About This Episode - 

Dr. Sam Serio is an author, presenter, and speaker on the topic of sexual hurt. Dr. Serio and Warren Mainard discuss the 7 types of sexual hurt that men and women experience and what to do when you or your spouse are experiencing sexual hurt that is negatively impacting your sexual intimacy in marriage. Raw, real, gritty and honest conversation on a topic few men ever talk about.

Warren Mainard is the National Director of IMPACT Players, an author, speaker, and connector. He has 30 years of ministry experience as a pastor, nonprofit leader, and church planter. You can connect with Warren on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Warren is also available to speak on your podcast or event! Email him at [email protected].

Dr. Sam Serio has more with more than thirty-five years of experience in preaching and counseling. He has pastored churches, conducted seminars, and currently counsels individuals who daily feel the deep emotional effects of sexual sin or pain. Dr. Serio is founder and president of Healing Sexual Hurt (www.HealingSexualHurt.com) and Healing Your Hurt (www.HealingYourHurt.com) where people from all around the world seek his words of biblical wisdom and warmth in these taboo topics. He has published various articles and is available to speak at churches and conferences. Dr. Serio lives with his family in Atlanta, Georgia. You can connect with him through his websites, LinkedIn, or by sending him an email.

Additional Resources Mentioned:

• Sensitive Preaching to the Sexually Hurting by Dr. Sam Serio

Listen: Apple | Spotify

Transcript -

Warren Mainard: Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the IMPACT Players Linking Shields podcast. My name is Warren Mainard. I'm the National Director of IMPACT Players. And if you're new to IMPACT, IMPACT is all about inspiring men to be great husbands, fathers, and leaders by equipping them to thrive in the relationships that matter most. If you haven't been to our website, please check us out at impactplayers.org and look for an opportunity to get connected with a group of men through one of our cohorts or one of our regional breakfasts. The IMPACT Players Linking Shields podcast is all about bringing together some of the best leaders in the men's space to help you guys become better husbands, fathers, and leaders. And with me today is Dr. Sam Serio. Dr. Serio is an author, he's a speaker. He's been a pastor for many years. He conducts seminars all over the country, and he deals with a very specific subject that we're going to get into today. And it's the topic of sexual hurt. The truth is, is that almost everywhere you look and everywhere you go and every person that you talk to, you're going to run into someone who is experienced sexual hurt on some level, whether it's through the effects of pornography, addiction to some sort of sexual attraction. It may be adultery, it may be a sexless marriage. It may be same sex attraction. All of these different things can cause different types of hurt. And Dr. Serio is here with us today to help us unpack what we can learn about these things and how we as men can better engage in thinking and talking and practicing these things in a healthy and biblical way. So, Dr. Sam, thank you so much for joining us. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this really fascinating and super important and relevant subject of study.

Dr. Sam Serio: Well, thanks for having me, Warren, and I'm honored to be here as you work with men to help them be happier and healthier in all of life - wife, kids, work, everything. So I'm honored to be here. It's interesting how I got into this was I was in seminary many years ago, and one of my professors in one of the classes said, I want each of you to become an expert in one book of the Bible and one topic in society. And I thought, well, I'm young and dumb. I'll do that. So I decided that day in contemporary theology class. I said, you know, I'm gonna know the book of Ephesians, but I'm also gonna become an expert in abortion. That's the big topic at the time. So I did, I made it my goal to know everything there was to know about the book of Ephesians of the New Testament, which is a wonderful, and the topic of abortion. So I became a pro-life speaker. I started learning about all the ways it's done and just everything there was to know and I was giving messages, that were considered pro-life. And, you know, when you combine guilt and gore and God, you get some types of reactions where that's what I would do. I would share how abortions are done and why you ought not do it. And just, it was, you know, add the guilt in there. And I did pretty good in terms of making people feel pretty guilty and not to do it.

Warren Mainard: Yeah. I mean, and just as you're sharing that, I think about so many men when they think about Christians or the church, that guilt is oftentimes the first thing that comes to their mind is a heavy handed shame-based, guilt-formed type of religion. And it sounds like that was a part of maybe the way that you started...

Dr. Sam Serio: Correct.

Warren Mainard: ...but somewhere along the lines, you realize that that wasn't the type of message you wanted to be about.

