Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
From "Half-hearted" to Infinitely Joyful--Digging (Into) Desire with Jay Stringer (Pt. 1)
0 Plays1 second ago
C.S. Lewis famously wrote in The Weight of Glory, "It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
You may have heard that quoted in a sermon before. You may even have read it in the original text, or maybe even considered it on some deeper level. But I mean, really, what would it be like to live as if that concept were actually TRUE?
Our friend Jay Stringer, an NYC-based psychotherapist and author, has spent a great deal of time thinking and writing about our relationship with our desires, and what if anything God might have to do with them. In his first bestselling 2018 book Unwanted, he suggested that paying attention to various forms of brokenness in the realm of sexual desire (whether through addiction or avoidance) might tell us something important about ways that we need to heal.
The overwhelming positive response to that book, and the boatloads of people who felt safe naming difficult things about themselves and their relationship with sexual desire in particular, let Jay know that he was on to something. But as it turned out, the challenges people spoke or wrote of were both broader and deeper than his initial theme.
That piqued Jay's curiosity about the concept of desire in general. Jay heard story after story of desires of all kinds being denied, deferred, derailed, defiled, demanded, discarded, or distorted. (And okay, probably some other verbs that do not start with the letter D).
And that led him to do a decidedly deeper dive into desire, in the form of yet another thoughtful survey regarding how people relate to desire in five key areas of their lives. But Jay's work isn't merely facts and figures reduced to words on a page. It's a wise, kind, thoughtful engagement with the stories of regular, relatable people who have wrestled with what they desire, and why, and whether it's too much or not enough. And to his delight and surprise, once again, Jay's own dance with desires provided ample grist for the mill as he wrestled with this topic.
The result--which works to all our collective benefit-- is his new book, Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow, coming out this month (March 2026). We hope you will genuinely enjoy this preview, ideally using more than one of your senses, and that it will whet your appetite for Jay's kindness and insights in the book. (Or at least for part 2 of our interview.)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Surviving Saturday
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to Surviving Saturday, a podcast about finding hope in the midst of life's disappointments. We resonate with the powerlessness that Jesus' first followers experienced as they waited between His crucifixion on Friday and His rising on Sunday morning.
00:00:27
Speaker
We feel led to bring light and goodness into a world that aches and wonders when relief will come. Here you'll find no easy answers, just honest conversations about actual pain through the lens of a suffering God.
00:00:42
Speaker
I'm Wendy Osborne, a licensed counselor based in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I'm her husband, Chris, a counseling intern and family law mediator. Join us as we wait together for more.
Meet Jay Stringer
00:01:01
Speaker
Welcome back. Hi, Chris. Hey, Wendy. We are here today with Jay Stringer, um author and psychotherapist. Hi, Jay.
00:01:13
Speaker
Hello, Chris. Hello, Wendy. So good to be with you all. Thanks for having me. So good to have you. You are in frigid New York, correct? Yes. frigid New York at this point preparing for a blizzard of some kind so yes we've got two kids get some snow coming too right we we are looking at ice it has downgraded from winter watch to ice storm warning much to your disappointment much to my disappointment but we do have two kids in Brooklyn that I will be living vicariously
00:01:47
Speaker
Yes. To hopefully enjoy. um Okay. I think I got the last two sleds into Manhattan. So I was like doing every single web website I could find from like Target to Amazon to Walmart plus to everything. And, Well done.
00:02:09
Speaker
with me well done oh my god some points now you are bringing back memories of of because they were even slepter harder to come by in charlotte north carolina as you can imagine because it's so rare And then when it comes, oh my gosh, here it is. And there's a complete run and we have a lot fewer options. So i'm glad you know it spreads. right place No, i'm it's like that when you hear a heat wave is going to come in, it's like, okay, it's coming a week later. i If I need a box fan or some type of, I need to order it right when the news comes out. Cause there are no sleds on Facebook marketplace or Craigslist or so. We, it we came to learn that trash can lids.
