EP.21 What we are learning, loving, and a whole lot about kissing

EP.21 What we are learning, loving, and a whole lot about kissing

Bridgett and Lauren gather the threads from recent conversations with Dr. Anthony Bradley, Barb Hill, Dr. Andrew Bauman, Dr. Jenna Mountain, Jonathan Hernandez, Adam Young, and Dr. Tony. Across themes of men’s formation, emotional capacity, abstinence, shame, story, and embodied sexuality, they keep returning to what healthy love actually takes. The tension is honest: rules can feel safer than discernment, but they cannot do the deeper work of formation. Bridgett and Lauren name the body as a place of wisdom, not fear, where desire, hesitation, grief, attraction, and discomfort all offer meaningful information. Their invitation is toward integrity that is connected and whole. Physical closeness is not treated as a formula, but as something that should match trust, commitment, communication, and the relational reality being built. For dating and relationships, this becomes deeply practical. What to pay attention to is whether your body feels safe, whether your words can be honest, and whether connection is forming something good in both of you. The fruit is clarity, discernment, and growing trust in yourself. Watch this episode on YouTube [https://youtu.be/upOoo2dHcqc] Mentioned in this Episode * Join Andrew Bauman's Man Land [https://andrewjbauman.com/man-land-online-community-is-open/⁠] * Listen to Three Percent Podcast [https://threepercentco.com/podcast⁠] Heartbreak Albums Bridgett Mentioned: * The Process by Judah & The Lion [https://open.spotify.com/album/6nGvTLfDe8Re9cUKx2YcOp?si=Fi8rOqzJQc6sq61eB4jJvw⁠] * Nova by Falcon [https://open.spotify.com/album/3OsuGDfJXeBFUUlYCtkjpq?si=1M1bOpGyTQm5B7drNJ6pZQ] If something in this episode resonated with you, here are two ways to go deeper depending on what you need: 🩷 Work with Bridgett You don’t need more rules. You need a deeper understanding of your sexual desire.If you still feel confused about how to navigate dating without shutting down or crossing your boundaries, Bridgett helps you build sexual self-trust and honor your values → ⁠⁠⁠ RECLAIM Cohort⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/reclaim] 📓 ⁠⁠⁠Free Guides and Ecourse⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/freebies] → ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/bridgettblood/] → ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/]   💙 Work with Lauren If you’re feeling unsure what to do next— whether that’s meeting people, choosing who to pursue, or trusting your judgment in dating, Lauren helps you move forward with clarity and confidence.→ Work with Lauren [https://calendar.app.google/DqcbBo3bYi5q4vuY9 ] → Coming in July: The Mid-Summer Dating Reset [https://laurenmathues.kit.com/63d82cbf1c]→ ⁠⁠⁠Book a Dating Clarity Call⁠⁠⁠ [https://book.titan.email/claritycallwithlaurenmathues] We’ll look at your specific situation and map out your next step. 📔 Get the free guide ⁠⁠⁠Dating Apps Don’t Have to Be Confusing⁠⁠⁠ [https://laurenmathues.kit.com/477a573d13] → ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/laurenmathues/?hl=en] → ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠ [http://www.laurenmathues.com/]