Dr. Sam Serio: Well, you're exactly right, Warren. I would do these messages, and then afterwards privately, ladies would come up to me and tell me how sorry, and how sad they are that they realize what they've done, but it's too late. They would tell me about all sorts of stories where they felt guilty, they missed their child, they would go in depression, but nobody else would know, and they didn't feel they could tell everybody because it's the thing to do. So I started hearing all these private heartbreaks from women who would tell me and said to me, is there any hope? Is there any healing, any restoration, any forgiveness? And I was stuck. I was clueless because I knew how to do truth but not grace.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: Which a lot of Christians or pastors don't do today. So I decided I needed to go back to the drawing board and include in all of my messages about abortion to assume that it's already been done. Not just don't do it, but here's what happened. Here's how God can heal you. So I started changing my message and improving it to always include words of healing and forgiveness and truth and grace. So I did that, and then something else happened. Ladies would come up to me and tell me stories of being raped, being molested, having a sexless marriage, being tempted, pornography, just all these other stuff that I didn't sign up for. I just signed up for one topic, and all of a sudden I'm hearing all sorts of other topics, which I eventually turned into a book to realize that many times they're all related. They're all related. So, I went to a gentleman said, you know, and I realized that as I asked them all, like, Hey, you should maybe talk to your pastor about this or your priest, like we're here when you're talking and I can help you, but you ought to talk to someone like that. And every one of them said, you gotta be absolutely crazy.

Warren Mainard: Right.

Dr. Sam Serio: I would never ever talk about this stuff, these secret sadnesses and hurts and habits. I would never tell any religious person that. They wouldn't have a clue what to say, and they never talk about it. If they do, they're just gonna yell at me. So I just got it in my mind that I need to write a book about this to help people heal, hopefully to help pastors and churches and priests know what to say better. But that's not our topic today. So I did, and I wrote this book about seven different sexual hurts or habits that I find extremely prevalent today. And if you're listening to me, you know that they're all around us. Abortion and sexless marriage, which we'll talk about today a little bit, a lot, pornography, same sex attraction, rape, just all these different topics that many times people don't know what to say about. So that's how I got into it. I just wanted to just become an expert in one topic. And now, so I've been doing this for many decades now, and I've had the opportunity to counsel a lot of couples and men and women in topics that most Christians don't ever talk about or don't wanna talk about it, don't know what to talk about. So that's how it all started just from a seminary class a long time ago. And, and I'm so glad because God's the, he's the expert in helping us with every emotion, every hurt, every lifestyle, every habit, every memory. I mean, God's the best chance of becoming healed from certain addictions or certain memories or certain events. And some of these are extremely painful, and they just mess up your whole life.

Warren Mainard: Yeah. No, and you said something a few minutes ago, Dr. Sam, about how you just started assuming that everyone, every woman in your audience had already had an abortion. And I think what I was immediately reminded of was many years ago, probably around 2012, at that time, I was working as a youth pastor and I remember sitting down, I had a group of about 25 high school guys that were really opening up and sharing, and basically went around the room voluntarily. There was no heavy handed forcing of this, but, but voluntarily, almost every single one of those young men was struggling on some level with pornography. And for me, that reality began to shift of, I need to stop thinking about this as something that maybe a couple kids are struggling with to the reality that I have to assume that every young man in my ministry is struggling with some form of sexual sin, some form of pornography addiction. And the other thing that I took away with it was that several of these young men shared that their first exposure to it was when they were in third, fourth, or fifth grade. And so there was a lot of confusion and shame built up in that. But as I kind of changed gears, and now I'm in this, this role with IMPACT Players, all those young men back in 2012, all those guys are in their thirties now. So in many ways, I'm still kind of working with a lot of the same young men. They're just no longer high school students. They're dads. They're husbands. They're leaders, they're business owners. And they're still wrestling with a lot of those challenges. And so this is the, this is why I think it's so important that we have open opportunities for men to talk about this. In fact, we have a study that we do with IMPACT Players called, "Good Sex: Great SEXpectations." And the very first thing that we do in the first session of that study is the guys have to repeat after the leader, "Sex, sex, sex. I'm going to talk about sex." And just break the ice and encourage, guys, hey this is the time and the place to talk about those things that you've been keeping in the dark, the things that you would never talk to your pastor about the things that your pastor would never preach about on a Sunday morning. But they're the very things that you're feeling the greatest weight and burden about in your everyday life. So let's do that. We're gonna break this ice wide open. We're gonna obliterate the iceberg. And let's get into this. Give me just kind of an overview of what are some of those different types of hurt that men and couples are bringing into their marriage, and what are some of the ways that you kind of help get men talking and opening up about those types of things?

