Every Man’s Battle Podcast

Voiceover: Welcome to the Every Man's Battle Podcast, brought to you by New Life Ministries. In this podcast, you'll hear honest conversations and encouragement for living a life of sexual integrity. In every episode, licensed marriage and family therapist JJ West and licensed professional counselor Doug Barnes break the silence around sexual integrity struggles that millions of men face but rarely discuss openly. Each episode offers practical strategies and genuine hope to dissolve the shame and isolation that keeps men trapped in destructive cycles. Let's get to today's episode.

JJ West: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Every Man's Battle Podcast. Thanks again for listening. We really do enjoy these episodes as we're recording them, and we're especially excited about today's episode because we have a special guest with us, Marc Cameron. Marc, thanks so much for joining us.

Marc is a longtime friend of the podcast. He has been on the show before. He's a licensed marriage and family therapist. He's also a member of the New Life Live panel and is on that show frequently. He's recently written a book, Understanding Your Attachment Style, and we're going to talk a little bit about the book today, but specifically, we're going to dig into how our attachment style affects the way we might act out sexually. What are the sexual propensities of the different attachment styles?

Marc Cameron: Super excited to be here. I love being on the show for the second time. This is great.

Doug Barnes: Oh, thanks. It's exciting.

JJ West: That's right. We have flags out in the lobby. It's a big deal. It's a big celebration. Doug and I have just been chomping at the bit waiting for you to get back in the studio and to share with us and to share with the audience your wisdom.

I'm excited for what God has in store for us. For those of you who maybe are unfamiliar with attachment style, you can go back to season one. We had a couple of episodes. One was Our Family of Origin, and that aired on March 11th of 2024. Then we also in the episode Our Wounds of Shame and Our Attachment Styles on May 6th of 2024. Those would be great episodes to go back and listen to as a setup, a precursor to what we're going to talk about today.

Today, we're going to shift our attention to the sexual propensities of each of these different attachment styles. But before we jump into that, Marc, I have to ask. You've worked with Milan and Kay at How We Love. You've certainly served at the Intimacy in Marriage Workshop many, many times. What prompted you to write this book? How did that process come about?

Marc Cameron: It's a great question. I got into attachment by reading Milan and Kay's book, How We Love. Everything that I read in there totally made sense. It described the conflict pattern, the way my wife and I relate, and it outlined a structure, the comfort circle, the way for us to start to recondition. A lot of the things in the comfort circle are just very well-known ways to communicate with I statements and feeling words and things like that.

But the problem for me was being able to stay regulated in those roles. I saw what the journey was and what I needed to do, but I just didn't quite have the skill yet or the capacity to do it. As I discovered How We Love, I was also on the journey to getting my hours, going back into therapy because therapy was a second career for me.

I realized if I've got to teach other people, I've got to know how to do this myself. As I just went through the journey of understanding what earning a secure attachment means and how I started to lead people through the therapeutic process of what I was learning, I started to write some things down. Eventually, I just had all of these resources and I thought, "Why don't I just put this into a book?" This just shows the journey of how to earn the secure attachment style for a person. That's where it came from.

Milan and Kay say that they'd been asked for years to write a How We Love book for individuals because How We Love is mostly for couples. But they didn't do it, and they say now they know why. It's because I was there to write the book. This is for the individual person, not necessarily for a single person, someone who's not in a relationship. It could be for that person, but it's just for that individual who could be in a relationship and they're struggling to do their side.

Or they're in a relationship and their spouse doesn't want to do the work. Or maybe you have a pretty good relationship with your spouse, but it's an adult child, son or daughter, that you're struggling with or a parent now that you're in adulthood who you're struggling with. This just outlines how you can learn to be more secure in all of your relationships.

JJ West: Oh, I love that. That's so important because you're right. I'm a huge fan of the book How We Love and have been promoting it since I first read it, and of course, we use the material at the Intimacy in Marriage Workshop. But you're right, it is really geared to a couple. To have that same set of truths, those guiding principles, but for those where the focus is not on a romantic relationship, it's wonderful to have another resource to help you walk through those. Thank you for writing this and thank you for making it available.

So, that's the big question. Where is it available? Where can people find it?

Marc Cameron: It is available at all reputable book sellers. You can find it at Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble, Walmart. Wherever you buy your books. It is also available in audio form.

JJ West: And you recorded it! You get to hear Marc's wonderful accent read to you. What a great bonus that is. Thank you for doing that and thank you for making it available.

Last season we had the episodes on the differences between men and women when it comes to sex. This is a little bit of a different take because this isn't gender-specific. This is: What is my attachment style, or how does my attachment style, especially my broken or my insecure attachment style, impact the way that I might engage sexually with others? Or perhaps with not others, which shows up as well.

So it's going to be a huge conversation for us to have, a huge impact on our audience. Let's dive right in. Let's start with the insecure attachments and specifically, let's start with Avoidant. What does an Avoidant person look like sexually? What is that? How does that show up? What are you seeing in your practice? What is the research saying?