00:02:50
Speaker
can be a good sled if it's deep enough. In Manhattan, we have no... You're right. You do not have them. That's right. You have piles and you have big bits. yeah you know when the ja We could right When the trash got on the street, get snow covered. If it gets snow covered enough, you got some nice moguls to work with though. That's right. Moguls. Yes. We could jump out of, we're on the third floor in our apartment. So if it gets enough, that'd be a fun jump.
00:03:20
Speaker
Yeah. We just moved our youngest kid into an apartment in Brooklyn and were getting re-wanted. They're in little, little Haiti on, okay yeah um, yeah. Yeah.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, no surround. that um But we're getting reacquainted with trash delivery is, know, trash pickup is put it on the street. Yeah. Maybe bagged, probably bagged, maybe in a can, maybe not.
00:03:44
Speaker
And you just kind of dance around it Yep. Yep.
Jay Stringer's New Book
00:03:47
Speaker
All right. So Jay, you've got a new book coming out in March um as um I would say a bit of a follow up, even though it's a bit of a different direction to your unwanted book that was so revolutionary.
00:04:03
Speaker
This book is called Desire, the Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal and Grow. So we're really excited to hear from you this morning about how you came to write this. Why was this the next
Moving from Seattle to New York
00:04:18
Speaker
step?
00:04:18
Speaker
And before that, if you just, you know, for listeners who maybe not familiar, you just give a little background on kind of where you are and how you got where you are. Sure. I am currently in New York City. We moved from Seattle ah in 2020, so moved right in the middle of the pandemic into Manhattan when everybody was moving out. So was pretty wild time to move in. Oh my gosh.
00:04:41
Speaker
Got deeply acquainted with all strange things New York from like manhole explosions to ah we got a car a couple years in and had rats eat all of the coils inside of our engine and a couple thousand dollar mechanic bill.
00:04:59
Speaker
um So, I mean, Manhattan has been an adventure. We have, I've loved it. I've loathed it and kind of anywhere in between, but currently in New York, I went out to Seattle right after undergrad to pursue my master's in counseling, master of divinity at the Seattle school.
00:05:16
Speaker
I met my wife, Heather there. She's also a psychotherapist ah trained at the Seattle school. And so ah You know, probably at some point in 2018, 2019, I was mowing my grass and i had an old lawnmower. And just you've probably seen that scene of like, just you're just trying to pull the thing to try and get it to start. And it's not starting.
00:05:40
Speaker
And we're just like, this feels like a microcosm of my life at this point. Like, it should work. We've got great friends, a church, ah you know, everything on paper is here. But there was a desire for, something new. um i grew up on the
Growing up as a Pastor's Kid
00:05:56
Speaker
East Coast in the Washington DC area.
00:05:58
Speaker
My work had been bringing me out to the East Coast a lot more. And so we thought, you know what if we just moved to New York? And even if we give it two years, we still have lived in a great city, even if we hate it.
00:06:11
Speaker
ah So that was kind of why we left. But you know i grew up as a pastor's kid, i was the third of four kids, so middle child-ish. And part of what I would say about that is you know my older sister was much more of the the rebel in the family. She kind of created a Petri dish of ah misery for my parents from time to time.
00:06:34
Speaker
My older brother took more of the philosophical rebellion route, like was reading Nietzsche 16, always critiquing my parents' philosophy on a lot of things. And so I kind of grew up both as a good kid, but also that was the provisional self that I built was...
00:06:52
Speaker
yeah The more tuned I am to my mom, to my dad, the more good I am, the more that this family ah runs a little bit better. And I think my parents could use a little break with me. And so there were you know a lot of things that were innate with me in terms of what I cared for. But also this kind of began a two-step dance between you know managing my image, knowing what I needed to present to the world around me, but then i'll also just having a lot of unresolved issues and dynamics inside of me um so kind of to use your all's language of you know friday saturday sunday um don't entirely know what it means have a hunch but i had no language to talk about friday and saturday it was always you can maybe mention it but move very quickly into a sunday story of easter redemption and that's how you and
00:07:48
Speaker
So I think moving out to Seattle, will hearing Dan Allender speak for the first time was like, this is the first person that has told me the truth about Friday and Saturday.