Dr. Sam Serio: Well, and it's a great question, and we have to expand to not just talk about pornography as part of it, but I talk about seven different ones, all of which men bring into in terms of hurts or habits. And we talked about abortion. We forget that it's not just about women, that men are affected. Some are relieved, oh, thank you. Not didn't get caught, but some feel they carry around the burden of knowing that, that they killed their baby. And no one talks about that, but I do. That the abortion is, it's not just a women's thing, it's a men's thing. Some are just unbelievably remorseful. And then some are, some men are just pissed that the baby, they wanted, yes, they wanted, they had no say in the death of their child. And there's just an enormous amount of anger and animosity against sometimes women in general or at themselves. So when we talk about men's issues with sex stuff, it includes abortion, it includes being molested. Men have been molested when they were young by other men. I have stories galore. And they bring that into the marriage that one man was always concerned about his size of his penis because the man who molested him were being fun of it. And then he brings in the marriage the fact that he feels so in inadequate, just like women do about their body. So when we talk to men about men, and when it comes to sexual stuff, abortion, saying about being molested by people that has affected them deeply, about rape, that some of them have done things to women in terms of date rape or rape that they'll never tell you about, but there's guilt and there's just a bad view of women, when it comes to that. Pornography is one of many things that they've seen thousands of naked women, and now they're supposed to be content with one.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: That's not easy for them. In terms of hooking up, they've had, and I'm not just talking about men here, but they've had dozens and dozens and dozens of partners, and now all of a sudden, the woman they married that they love has not had the same experience or frequency. And their brain is going kind of crazy comparing positions and partners and and pictures. So there's a lot of stuff.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: More than just pornography when it comes to all of these things. And now they, where they right now, they saved themselves for marriage, and yet the lady that they married had a lot of people, and all of a sudden there's comparison and lack of contentment.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: So it's just, there's a joke that when I've heard this, at first, I just thought, Ooh, and I thought, but it's true. And why do the husbands die first? Why do the men die first? And the answer was because they want to.

Warren Mainard: Oh, geez. Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: But there are a lot of men who, because of a sexist marriage, they want to.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: Because either death or, so there's just a lot of men that have a lot of hurt that they can't talk to anybody about, and they bring this into their marriage. And I can go into a lot more detail in terms of stories that are true. I've counseled hundreds and hundreds of couples that have some of these things where, but they don't have anybody to talk about. So I'm glad for your ministry that you, you'll encourage men to share their sadness or their secrets with some, with a group of men that will say, wow, me too, or I get it. And just, they have to become whole. And some of these secrets have to be brought out. And then they realize that God can, all of these, God talks about all of these topics. He talks about rape. He talks about being molested. He talks about a sexless marriage. He talks about being captivated. One of my favorite verses in the Bible, nobody knows this verse. I think one of the coolest verses that's around is, on my gravestone, if you wanna put it, is a verse that probably nobody knows. Proverbs 5:19, where God says, "Be captivated by the breast of your wife." Yeah, God said that. And it's like, be mesmerized. Be actually, the words mean intoxicated, to be captivated. So as I talk with couples, I remind her and him that, we just can't talk about sex before marriage, not being good or sex outside of marriage not being good, but sex inside of marriage being very good.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: And, I talk with a lot of, I have a chapter in my websites and a chapter in my book about this very topic. So I just see a lot of couples, and the sad thing is that when this is a hurt, the partner is hopeless. They feel hopeless, they feel humiliated, that they're not enough of a woman, or a man. They feel frustrated because they're tempted for the first time and they don't wanna feel tempted.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: So God talks about all this stuff. So why shouldn't we?

Warren Mainard: Yeah. No, that's so true. And there's a number of different ways we could go on this. I wanna drill down on one, and then maybe we can kind of expand from that.

Dr. Sam Serio: Okay.

