard to remember.

Juli (04:04):

Yeah, I don’t think so.

Ann (04:04):

Woah, you didn’t even throw it out.

Joy (04:06):

I might have. I probably focused on Sex and the Single Girl, one of Juli’s books was such a game changer for me. I probably started with that.

Juli (04:14):

I think you did. Yeah. Just saying how God had used that book in her life and journey.

Ann (04:19):

So Juli, what did you think when you guys met? Did you think, there could be something here?

Juli (04:25):

Yeah, I did. I mean, it was great talking to her even just for 15 minutes. I do have people every now and then who will say to me, “I’ve always wanted to work with you or work for Authentic Intimacy.” And I never say no. I always just say, “We’ll see what God does.” That was the last contact we had for six months or so. And then we had a job posting at Authentic Intimacy and Joy got in touch with me and said, “Hey, do you think I would be good for this?” I was like, “You are so overqualified for this particular job posting.” But she’s like, “I want to apply anyway.” It was a part-time job. She was so qualified. We’re like, “We’ll hire you full-time to do more than this job was posted for.” And you got to tell what had been happening in those six months.

Joy (05:16):

Yeah. So my late husband and I, we prayed every night for that job or a similar, I think it was just sexual wholeness, some similar job, and God opened the door.

Ann (05:26):

Well, we need to get into your journey, Joy, of even you guys writing about this. I just said before we got on air, Joy, I’m not sure we’ve had a woman talk about this openly about a struggle with porn on the air before. So thanks for being so vulnerable. I think this is something that there’s a lot of people, women that are struggling and they’re not talking about it. So for you to be out there and share your story, well done.

Joy (05:56):

Well, thank you. And thanks for being willing to have the conversation. Many people aren’t willing to.

Dave (06:00):

So what’s the story? Let’s go back.

Ann (06:02):

Take us back.

Joy (06:04):

Let’s get into it. Yes. So yes, as a fifth grader, I first saw porn, which that’s the average age, is 11 years old.

Dave (06:12):

Has it always been, Juli, that young or has it gotten lower?

Juli (06:16):

I believe it’s gotten lower in terms of the norm. But yeah, you still will hear stories like I know you had shared and on a previous broadcast, like three or four.

Joy:

Oh wow.

Juli:

Yeah, there are all kinds of stories, but as pornography is becoming more normalized, almost every kid is going to see it around, at least by 10 or 11.

Dave (06:38):

When you were 11, are you talking digital? Was it a magazine?

Joy (06:42):

This would’ve been when laptops were just a thing and I can picture that old Dell computer, my friend opening it, showing me the site.

Ann (06:51):

Oh, so your friend showed you.

Joy (06:51):

My friend did it. She came over and just showed me. I mean, I had no idea what it was. I just felt like, oh, something just feels wrong. I remember shutting my bedroom door so my parents wouldn’t know, but it wouldn’t impact me till decades later. It definitely awakened sexuality and curiosities in my life.

Dave (07:09):

So that was it? Just that one time?

Joy (07:09):

That one time. And then fast forward to college, my third day of college, I was date raped on my campus, which is very common, sadly.

Ann (07:18):

Is it?

Joy (07:19):

Very common. As a freshman in a new state, didn’t have any friends, such a nightmare. And porn became my coping mechanism. It started out as a sex education, which is really common for women that we talk to, that you just Google your questions because you don’t have a sex ed, your family doesn’t talk about it, and that leads you to pornography. And so it became my education and then my coping mechanism and spent a good year plus just pretty stuck in that spot.

Ann (07:50):

Where were you spiritually at the time and where were you growing up spiritually?

Joy (07:54):

I grew up going to church, but they didn’t understand the gospel. Actually, fun fact, I went to Cru, a Cru event, a campus meeting and heard the gospel. I remember going up to my leader afterwards and saying, “So I don’t have to earn His love. I don’t have to be perfect and try and have it all together. It’s a gift.” And that’s when it started clicking, started to get discipled, really grew my passion for college students. So if I wasn’t working with Juli, I’d probably be working with Cru.

Dave:

Well, you’re here at Cru.

Joy:

I know, at Cru.

Ann (08:25):

But you still had this little secret. Have you told anybody, even your discipler?

Joy (08:30):

I did. We had a women’s event at Cru, and a brave woman went first. I’ll never forget, I can picture her being brave. You could hear a pin drop. I mean, the silence in this room of like 30, 50 women. I just remember going up to her afterwards telling her I’d been struggling and this relief, like I’m not alone. Other women struggle too. We can talk about this. I had only heard men talk about it up until this point and it was just so freeing to start that journey. I started to get discipled by her, started doing counseling, all these things, different things to work on finding healing and freedom.