Personal Growth through Therapy
00:07:57
Speaker
And I was just hungry ah to be able to kind of, like, I know there's a goodness, there's a longing for redemption, for beauty on this earth, but also what what the hell am I supposed to do with all these stories that I've never known how to talk about that happened to me And then all the unwanted behaviors, relation disordered relationship to food yeah and my body. So there were just so much stuff that I needed to address out in Seattle. And so grateful for for that time. Yeah.
00:08:30
Speaker
Well, and what a great thing that that you were able, even at that young age, to sort of to have that knowing, that knowledge, um this fast forwarding to Sunday, everything's good. And i'm I'm in right, down, right up, right down, right happy all the time. You know, I've got the joy, joy, joy.
00:08:46
Speaker
Is that capturing everything? Even as you say that. yeah Yes. yeah We're probably raised on some of the same Sunday school songs and stuff. were only a little bit ahead of you, but um yeah there that is a challenge. and that's one the things we'll talk about in your book, Kitsin 2, is how do we reckon with um heartache, disappointment, and and without just you know slapping a spiritual band-aid on and saying, well, all things work for glory. Let's go forward. you know That rings hollow the longer you live and the more you know you actually get acquainted with other people and their stories and your own yeah experiences.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Why do you think there is such a pull to live only talking about Sunday or giving very little um time and attention to Friday, Saturday?
00:09:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think of, you know, the classic Jung reality of like Carl Jung, like you can't you can't take anyone further than you have been yourself. You would say that to, you know, other psychiatrists.
00:09:44
Speaker
So I think, you know, the longer I've worked with leaders in my world, it's a sense of like, they don't know what to do with Friday and Saturday. Sunday, you know, if if trauma is real, like, again, Friday is a day of trauma, ah sexual abuse, likely from what many scholars are saying about what Jesus' body underwent with regard to soldiers, ah his own physical trauma. And so when you go through trauma, And it's that sense of, I can't trust the ground underneath me. I can't trust God. I can't trust my body. I can't trust anything. And I don't know what to do with the questions of Saturday. Like, just imagine like a disciple, like I've followed this guy for three years and now he's dead. And the entire thing that I've invested my entire life work in and left my career behind to do, now he's dead, What do I do now? And so Sunday kind of gives us some sense of,
00:10:45
Speaker
I get to bypass that. I don't have to deal with those questions and everything is good. And that's what trauma creates is I need some level of certainty. I need solid ground to be able to understand this. And that's why I think it moves to, okay, here's language that, you know, overcomes Friday, overcomes all of that to be able to speak at the end of Sunday. So yeah.
00:11:10
Speaker
um And I was thinking, I i totally agree with everything you said, that it it gives us a false sense of like solid ground under our feet.
00:11:21
Speaker
And we often don't have, like you said, anywhere to go with the questions. And so I'm reading a book right now about a pastor who um walked away from the faith for a season between childhood and current vocation. But part of the story was that he began questioning some of the theology at a young age.
00:11:45
Speaker
And none of his leaders knew what to do with him. So they kept dismissing him from groups and calling him disruptive. And so um we've got a puppy joining us who wanted to. Hello puppy. the ring So this is our newest edition. Now that we are full into empty nesting. Yes. Yes. Welcome.
00:12:11
Speaker
So there anything that you would like to say or she would like to say? What would you like to say? What would you like to say? He probably has a lot of to say about desire, yeah desire of being shut down and not being able to do what he wants.
00:12:25
Speaker
I want to belong. Bring me in. Exactly. That captures him very well. He is definitely a belonger. yeah Yes. Yes. um Okay. See, I just always like to ask that question of why do we try to bypass? And I think there's something too about,
00:12:44
Speaker
trying to defend a reputation of God that we don't quite trust ourselves because we haven't had to do the mud wrestling in the dark, in the wake of the trauma, in the aloneness. And so we're trying to pretend we know who he is.