Warren Mainard: But you talked about pornography and the reality is is that a vast majority of men have had some experience with pornography before they enter into marriage. And of course, what many men come to find out is that getting married doesn't cure their addiction to pornography. In many cases, they're with a woman of their dreams who they deeply love, and yet they still find themselves going back to pornography because it is an ingrained habit, addiction, a sinful struggle. And we've had other guests on the podcast before who have shared their stories in similar ways, but I've heard this story repeated many times over the years about a Christian husband and a Christian wife that get married. And at some point in the first few years of marriage, the Christian wife discovers her husband viewing pornography, masturbating to pornography. And there's just this tremendous sense of shame, betrayal, and you kind of talked about how that can produce a number of kind of collateral damage types of outcomes. Like, the woman being so hurt and betrayed that she doesn't want to have sex again. The husband, feeling like he's blown it and that he's a liar and he could never be loved again or trusted again. There are occasions where anger really drives a wedge between these two, you know, husband and wife. So how do you kinda speak into that, let's just call it that truth bomb that blows up when a husband is caught in the sin of pornography and masturbation by his wife as to Christians who by all intents and purposes, are trying to do things the right way?

Dr. Sam Serio: When I work with men, typically I get a phone call where she caught him, she went on his portable phone. She went and just went through his browsing history and caught him. And she and he are on the phone, and she is heartbroken, livid. Her whole life and typically the man is sorry, but I usually know that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Whatever you tell me at first, it ain't the whole story.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: There's probably more going on here. And I want the men to set, I always try to do truth and grace. That's so important. Not all truth, where you're just, guilt, but not all grace, where it's no big deal. Everybody does it. So truth and grace, and I want the men to know that the Bible talks a lot about your eyeballs, and he's, God's not surprised when men are letting their eyeballs look at things that, again, be captivated by the breast of your wife, nobody else. No other, no other pictures, no. Hers. That's a big deal. So I let men know that this temptation to look is talked about a lot. So that that's where God's not a prude. He knows, he says, I know that, I wrote about it. But I also want the men to know, do you have any idea how much you've hurt your wife?

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: You have any idea how much their heart is broken, their fairytale life, and the future is gone now. The one person that they gave their body to because they respect you, is gone now. Their dream, they think they're ugly for the first time. The hurt. And I have entire section in my book and my websites on this topic of healing her hurt. And so I want men to know, Hey, guys, it's just not all about you.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: You have deeply hurt her, and I know you don't want to. And I hang on that for a long time, like it's about her too. And I just see it so much where men, a picture's worth a thousand words, and a lot of men have seen a lot of pictures, or had a lot of partners and had a lot of different positions, and all of a sudden now their honey is timid. She was maybe raised in a way that we don't talk about that, and we, you want me to do what?

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: And to say, so we can be raw here. Because God talks about, he talks about Proverbs 5 and about being, not being tempted. He talks about Song of Solomon, chapters 4 through 7, where it talks about body parts, tasting, touching... a lot, where she initiates. So God talks about this stuff. So we're the perfect people to help them to heal from this. But yeah, they feel ugly. They feel, they're mad, they're sad. It's all sorts of emotions. And I try to help couples to heal from this and realize that, hey, this is not, it can be forgiven, but it can't be forgotten. It's not worth it, guys. Find joy in your wife's body, and sometimes goes both ways.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: So we could talk more about that, but it's just a very deep hurt that changes, it's a life changer. It's a marriage changer and a life changer, and it ain't worth it.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: And so we could go on and we could talk more about that or other stuff, but Yeah, it's a tough one.

Warren Mainard: Yeah. I wanna circle back to that in a minute, but I want, I wanna just flip the situation over.

Dr. Sam Serio: Okay.

Warren Mainard: Because I mean, obviously there are certainly instances and the number of women who are engaged in pornography is growing. So it's certainly possible that a man could catch his wife engaged in pornography without him personally being engaged. But I want to kind of flip the conversation around to a topic that I have heard many times, and you alluded to it just a moment ago, and that is the man who enters into the marriage expecting to have a great, healthy, wonderful sex life with his beautiful Christian bride whom he loves and adores. And then really without warning, they get into the marriage and he discovers that she has some sexual baggage. There's some hurt, some wounding, there's some timidity there, there's some sense of fear or whatever that might be. And all of a sudden he kind of has this shocking revelation that sex is going to be very difficult and very rare to come by in his marriage. And I've heard that story over and over again, where really for no fault of his own, his wife has kind of shut him out sexually, and she has some reasons that are valid, and then other times reasons that are just perplexing that don't make sense to him. So what do you say to that man who's feeling the disappointment and the hurt of entering into the marriage expecting a healthy sex life, and then only realizing after they get into the bedroom that that the bank is closed for business.

Dr. Sam Serio: Bitterness is a big deal. And then a lot of, since you talked about, again, it goes both ways. Sometimes he could be doing video games or working all the time.