Ann (09:04):

When you’re talking about this eight-week curriculum, this is what you mean like I wish I would’ve had that.

Joy (09:09):

This is what I wish I had, yes. Because so much I found was more behavior changing than getting to the deeper root issues through Juli.

Ann (09:21):

Juli, when did that change? Because it’s always been behavior for years and years and now—

Dave:

Decades.

Ann:

Yeah, decades. I can remember when that’s all it was. Hey, just put these things on your computer. Don’t look, shield your eyes. But now we’re saying, no, there’s more to it than that. When did that start?

Juli (09:38):

I don’t know when it actually started to shift, but I think a lot of it is people just not finding help by the behavior approach. And then also, if you think about the way our conversations about sexuality have changed over the last maybe 15 or 20 years, we’ve had to get deeper theologically.

(09:58):

All the questions about not just pornography, but addressing trauma, what do you do with trauma, LGBT kind of questions, just telling people the rules and telling them to live by these rules have not been enough. People are like, “Where’s God in this?” And so I think one of the good things to come out of a lot of the brokenness we experience is that we’ve had to go to the scriptures and we’ve had to bring this before the Lord and grapple at a deeper level. Some of what has come out of that in all these conversations is really getting to the heart of God and also getting to where are the strongholds where the enemy is camping out in our lives and we can’t change even if we have the desire to.

Dave (10:41):

Yeah. Joy, when you dove in, what did you find? I mean, you said you were exposed to it as an 11-year-old, but what was at the root?

Joy (10:51):

So it was a lot of finding healing from that sexual trauma I mentioned, a lot of healing from that, a lot of anger and bitterness towards God of how did that happen? Was it my fault? Just all these big theological questions.

Ann (11:03):

Did you ever tell anyone about that?

Joy (11:04):

I did, and I got some bad feedback, bad reactions, so that doesn’t help either.

Dave (11:09):

Like what? Like it was your fault?

Joy (11:11):

Why did you go there? Why did you let that happen? I mean, close people that I love dearly said that, and it really just creates a lot of shame. I mean, even looking back at high school joy, I could just see the shame already forming then just about being a sexual being that I didn’t know that that was okay and that God designed it. It’s just how to steward it. What do I do with these desires? No one was talking about this for a young single me.

Dave (11:39):

Was it ever talked about in your home?

Joy (11:41):

It was not, no. So I first heard about sex from a friend, and I was grounded from going to the friend’s house. That was the response. So it just wasn’t handled.

Ann:

Shame on shame.

Joy:

And the shame, yeah. So just I can look back and see that shame cycle and it just deep root in my heart.

Dave (11:59):

Boy, I mean, this isn’t where I want to go today, but Juli, how would you coach parents about that? They’ve got 11-year-olds, 6-year-olds, 15-year-olds in their home, and many Christian homes, they won’t talk about it. If they say anything, don’t do it, but there’s not really a healthy environment in the home. How would you help parents?

Ann (12:22):

Before you answer that, Juli, I’ll say the same thing that you said, Joy. I led a small group of young women, probably 12 women, half of those women, they had been date raped. I was shocked. Are you saying that this is happening more often than we realize?

Juli (12:40):

Yeah. I think there was a Time Magazine article several years ago that reported about 25% of women on college campuses experience unwanted sexual contact.

Ann (12:51):

That’s a lot.

Juli (12:52):

It is.

Joy (12:52):

But those are just the people reporting it. Yes. And there’s no. You don’t want to report it with all that you have to go through.

Ann (12:59):

Because you’ll hear things like, “Well, why’d you go?” Yeah. And so Juli, to get to Dave’s question, as parents—and Joy, you’re a parent. You have two kids—how do we prepare our daughters for that, and our sons really?

Juli (13:15):

I think one thing we have to acknowledge when we talk about our parents, when we talk about church culture, they were doing the best they could.

(13:26):

And there really weren’t the tools and the conversations and the knowledge available to prepare parents for these conversations. And so starting with a lot of grace.

Ann:

That’s good.

Juli:

Because I think it’s easy to look back and be like, “Oh man, my parents messed up or my pastors messed up, but they weren’t trained.” And here’s what’s really key. You can only pass on what you already have. When I’m talking to parents, one of the first things I encourage them to do is they need discipleship in this area because if you are awkward, you’ve got your own shame, you don’t know what to say.