00:13:02
Speaker
And I think that only comes through the mud wrestling. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there is. mean, i I think growing up, there was always the sense of kind of like the the darker the night, the brighter the stars. And, you know, it sounded true, but there was no like, let's actually enter into the darkness. Let's enter into the particularities of what happened.
00:13:26
Speaker
And so, i mean, I think part of, i remember one of my ah friends in grad school did his master's thesis on essentially ah connecting Holy Week to our life experiences.
00:13:39
Speaker
um He had ah a mom that died when he was 12 years old. ah had a lot of kind of just grief that he was walking through. So his master's thesis was essentially walking people through, you know, Monday, Thursday, day of betrayal, Friday, day of trauma, Saturday, day of emptiness, and was really involved with that project with him. And that's part of what so many of our late night beers were about is how do we connect like these crucifixions that we have all been through, these traumas that we have undergone and really connect them to the story. So I think part of what we started working through is like, we thought that we were only being faithful to the gospel when we talked about Sunday, but it was like, no, our ability to bear witness to Friday, bear witness to what Saturday is actually makes something known
00:14:34
Speaker
about who Jesus is that I had never really conceptualized in that way before. And I remember taking that into therapy of like just my friend's integrity to say, this is my Friday, this is my Saturday. and I was like, whoa, you entered into particularities that I've never entered before. And so that was revolutionary to me of like,
00:14:56
Speaker
No, it all matters. And Sunday is beautiful, but like you you can't name resurrection if you have not articulated and entered into Saturday and Friday. It just it it it trivializes the very trauma of the yes Yeah, and I can relate to, i mean, the I think the longing, the hope, the desire for restoration, and even for a certainty some degree. I've been learning to realize first I have that. um And then I remember where I was actually. i was listening to your good friend and ours, Adam Young's podcast, and he said something that just stopped my tracks. He said, you know, you grew up with a fragmented self from different traumatic things. You're going to crave certainty and theological certainty offers it in. And it's like crack. and I'm like, shut up now.
00:15:46
Speaker
I don't want to hear that. But it's so true. I'm like, okay, no wonder I've gravitated towards this or that that provided answers. A big part of my story is when my heroes was Encyclopedia Brown.
00:15:58
Speaker
because he was the kid who listened and solved all the problems. And I, i want to be that guy. even had a friend who called me and so be at Osborne. I'm like, yes, that's, you know, but that led to this. Oh, I will find certainty. I'll find rightness. I'll find the answers.
00:16:13
Speaker
But some of that is, is bypassing and skipping over the questions and the questions of of suffering and things like that, which of course life brings you if you don't go there yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's such a helpful exercise to say, like, what what was your encyclopedia, Brown? Or, like, for me, it was the deader, the better in terms of theologians, like, read your Edwards, your Lutheran, Calvin, and just became such an asshole in college due to, you know, had all this unaddressed trauma, all this two-stepping of being in a pastor's family, but exactly that thing of, like, this feels really good to be able to
00:16:48
Speaker
just think about election and tulip and all these categories was like, yes, like this feels so much better than fragmentation, than questions, than angst, than doubt.
00:17:00
Speaker
So um it was a pill that I took. Yes. Yeah. And it was baptized. It was a baptized pill. A baptism. Yes.
00:17:12
Speaker
No joke. yeah Some of my favorite clients are, teens who have been through very hard life situations and they are in a Christian context and they come to me with all of their questions of why and how and who is this God and helping them craft what essentially becomes their own psalm around a theology of their particular suffering of, you know, what would they want to ask God and why is it hard to sing this song or that song? Why are they drawn to this song or that song? And, and what's deep in their heart that needs tending to, um, rather than feeding them more scripture in an attempt to quell what are very legitimate screams of protest.
00:18:07
Speaker
Indeed. Yep. So I think we would love for you to tell us um how you knew this was the next thing you wanted to write about.