Warren Mainard: Yep.

Dr. Sam Serio: Or not interested, I'm aware of that as well. But in the examples where one person is interested and one person very interested, and one person's not, it's gotta be dealt with. Because this bitterness sooner or later, you can talk yourself so much into like, well she's had a bad day. And many times there are, if there's menopause or memories of, and I've talked with couples where she was raped or molested, and she never told him, and the pastoral counselor never talked about it, of course, they don't talk about those things, which is so wrong, that there's a lot of stuff in baggage, like you said, that comes into it. Where, I remember talking to a couple where he came and just one day just kind of peaked around the corner and surprised her, thought it was cool, and she just froze. Because earlier in life, her uncle did that with her, and she was molested. He never knew it, she never expressed it to him. And she went into like, depression for like a month or two. And he's thinking like what's wrong? What did I do? And she doesn't even kind of know it or had been molested or just so it kind of depends. If it's, if there's reluctance because of past memories or past, that's one thing. But if it's just no interest, and I told you that I want the men to know how the women feel when they do porn. I also want the women to know how the man feels when there's constant reluctance or rejection. He is devastated. So let's go, let's flip it. Like you said, where he now is, feels humiliated. I'm not man enough. What's wrong with me? I must be chopped liver. And he takes it very personal.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: It's hard not to, takes it personal sometimes too much. And there's frustration. And I want the women to know this is how the husband feels. He's humiliated, he's so frustrated because the only person in the world that he wants to be with, that he is allowed to be with, that he could be frisky with or playful with is you, and you shut him down. Like that's so frustrating for the husband who adores his wife, and he is been waiting all his life, and the only person he can be physical or sexual with, he can't. So that's why the original thing of why does the husband die first? Because he, 'cause he wants to, it's too true too many times. So the husband needs to be patient. If it's, you were raised in a certain framework where in your mind, you're embarrassed, get that, I get. But sooner or later it gets to the point where he just feels, and he's tempted for the first time. I don't wanna be tempted, honey, but I see another wife, I see another TV scene, and they're all frolicky and playful and romantic and tender, and why can't I have that? Like there's bitterness, there's humiliation, there's frustration, there's temptation, and it spills over where he does wanna avoid coming home.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: He does wanna watch more tv, he'll do anything because he doesn't want, and he cries himself to sleep sometimes. Yeah, they do. You know, she sleeps and he doesn't. Or sometimes it's the other way around where she's wanting to be with her husband and he is doing video games, silly childish video games downstairs when he is 30 something, 40 or something years old. It's just so unfair. And to me, again I'm giving allowances for if there's trauma and memories.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: And I talk about that in my book and in my websites, I talk about that. But if it's just stubbornness or...

Warren Mainard: Right.

Dr. Sam Serio: ...rejection and she views sex as a reward, and he views it as a right. To me, this is a right. I'm still gonna be nice to you, but she views it as reward. If you're perfectly wonderful to me, I'll give you sex.

Warren Mainard: Right.

Dr. Sam Serio: So you gotta kind of get the same perspective. That's how I wish churches and pastors would talk about this more. Like, do you think it's a, sex is a reward for your spouse, or do you think it's a right that you have? And 1 Corinthians 7, God talks about that. He says, don't withhold from each other unless you purposefully and mutually agree. And then because they're gonna get tempted.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: So I'm not blaming a husband if he does something like an affair. But I do talk with couples about like, let's get this on to, and you're supposed to be risky with each other. Song of Solomon, chapter 4 through 7. She's frisky with him.

Warren Mainard: Well...

Dr. Sam Serio: And she, frisky is an old fashioned word showing my age.

Warren Mainard: No, it's good. It's good. And I mean...

Dr. Sam Serio: It's like, ladies, this is your gift to him.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: He's willing die for you. He's willing to die for you, so why would you withhold that gift? So I know there's a lot of male bashing around where the man's always wrong and always horny and this and that, and the lady's always right. No, sometimes there just needs to be that mutual like, let's not be selfish here. Sacrificial.

Warren Mainard: And that, I mean, really a lot of what you talked about is what we cover in that study. I mentioned "Good Sex: Great SEXpectations." And when you, when you listed off those different categories of hurt, I think and based on my own experience, I would say let's just kind of do a little mathematical equation. If there were a hundred couples, that's 200 individuals, a hundred husbands, a hundred wives. Out of that 200, I would venture to guess that probably somewhere between 150 to 190 have had some experience with one of those different types of sexual hurts.