Ann (14:05):

Which you probably do as a parent.

Juli (14:06):

Yeah.

Ann (14:07):

We all do.

Juli (14:08):

I mean, I’ve said it before. It’s easier for me to talk to a thousand people about sex than talk to my own kids.

Dave (14:14):

I agree.

Juli (14:15):

Because it’s just awkward.

Dave (14:16):

It’s intimate. Yeah.

Juli (14:17):

It is.

(14:18):

So if you don’t get your own healing and address some of your own questions and you’re like, “Hey, give me the book or give me the script,” it’s not going to go well. You’re not prepared for what might come out and the kinds of difficulties your kids might encounter. So that’s a very, very important first step is for you as mom or dad to really go through your own healing, to be able to have a safe place to process your own questions and your own experiences so that you’re not bringing that into the conversation. And then we could do a whole nother show someday on what does that discipleship process look like from toddlers all the way through.

(14:55):

But one thing I’ll just say, we have to keep in mind that in today’s day and age, it’s not a matter of if my kids are going to encounter something or stumble or get into sin, it’s when and what. Being prepared for that, as a mom or dad, you are like, “I so want to protect my kids from this.” And there are preventative conversations you can have and boundaries, but also preparing yourself for the fact that someday my kid is going to see porn. Someday I very likely might see inappropriate text messages on their phone or DMs. Someday my kid might come to me and say, “I’m really struggling with being a boy or a girl.” And so just being prepared that that’s not the end of the story, that that’s your kid really coming to you and asking for guidance and discipleship.

Ann (15:51):

It’s really good.

Dave (15:51):

I mean, that very fact makes you as a parent go, “I got to be discipled in this because that’s so depressing. I want it to be if, not when, but it is a when.” And then parents think, “Okay, then when it happens, I’m not going to know what to do. I’m either going to just do nothing or I’m going to farm it out.” Thank God for what you’re doing, discipling us, parents to help and even grandkids because now we’re doing it with grandkids.

Ann (16:15):

Well, even having sons, talking to our sons, Juli, you have all sons. Even what’s appropriate with a girl. I can’t even imagine some of these boys and girls that are in college and for you to end up in that situation, it affected you so much and it does all of us. So I’m really glad you guys have helped and put this out. But Joy, how did you meet your husband?

Joy (16:40):

Yeah. So in Dallas Theological Seminary, we met in an elevator. I held the door open for him. It was like a movie.

Dave (16:47):

Wow. I mean, after the elevator, was it instant, we’re going to date?

Joy (16:51):

For him it was.

Ann (16:52):

Did he know? He met you and he’s like, “This is my girl.”

Joy (16:55):

So he said to me later, we were supposed to go to this luncheon. He said, “I decided I wasn’t going to date right away, so I went and sat with a random guy for the luncheon.” And he said, “He turned out to be the most boring man in existence, so I should have sat with you,” is what he said to me. But I think we started dating a couple months later.

Ann (17:14):

The redemptiveness of God.

Joy (17:16):

I mean, I could write a whole book on redemptive love.

Juli (17:20):

Maybe you will someday.

Ann:

Maybe you will. Because keep going with that journey. How long were you guys married before you—

Juli (17:26):

Well, before she even gets into that, I know some pieces of her story that are just really cool. Yeah. So you were nervous about your husband, Zach, or your boyfriend at that time finding out about your struggle.

Joy:

I was.

Juli:

And you had already been very public about helping women and—

Dave (17:45):

So other people knew.

Joy (17:46):

Oh yeah. So my story’s all over the internet.

Ann (17:48):

Oh, even before you went to seminary?

Joy (17:51):

Yes. I started blogging in 2013. I was on YouTube.

Dave:

Somehow Zach didn’t know?

Joy:

Well, he didn’t know me until we met.

Dave (17:59):

And then when he, he didn’t—

Joy (18:00):

Well, before our first date, he had read over 200 blog posts I’d written.

Dave (18:05):

Oh boy.

Joy (18:08):

So he was well researched in me.

Dave (18:10):

And what did he say? How did he respond?

Joy (18:11):

He said that he fell in love with me when he saw my heart for other women. We even, we speak at events and women line up and one of the things they say to me is, “I’m over this now. I’ve found healing and freedom, but will a man ever love me when they hear my story?” I’m able to say, “I was there. I believed that lie.” And yeah, Zach was different.

Juli (18:33):

And he gave you a new title too. You got to share that.