EP.20 Holistic Health for the Man You Want to Be with Dr. Tony Krohn

Dr. Tony Krohn, chiropractor and men’s holistic health coach, brings a thoughtful and needed perspective on men, formation, health, and what actually prepares someone for love. He speaks to the pressure many men feel to become impressive on the outside while avoiding the deeper work of identity, community, healing, and embodied integrity. This conversation moves beyond appearances, apps, and external validation into what it really looks like to become ready for relationship. One of the central tensions is that growth can look good on the outside while still being driven by fear. We can read the books, work out, clean up our lives, and say we are “doing the work,” but still be trying to prove we are worthy of love. Tony names the deeper invitation: to let God form the places in us that are lonely, defended, insecure, or still reaching for validation, so our healing becomes honest rather than performative. His framework is rooted in wholeness: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health held together rather than separated into parts. The goal is not simply to get the girl, get married, or check the boxes. It is formation with integrity, where community can offer encouragement and correction, where the body is cared for, where the heart is not abandoned, and where connection becomes something we can actually receive and sustain. What to pay attention to is why you are doing what you are doing. Are you growing because you are afraid you are not enough, or because you want to live with greater clarity, love, and faithfulness? In dating and relationships, notice whether your desire for marriage is helping you become more whole or tempting you to perform. That kind of honesty creates space for discernment, deeper trust, and a more grounded relationship with yourself. Watch this episode on YouTube [https://youtu.be/bfmrtOFbJZk] Connect with Dr. Tony * Instagram [https://instagram.com/drtonykrohn] * The Restored Man - Group Program [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd8Q02QZFDBubcM0HBNq-H7b4zPqeiNFQhHfSR8wD7dx2WT0g/viewform] * Discovery Call [https://l.bttr.to/78G76] If something in this episode resonated with you, here are two ways to go deeper depending on what you need: 🩷 Work with Bridgett You don’t need more rules. You need a deeper understanding of your sexual desire.If you still feel confused about how to navigate dating without shutting down or crossing your boundaries, Bridgett helps you build sexual self-trust and honor your values → ⁠⁠⁠ RECLAIM Cohort⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/reclaim] 📓 ⁠⁠⁠Free Guides and Ecourse⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/freebies] → ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/bridgettblood/] → ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/]   💙 Work with Lauren If you’re feeling unsure what to do next— whether that’s meeting people, choosing who to pursue, or trusting your judgment in dating, Lauren helps you move forward with clarity and confidence. → ⁠⁠⁠Book a Dating Clarity Call⁠⁠⁠ [https://book.titan.email/claritycallwithlaurenmathues] We’ll look at your specific situation and map out your next step. 📔 Get the free guide ⁠⁠⁠Dating Apps Don’t Have to Be Confusing⁠⁠⁠ [https://laurenmathues.kit.com/477a573d13] → ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/laurenmathues/?hl=en] → ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠ [http://www.laurenmathues.com/]