Dr. Sam Serio: Yep.

Warren Mainard: So essentially, almost every single couple is going to have at least one, if not two members, or two people in the marriage who have experienced at least one of these sexual types of hurts. And they're bringing that into their marriage whether they like it or not. And so the thing that comes to my mind is, I think about that, is that there's gonna have to be on some level, and maybe it's a ongoing process, but there's gonna have to be a level of reconciliation and restoration for the sexual intimacy in the marriage to really thrive long term. So in other words, just to kind of to sum that up, if you are in a marriage where you or your partner or the both of you have experienced some level of sexual hurt and that's causing some dysfunction in your relationship, you're certainly not alone...

Dr. Sam Serio: Right.

Warren Mainard: ...but you're not at the end of the road. There's a path forward, but it's a path through reconciliation and restoration. So maybe kinda walk us through some larger principles for how husbands and wives can begin a process of reconciliation and restoration, whether that's with one another or with themselves and God or on some other level outside of the marriage.

Dr. Sam Serio: Another great question, and it's actually on my website, healingsexualhurt.com. I have a section for women and one for men, and one for couples. And in the section for couples, there's three different sections. One is when one of you refuses, what we just talked about or reluctant. Another section is on when one of you cheats, that's needs to be talked about. And then one of you, one of the topics is when one of you hurts. And that's, I had lots of choices, but I decided that you need to know certain things that one, when one of you has hurt that you're bringing into this. And one of the first things is to be patient with the person. Don't take it personal, don't take it personal if they won't do something or this or that. Not to take it personal, that it is a reflection on you. You gotta be so patient with your honey when it comes to the fact that male or female, 'cause men too, when it comes to the topic of just not get angry because you won't do this. You know because this, and if you're ever gonna need the love of God in your life to learn how to love someone who's doesn't feel very loving to you... they do love you, they just don't show it the same way you would like for them to, and that goes into love languages. But you get the honor of saying, I get to love you with the way God loves me. I'm not a prize either and yet he loves me through it all. He's patient with me. So the first thing I say is to be patient with your spouse, with your partner. You can't seem to be angry or you can't take it personal that well you know that you're chopped liver when you're not. And not to make the other person panic that, let's say the honey, she finally tells you what happened. Well, you can't, even though you want to, say, well I'm gonna go kill them. I can't believe that your father or your uncle did that. I can't believe. So, you know, to not make the other person panic. And for men to, if it's again, either way, male, female to be their pastor, you gotta realize that God can heal this hurt, you can't. You can't take it away, but God. So if you're not a religious person, maybe you ought to be for a little bit to be the person's pastor and to give that person strength from God. That honey, though you were treated so wrongly by this person, I love you. But more importantly, God loves you. And where the other person who is trying to be patient has to be the pastor, the partner. I'm now, I'm gonna be patient with you. I'm not gonna take it personal. It takes divine strength to be, to have that patience. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love doesn't keep a record of wrongs. So a lot of times, we take it personal when you kind of just can't do that, it's not you, it's them. It's to help them, help them find their strength in God, which is what Jonathan did with David. It says that he helped, Jonathan would visit David when he was being persecuted and he would help him find his strength in God. And that's what I wanna do. I wanna help you find your strength in God. I love you the way God loves you, in spite of it, but even when I'm not feeling loved, I'm still gonna love you, which is what God does for us.

Warren Mainard: That's right. Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: I hope that's helpful.

Warren Mainard: No, that's so good. And I just, I think I love that idea of stepping in to minister to one another. You said pastor, but it's really to spiritually care for one another. And I would just suggest that one of the most powerful things you can do is to pray for one another and to pray with one another. And if there's a wound, a hurt that has been caused sexually, pray about it together for one another, like I think sometimes we think that like God doesn't want to hear those kind of prayers. But the reality is, is that God created sex. He designed for men and women to be so intimate with one another, that they are considered one flesh. And when that is not working the way that it's supposed to, that hurts the heart of God. God wants to see you, man, and you, woman, having a healthy sexual relationship with one another like that.