Joy (18:35):

He did. So I started this journey. I’m speaking about porn and someone said to me, “You sure you want to be known as porn girl?” I mean, who wants that title? I’m like, “No, I don’t want that title.” Zach said to me, “You’re not porn girl, you’re freedom girl.” And it became my new thing. Yeah, because why have my identity be in my past struggle? My identity should be in who Christ made me to be.

Dave (19:00):

You’re new. The old is gone and new has come.

Joy (19:02):

Yes.

Dave (19:03):

Wow.

Joy (19:04):

So yes, his love was very redemptive, very healing in many ways.

Ann (19:07):

Did you get married while you guys were in seminary or after?

Joy (19:10):

Ten months dating, ten months engaged.

Dave (19:13):

And then how long married?

Joy (19:15):

Yeah, we were married eight years and then he got brain cancer and he died a year later. I got to walk him home to eternity and that’s the biggest honor I could ever do. Halfway through his cancer battle, I got diagnosed with breast cancer. We had to separate for a lot of it. His parents taking care of him and one of our toddlers, my parents taking care of me and one of my toddlers, and he still sent me encouraging texts every day that he could. Every day he mentally could. Wow. Very redemptive love.

Ann (19:50):

Beautiful, redemptive.

Dave (19:52):

To get even more personal, because I know there’s women especially that are thinking, okay, if I’ve had a sexual trauma or I’m bringing even a porn struggle, whatever, into my marriage, how did that go?

Ann:

Were there consequences?

Dave:

Like the marriage part, the sexual part, the walking through sexual wholeness with now your husband.

Joy (20:13):

And that could be a whole nother episode too, but I mean, I won’t sugarcoat it and say those things don’t impact your marriage because they do, and I’m sure it’ll impact my next marriage.

Ann (20:23):

I’d love for you to elaborate a little bit because you often hear of a man’s struggle and maybe a comparison. Is it different for a woman?

Joy (20:33):

One of the biggest things with porn is it’s so self-focused, which is the opposite of God’s design for covenant love where you’re serving your spouse and loving each other and all that. I think I, in the beginning, was so trained, it’s not let’s invite this person in who—and just some history on Zach, and he’d be fine with me saying this, is he had never struggled with porn. He had maybe, saw it once when a kid showed it in fifth grade and then never looked at it again. So just our sexual histories alone were different going into it. And I think a big struggle that I had was I was the sexual broken one. And a lot of the work at AI really helped me heal from that, that we’re all sexually broken. Zach and I went to a conference together back in 2020, and we were even married at this point, but I still was struggling with some of that, thinking I was the more sexually broken one in the relationship, and that just further healing happened later on as we processed that.

Dave (21:34):

I mean, was there something Zach did as a husband to help love you through that? Because when Ann and I got married, I knew about her sexual trauma. I had a perspective, and we were pretty new in Jesus, like less than two years, maybe a year and a half. So my thought was it’s her past, the old’s gone, the new has come, it’s done. I was that naive. It may have happened 20 years ago, but it’s a new day and it won’t come into our marriage or literally into our marriage bed. Duh, I was so naive. So when it did, I was like, “What? That was so long ago.” So I was so bad because I didn’t want to walk through it with her. I just wanted her to get over it, and we’d be good or I’d be good. It was very selfish. I obviously learned.

(22:25):

I actually read The Wounded Heart. It’s one of the first things I read by Dan Allender. Dan was on our Weekend to Remember® speaker team and he handed it to me.

Ann (22:33):

I think I handed it to you.

Dave (22:34):

And there’s a chapter for the spouse and I’m like, “Oh, I guess I’m the spouse.” I’m like, “Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry. How do we walk this?” So did Zach, was he able to walk with you? What’d that look like? Because there’s husbands listening. They’re like, “What do I do? How do I navigate?”

Joy (22:50):

I think I was just as shocked and surprised that it impacted us.

Ann:

Me too.

Joy:

Yeah, because I did all the things. I went to counseling. I read all the books. We were in all the premarital, pre-engagement counseling. We did all the things. So I was so shocked that it still impacted, but I mean, his love, his support, his encouragement, his pausing, asking good questions, never tried to be right, just tried to be loving. Those were the game changers and kind of let me lead. If there was something that was triggering, I would just—so much communication there of “Okay, we can’t do that,” or “Let’s pivot.”

Dave (23:44):

The book is called Her Freedom Journey: A Guide Out of Porn and Shame to Authentic Intimacy, and we’ve got it at FamilyLifeToday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes.

Ann (23:54):

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Dave (24:43):

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