Understanding Desire
00:18:17
Speaker
desire.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yep. So first book was Unwanted. And, you know, part of what I was trying to do with Unwanted was to change some of the evangelical conversation, Christian conversation on how do we approach issues like infidelity, unwanted, porn use. And so part of, you know, what I had been reading was kind of some of the classic, like every man's battle stuff. And, you know there's There's some really troubling direct quotes in that line. like you know If your husband is struggling with porn, present your body as a merciful vial of methadone to him. like If he wants to ogle you coming out of the shower, like let him ogle you because he needs to find it. And so there were all these like really problematic ways of...
00:19:05
Speaker
engaging this, which I would essentially just break down into lust management. Like it's internet monitoring, it's accountability, it's any system that kind of doesn't really have to address arousal, understand why those fantasies, those desires first appealed to us.
00:19:23
Speaker
ah And so really trying to do a lot of research instead of just bring good clinical theory or good theology to it, but really trying to get a sense of you know, why do we do what we do? And so did a original research project that looked at ah essentially finding that we could predict, not just do people watch porn or how much porn do people watch, but like what types of porn, what types of affair partners will people pursue based on the unaddressed realities of their life? And even pre-launch of that book, I wrote a blog article on just the meaning of our sexual fantasies. And I think I got somewhere like a hundred requests for therapy ah from that book.
00:20:07
Speaker
And, you know, the the writing was fine. The concept was good, but I think what struck me, and I think that the nerve that it struck was like, it resisted two of the paradigms of our day, which are just like suppress- ah those things are bad or just kind of normalize these things. Like people got really curious about their sexual fantasies. And to this day, we still get random inquiries from people of like, here's my porn search or here's my arousal template. Can Jay interpret it for me?
00:20:38
Speaker
And they'll offer for like five bucks or can I Venmo like 10 bucks for this? It's like, are you kidding me? But I knew that there was like curiosity around like, you know, why do I do what we do? And that's what I loved about that book.
00:20:53
Speaker
But then we started getting a lot of other people that would write in and they would say like, okay, yeah, you addressed out of control sexual desire, but I feel like I need a defibrillator for my sex life. Like I can't find any desire. Yeah.
00:21:07
Speaker
And so then kind of staying with the category of sex, but then as the clients that I was working with, you know, they would have insight about their patterns. They would want to outgrow it and would find some some success. But then all these other questions came in of like, so I still don't know how to do intimacy with my partner. How does this connect to now that I'm not sabotaging my life in this way, I don't know how to move towards my career And so as I started paying attention to just the patterns, the problems that people were experiencing, I realized like this isn't just about getting insight into one problematic area. This is like most of us have never received a roadmap for how to understand desire itself. like And it's this mysterious, powerful force that has the potential to turn us into something the best version of ourself or our the worst version of ourself. But I think that's where most of us live in the civil war of our relationship to desire. Like, I know I need to want something, but also wanting creates havoc in my marriage. ah You know, the proverb of unfulfilled, you know, anytime we have hope for something that is unfulfilled, it's going to make my heart sick.
00:22:24
Speaker
And yet we also don't want to live depressed and just kind of feeling like something in us is dying inside every day of our life. So most of us kind of, you know, modulate some level of, i don't want to feel too much, but I also don't want to feel dead. And that's what we end up calling a life is, you know, you know, a three out of 10 on the desire scale. And I was like, no, that is not the meaning of life. And, So all that to say, just paying attention to the problems, the patterns that we're finding and what did really readers need after unwanted. So I've i've kind of referred to desire as both like a prequel and a sequel to unwanted of ah light act this bias that makes sense.
00:23:08
Speaker
before and after. so As you're describing that explore duality in the Civil War, going come back to that language because really like that in the book, um I'm just thinking of ah where my brain went was that just the conflicting messages, even within the Christian church, about
Desire in Religious Contexts
00:23:23
Speaker
desire. For example, the delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.
00:23:27
Speaker
But then there's other verses like, but watch out because the heart is deceitful above all things, so you're going to desire bad things. And well, if they're really God's desires, you'll get them and you know you're off to the races. Like, How do I make sense of this? It's overwhelming.