EP.19 Making Sense of Your Sexual Story with Adam Young

Adam Young, licensed clinical social worker and author of Make Sense of Your Story, brings a compassionate and clarifying lens to why our past continues to shape how we date, desire, and attach. Rather than asking us to summarize our whole life from a distance, Adam invites us to pay attention to the particular memories, relational patterns, bodily responses, and places of pain that have formed us. For anyone longing for honest, connected love, this conversation helps name what it really looks like. There is a meaningful tension here: our bodies are telling the truth, but not always the whole truth about the present moment. Attraction, fear, shame, and longing are not random, and they are not problems to simply overcome. They are often invitations to listen with more kindness to what our lived experience has carried, so that we can respond with greater clarity instead of simply reenacting what feels familiar. Adam’s framework centers on the integrity of looking at our own story with compassion, not contempt. Healing is not a finish line we cross before we become ready for love, but an ongoing formation of how we relate to our heart, our body, our wounds, and our desire. The real question becomes whether we and the people we date are willing to keep looking, keep repairing, and keep moving toward wholeness together. What to pay attention to is not whether someone has a perfect story, but whether they can engage their story honestly. Can they stay present with emotion? Can they receive a small vulnerability with care? Can they notice a pattern without turning away or becoming cruel? These are the places where dating becomes discernment, where clarity deepens, and where self-trust has room to grow. Watch this episode on YouTube [https://youtu.be/LOQrtP__L1E] About Adam Young Adam Young is a therapist who focuses on trauma and abuse, the host of The Place We Find Ourselves podcast, and the author of Make Sense of Your Story: Why Engaging Your Past With Kindness Changes Everything. Adam is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with a Master degree in Social Work (Virginia Commonwealth University) and Divinity (Emory University). He currently serves as a Fellow and Instructor at The Allender Center and lives in Fort Collins, CO, where he enjoys skiing, soccer, and mountain biking. Connect with Adam Website [https://adamyoungcounseling.com⁠] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/adamyoungcounseling/⁠] Adam's Book, Make Sense of Your Story [https://www.amazon.com/Make-Sense-Your-Story-Everything/dp/1540903753]Want help applying this to your dating life? If something in this episode resonated with you, here are two ways to go deeper depending on what you need: 🩷 Work with Bridgett You don’t need more rules. You need a deeper understanding of your sexual desire.If you still feel confused about how to navigate dating without shutting down or crossing your boundaries, Bridgett helps you build sexual self-trust and honor your values → ⁠⁠⁠ RECLAIM Cohort⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/reclaim] 📓 ⁠⁠⁠Free Guides and Ecourse⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/freebies] → ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/bridgettblood/] → ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/]   💙 Work with Lauren If you’re feeling unsure what to do next— whether that’s meeting people, choosing who to pursue, or trusting your judgment in dating, Lauren helps you move forward with clarity and confidence. → ⁠⁠⁠Book a Dating Clarity Call⁠⁠⁠ [https://book.titan.email/claritycallwithlaurenmathues] We’ll look at your specific situation and map out your next step. 📔 Get the free guide ⁠⁠⁠Dating Apps Don’t Have to Be Confusing⁠⁠⁠ [https://laurenmathues.kit.com/477a573d13] → ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/laurenmathues/?hl=en] → ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠ [http://www.laurenmathues.com/]

EP.18 The Night God Met Me in My Addiction with Jonathan Hernandez

Jonathan Hernandez, certified Connections Codes Coach, specializing in porn recovery and men's emotional wellness, joins Bridgett and Lauren for an honest conversation about sexuality, shame, curiosity, and wholeness. Through his story with pornography, trauma, faith, and dating, he names what it looks like to pursue healing with integrity instead of fear. The tension is real: many of us learned to hide or manage sexual struggle instead of bringing it into connection. Jonathan offers a more embodied path, where our reactions, attractions, and shame can become places of honesty, not isolation. His invitation is not behavior control, but formation. Sexual wholeness begins when we get curious about what desire is connected to, where we disconnect, and how God meets us with kindness as we grow in clarity, trust, and integrity. What to pay attention to is when attraction shifts into urgency, fantasy, control, or the need to be chosen. In dating and relationships, those moments can become invitations to slow down, tell the truth, and move forward with discernment, clarity, and self-trust. Watch this episode on YouTube [https://youtu.be/Qaoa6Lh-6qQ] Connect with Jonathan * Website [https://jonnythecoach.com/⁠] * Instagram [https://instagram.com/jonnythecoach] * Connection Codes Coaches [https://connectioncodes.co/all-coaches⁠] Want help applying this to your dating life? If something in this episode resonated with you, here are two ways to go deeper depending on what you need: 🩷 Work with Bridgett You don’t need more rules. You need a deeper understanding of your sexual desire.If you still feel confused about how to navigate dating without shutting down or crossing your boundaries, Bridgett helps you build sexual self-trust and honor your values → ⁠⁠⁠ RECLAIM Cohort⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/reclaim] 📓 ⁠⁠⁠Free Guides and Ecourse⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/freebies] → ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/bridgettblood/] → ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/]   💙 Work with Lauren If you’re feeling unsure what to do next— whether that’s meeting people, choosing who to pursue, or trusting your judgment in dating, Lauren helps you move forward with clarity and confidence. → ⁠⁠⁠Book a Dating Clarity Call⁠⁠⁠ [https://book.titan.email/claritycallwithlaurenmathues] We’ll look at your specific situation and map out your next step. 📔 Get the free guide ⁠⁠⁠Dating Apps Don’t Have to Be Confusing⁠⁠⁠ [https://laurenmathues.kit.com/477a573d13] → ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/laurenmathues/?hl=en] → ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠ [http://www.laurenmathues.com/]

