It’s Just a Dang Chicken Sandwich…
Some people ask me what a sex therapy space can look like when we’re addressing messaging around purity culture, religious trauma, and societal expectations. My answer is almost always the same: it’s a consensual, hopefully a created safe space.
While some of the techniques I—or another therapist—may use can look similar, the overall experience and, more importantly, the needs of each person will look different. Some people are hesitant to explore this space because maybe they think, “It could have been worse.” Maybe they logically understand that something is impacting their relationship with connection, intimacy, or their body, but they’re still able to maintain a long-term romantic relationship. Maybe they have what they consider a functional physical connection. So, they wonder if it’s really “bad enough” to talk about.
I want to be clear: this is not an attempt to dismantle the fact that spiritual and/or religious spaces can offer significant benefits. There can be organized friendships. There can be spaces for verbal and emotional support amid all forms of pain. There can be teaching that may not exist in the home or educational setting. There can be an encouraged belief in hope. All of these beautiful aspects can exist, and you can still say that your experiences with religion and/or spirituality challenged the messaging you received about your body, partnered sex, identity, physiological responses, self-pleasure, masking, pressure, puberty, physical and non-physical connection, comparison, fear of judgment, safety, vulnerability, and more.
I figured I would share a personal example—this is a blog, anyways…
When I was a freshman in high school, I went to a school assembly. I don’t even remember what the assembly was about. What I do remember is that, somehow, a well-known chicken sandwich restaurant with Christian ties was providing a card to every student who took an oath. The card was for a free chicken sandwich every time I went there. And I had friends who drove. This was huge for me. All I had to do was sign my name on the back of the card, pledging that I would remain abstinent until marriage.
These people didn’t know a thing about me. They didn’t know that I wasn’t struggling feeling aligned with the structure of Christianity I had been raised in. They didn’t know I had already been sexually involved with kids my age. They didn’t know I had been talking with my boyfriend at the time about the possibility of having penetrative sex.
My friends and I chatted as we left, and I brought up, “What if we do have sex?” They shrugged it off, saying we didn’t need to disclose it if we did. It was just a chicken sandwich. In fact, it was my favorite dang chicken sandwich. I remember walking out of that assembly feeling strong and powerful. I had this. I had a free meal for as long as I wanted it. And I also remember the tightness in my chest, knowing I would need to hide myself in order to receive it.
As time went on throughout high school, I continued to go to that chicken restaurant and receive my free sandwich. I went with my peers. I was also served by my peers. And in both situations, I felt paranoia. I would glance around, wondering if they knew the truth. Did they know I was exploring myself and other people sexually? What did they think about me? What did this mean about me? At some point, I became so convinced that the person working the drive-through would take my card, hand it back to me, and declare that they couldn’t accept it. Or that someone would suddenly vocalize that they knew what I was doing. They never did.
But let me tell you what the experience did. It became part of what I started thinking about when I was engaging sexually with myself and other people.
“I am bad.”
Not only because I was having sex, but because I was rebelling against the religious standards I had been raised with.
“I am shameful.”
Because I was going against my own value of honesty by lying.
“I’m not good enough.”
Not only to receive my chicken sandwich, but to uphold the societal standards I had been taught were necessary to “deserve” something as basic as food. Something as simple as a chicken sandwich didn’t just impact my relationship with anxiety. It reinforced messages of shame surrounding sex. It increased my fear of re-entering religious spaces. It affected my relationship with food and became part of the trajectory that eventually contributed to disordered eating in adolescence and adulthood.
This is why I’m writing this blog. Because if you feel stuck in messages or beliefs about yourself that were created somewhere along the way, this could be the space for you. Something that seems simple—or something you may have decided was “not that bad”—can still have an impact. Our brains and bodies hold onto messages that impact your creation of neuropathways. Those neuropathways can affect your relationship with yourself, with others, with sex and intimacy, and even with your desire or physiological responses. You deserve a space to explore those messages without judgment, without bias, and with complete curiosity. You don’t have to prove that something was significant enough before you’re allowed to examine how it affected you in the past but how it impacts your present and our innate response to the future.
Because at the end of the day…
It wasn’t just a chicken sandwich.