00:23:41
Speaker
Overwhelming. Yep. And then you, yeah, you, you come ah and maybe in a family system where like you wanted something and your mom, your dad never knew how to work with those raw desires and just kind of made it bad or selfish. And so then you kind of went off to college, went off into, you know, life. And then all of a sudden you have all these social media influencers that are like, you know, eat, pray, love your way through life. What is it that you want to do with this one wild and precious life that you've been given? And they sound so good. Like they are like oxygen to us that have been deprived of desire and pleasure and goodness. And then it's like, wait, but there's now I'm like working with a Ferrari and I have no idea how to drive. No one gave me any lessons of like where I should go. with these desires, where to direct them, how to intentionally form them. And so I think it's just, we were like, we've been screwed by, you know, Christian culture and progressive culture with regard to desire. So all of my clients are coming in I would say wildly underdeveloped in terms of kind of developing this mysterious powerhouse called desire.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yes, wildly underdeveloped is a great way to put it. I think of the I appreciated the most about Unwanted in particular was at the end where you're you're you're talking about, look, the answer is not kill off desire and shut yourself down and and be ascetic. And I flashback to all the different things i used to do growing up to try to stamp down or...
00:25:20
Speaker
chill or whatever, freeze parts of me or ways that but your invitation to awaken desire, like actually you're made to long for comfort, for somebody to see you and want to to be in your presence and to give you goodness.
00:25:36
Speaker
um Fanning your good desires into flame and and getting better at tending to those Instead of just stop the bad stuff, you know, ah you know, put a rubber band on your wrist and smack it or whatever. um That was radical. And it felt like a very fresh voice saying that there's something good in your heart and desire.
00:25:56
Speaker
Look at all the sources that have warped and changed and twisted it. But get back, getting back to that sort of what is the good essence? What is God making us for? And what does he you know invite us to even without a promise of it's going to work out perfectly all the time?
00:26:13
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think of like erotic energy, not just in terms of genital arousal, but erotic energy is often in contrast to thanatos, which is death energy. So eroticism is that sense of like it's ah it's life force. It's like when you think about your life, like it doesn't just have to be sexual arousal. Sometimes we think way too much about desire in terms of the bedroom. Yeah.
00:26:39
Speaker
But it's like, no, like, where do you feel alive? And that could be baking, that could be singing a song, that could be doing yoga or on a mountain, but really connecting to where does my body, where does my soul really feel some sense of vitality? ah And...
00:26:58
Speaker
that's so essential in order to kind of develop our relationship to desire is to recognize like where does my body come alive where does my soul come alive annie dillard ah you know often used to say like these bell-like moments and so she would say i never knew i was a bell until the moment i was lifted up and struck and that those are desire questions of when when was the last time like the bells were ringing inside you and you're like, this is the work that I want to be doing
Exploring Desire
00:27:30
Speaker
in the world. This is the sexual experience that I want to keep having. This is kind of like personal growth or you know therapy, healing, integration. Like all of those are bell-like moments. And part of what people discover is
00:27:44
Speaker
you know To borrow from the geography of the United States, like at least when we were in Washington, you would have the rainforest out near the Olympic Mountains, but then you'd have something of like a desert in eastern ah Washington. And so even one state...
00:28:01
Speaker
had so much diverse terrain. So when you think about the US and forests and mountains and deserts, ah that is similar to the terrain of the human heart. And so often, we just think about desire as it relates to sex or desire as it relates to crushing our career, but it's so much more big and vast than that. And so that was part of What we did a lot of research on and just trying to understand, like, what is this thing called desire and how can we develop it even more than we currently do?
00:28:36
Speaker
The Surviving Saturday podcast is brought to you by Nurture Counseling PLLC, the counseling, teaching and training center based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. We help families flourish one story at a time.
00:28:47
Speaker
Nurture Counseling provides counseling, counseling intensive for couples, conflict resolution coaching, story work groups, seminars, workshops, and retreats to provide a safe and welcoming context for exploring the agonizing experiences of pain, brokenness, and evil that disrupt our lives and that God often uses to nurture deeper trust and intimacy with Him and with each other.
00:29:07
Speaker
You can find us online at www.nurturecounseling.net.