EP.17 From Formulas to Formation: Abstinence, Sexual Fragility and Maturity with Dr. Jenna Mountain

Bridgett and Lauren sit down with Dr. Jenna Mountain, a sex therapist and educator who works at the intersection of faith and sexuality, for a conversation that gently rewires how many of us were taught to think about abstinence. Jenna brings both clinical experience and a deep love for the church, and she does not shy away from the places it has gotten things wrong. Together, they explore what it means to make sexual choices from a place of conviction rather than control, and what healthy formation actually looks like. At the center of the conversation is a quiet but important distinction. A choice rooted in your own values feels different in your body than a rule handed to you by someone else. Jenna names the way purity culture often produced sexually fragile adults, people who learned to avoid their own desire rather than engage it with maturity. That fragility shows up later in dating, in marriage, in the way people relate to beauty, attraction, and their own embodied lives. The work, she says, is becoming someone who can stay connected to your body, your faith, and your discernment all at once. Her framework moves us from formulas to formation. Formulas tell you exactly what to do and promise a guaranteed outcome. Formation invites you into the slower, more honest work of knowing your convictions, understanding your own development, and choosing in alignment with what you actually believe. In this view, abstinence can absolutely be a healthy choice, but only when it is fully yours. The goal is integrity, wholeness, and the kind of sexual maturity that is not waiting on a wedding day to arrive. For anyone dating, this conversation reframes what real readiness looks like. What to pay attention to is whether your sexual choices are forming you into a fuller, more grounded person or quietly keeping you small. The invitation is to engage rather than avoid, to ask better questions of yourself and the people you date, and to build the kind of self-trust that holds steady whether you are single for another year or another decade. Move with clarity, trust your discernment, and let your convictions feel like your own. Watch this episode on YouTube [https://youtu.be/p2bBYezz_aY] Connect with Jenna * Work with Jenna in either counseling or coaching [https://www.jennamountain.com] * Join her email list [https://links.ivorey.io/widget/form/9hjk5csPYjGipXAngyJU] * Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/thejennamountain/] * TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@thejennamountain] * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/JennaMountain/] Want help applying this to your dating life? If something in this episode resonated with you, here are two ways to go deeper depending on what you need: 🩷 Work with Bridgett You don’t need more rules. You need a deeper understanding of your sexual desire.If you still feel confused about how to navigate dating without shutting down or crossing your boundaries, Bridgett helps you build sexual self-trust and honor your values → ⁠⁠ RECLAIM Cohort⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/reclaim] 📓 ⁠⁠Free Guides and Ecourse⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/freebies] → ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/bridgettblood/] → ⁠⁠Website⁠⁠ [https://bridgettblood.com/]   💙 Work with Lauren If you’re feeling unsure what to do next— whether that’s meeting people, choosing who to pursue, or trusting your judgment in dating, Lauren helps you move forward with clarity and confidence. → ⁠⁠Book a Dating Clarity Call⁠⁠ [https://book.titan.email/claritycallwithlaurenmathues] We’ll look at your specific situation and map out your next step. 📔 Get the free guide ⁠⁠Dating Apps Don’t Have to Be Confusing⁠⁠ [https://laurenmathues.kit.com/477a573d13] → ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/laurenmathues/?hl=en] → ⁠⁠Website⁠ [http://www.laurenmathues.com/] christian dating podcast, faith and sexuality, purity culture, abstinence conversation, christian relationships, christian singles, dating advice, relationship formation, sexual ethics, body connection, desire and faith, self trust in dating, emotionally healthy dating, christian dating advice, intimacy conversations, self awareness in relationships, christian young adults, dating mindset, healing from purity culture, authentic faith, relationship growth, christian podcast