Dr. Sam Serio: Sometimes that's a hard one because the person who's been wounded, the last thing want they wanna do is pray to God because they blame God.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: And let's go a little deeper there, where they're like where was God when when this happened to me? Where was God when this happened to me? What, why did he let this happen to me? And I know people, I can tell you stories as in my book as well, that where the last person I wanna talk to or think about is have God as my Father because of what my father did or stepfather did. So it's kind of a tough one where the last person they want to bring to, to their issue or their, so that's when you pray for them. Yes, with them, but sometimes they're pretty pissed at the Lord because of what they went through when it was so unjust and unfair. So be patient with your honey.

Warren Mainard: Yes.

Dr. Sam Serio: Just love her from a distance and help her trust you and just help her open up. Love her like God loves you.

Warren Mainard: Well, Dr. Serio, you've given us so many great insights and I know we've just touched the tip of the iceberg.

Dr. Sam Serio: Yeah, we did.

Warren Mainard: Thankfully you've got just a number of wonderful resources, books and other things available. So share a little bit about how men can follow you online and how they can access some of those resources that you have available.

Dr. Sam Serio: I have two websites now, healingsexualhurt.com. That was my original website created many years ago when the book was created, where it, it's meant to help you with counseling. I give a lot of information. Sometimes people say I give too much information free of charge. But healingsexualhurt.com works with, men, women, and couples. And you can get an ahold of me through that. And I opened up a new website called healingyourhurts.org. So I didn't wanna get rid of the Healing Sexual Hurt, but I also wanted to expand to know that, there's a lot of hurts where you need to grieve, you need to forgive, you need to trust again, you will get justice. That kind of branched out. So healingyourhurts.org talks about couples a lot, talks about sexual hurt, but also talks about emotional, very deep hurt that, that most people carry around with them, that needs to be worked on. So two different websites, healingsexualhurt.com and healingyourhurts.org. And then, I wrote the book, which was called "Sensitive Preaching to the Sexually Hurting." And it was cool because I was honored that it won the award for the best ministry book of the year.

Warren Mainard: Wow.

Dr. Sam Serio: Saying that every pastor and every Christian counselor should pick up this book and use it in like best ministry book of the years. I was honored by that. So those and... [email protected]. But I talk with people all over the world 'cause they tell me, wow, you're a strong Christian, but you ain't scared to talk about nothing. Like, I'm not gonna make you feel disgusted at what I did. And I've spoken with men who've molested children. I've spoken with people struggling with same sex attraction, abortion, rape. I remember one lady said she was a lesbian. She said, because I'm never gonna let any man do to me what my dad did to my mom. Or a lady was gang raped in high school. And she, so there's all sorts of hurt.

Warren Mainard: Yeah.

Dr. Sam Serio: That sometimes now turned into habits. And that's what I kind of want Christian folks to know that, like don't just see the hate, but see the hurt that people have. So those are the two resources, the two websites and the book. And, I'm on LinkedIn as well, but I just know that the person who can heal you the most is God. It's just being honest. We'll work through that. But he's the expert. And I use the Bible a lot in terms of helping to see people, like to help, especially people who have been hurt to say, Hey, this is how God sees you now. Don't worry about what they did to you. Focus on what God did for you in dying on the cross for you. That's where you get your dignity. No matter what someone did to you or what you've done, Christ died for that sin. He died for the sin of molesting. There's no sin he didn't die for. So you can be forgiven and you can also be, take glory in the fact that you're a child of God now. So to me, there's a lot of issues, but you know, God is the one in his Word, are the ones that will bring you the most healing or the most freedom. Freedom too, from what you, like pornography, and same sex attraction. God can free you from anything, any memory, as well as any behavior.

Warren Mainard: Well, Dr. Serio, thank you so much. This has been fantastic experience for me. It's encouraging to know that there are men out there like you that are speaking into these issues. And I'm grateful that we've been able to provide opportunities for men to do that as well. Guys, I encourage you to reach out to, Dr. Serio, find him on his website or LinkedIn. If you're looking for an IMPACT Players resource specifically designed to help you facilitate conversations around these themes, I encourage you to check out our study, "Good Sex: Great SEXpectations." It's eight weeks. And you're gonna be amazed how open guys are going to get, because they're waiting for the opportunity. They're looking for the opportunity to have this conversation with other men. And they just have never really felt like they've been given permission to do that. And so encourage you guys to check that out. But again, Dr. Serio, thank you so much and we'll look forward to staying connected in the future and perhaps bringing you on to, to cover some other topics in the future.

Dr. Sam Serio: I would love that.

Warren Mainard: So thank you again. And guys, thanks for listening to the IMPACT Players Linking Shields podcast. We'll catch you guys next time.