Marc Cameron: Attachment is programming for people who are unfamiliar with what attachment is. We get programmed in our families of origin, the families that we grow up in. Avoiders grow up in homes where there's not a lot of talk about emotions. There's not a lot of emotional connection that's happening. A kid will fall over, hurt themselves, start to cry, and the parent will be like, "Come on, you're okay. You're fine. Rub some dirt on it." Or, "There's no monsters under the bed, nothing to be scared of, go to sleep. Don't worry, it's going to turn out fine."

Their emotions get dismissed repetitively. They learn to turn the volume down on their emotions. Also, typically in this home, there's not usually a lot of hugs and kisses and physical touch. This person grows up programmed that basically I'm on my own when it comes to relationships. I've got to get my own needs met. They don't learn that foundation of connecting on an emotional level with others. They generally may term themselves as, "I'm just not a hugger. I just don't need a lot of hugs and kisses. I'm okay basically," because they had to learn to be that way.

When it comes to sex, somebody who is more Avoidant doesn't need a lot of what I would say is the stuff that happens before sex happens. All the foreplay in the sense of the hugs and the kisses and the emotional connection that is typically a female's drive for sex. There are some differences between male and female as Avoidant attachment. Typically, a female who has an Avoidant attachment may not like sex or want sex or enjoy sex at all. They may have an aversion to sex. I've treated many Avoidant females, and they just don't want it. They feel like they don't have a need for it.

But for men, because they don't have these emotional connections, they don't get to do a whole lot of feeling. When they discover sex, sex is a very intense feeling. It's not an emotion. Emotions can happen with sex, but it's an intense bodily feeling. When you get all of that dopamine, all of that pleasure, it's a way to feel, and it can feel amazing for them.

Typically, Avoidant men grow up with an approach to sex that is quite non-relational. It's more of a physical event, a non-relational event for them. There might not be a lot of "I love you"s and nurturing words before. There is not a lot of eye contact being made. It's all about let's just have the event. It feels great for me. I orgasmed, and hopefully, it felt great for you, and then we move on.

When you get primed for that kind of orgasm, that kind of sexual release, men who are Avoidant can engage in sex without having to form those deep relationships. They can sleep around. There is more of that tendency to do that because they don't need that emotional connection. Also, what about if we're not having sex? We can still have an orgasm if you're not having sex. They can be especially drawn to pornography because pornography is a non-relational event. You just show up and the person on the screen shows up and they're ready to go. There's nothing that you've got to do to build the relationship, and there's no obligation for you afterwards and very little risk either.

Porn stars are really masculinized females. They look like females, but they act like men. They're ready to go at a moment's notice. It's all about visual. They're high sex drive, they're the aggressors. That primes an Avoidant person, especially an Avoidant man, for what sex should be like. They can have what we call incongruent sex when they get married. It doesn't matter really what's going on with my wife. If she's having a bad day, well, let's have sex. I feel like it. It will make me feel better, and it will make you feel better. But that doesn't do anything to build a connection.

JJ West: Marc, you just peered into my soul and described my childhood and my early marriage and so much. I am a recovering avoider. I grew up in that home where we didn't talk about feelings at all, and there was very little physical affection. I mean, I knew I was loved, but there wasn't a lot of expression of that. I rarely saw my parents having any physical affection with one another. I grew up believing that emotion and connection were unimportant.

When I discovered pornography and masturbation, oh my gosh, this is amazing and it doesn't require me to interact with other people. It doesn't require me to take those risks for rejection or judgment. I can just handle it all internally and I can feel good.

Marc Cameron: There's no relational maintenance. Avoiders often use pornography or sex as a way to relieve stress.

JJ West: Yes, so much so. In our first few months of marriage, there was a point where I was hinting to my wife that I was wanting sex. She asked, "Did you want to have sex?" I was like, "I'm a guy. I always want to have sex. The answer to that is always yes." But I was believing a lie because for me, sex was that stress reliever. Because I was just walking around not dealing with my emotions, of course I wanted sex all the time because I wanted that relief. I wanted to escape from reality by using sex.

It's only when we start to go, "Oh, wait a minute, hold on, I could have real connection with you," that I start to see sex isn't this panacea that helps me escape from all my problems. It's actually supposed to be designed for me to have this heart-to-heart connection. But that looks very different than the sex that I've experienced so far.

Marc Cameron: Because it is a relief for stress, because it is a distraction, because they don't do well with emotional connections, when relationships break down, sexual affairs can be a great distraction for somebody who is Avoidant. But their affairs typically are one-night stands or prostitutes or something happening at a massage parlor because it's all non-relational. I'm not looking for a relationship, I'm just looking for the stress reliever.

That's what I have to guard against so that when I'm feeling that pull to want to act out that way as a recovering avoider, I have to look at what it is that I'm trying to escape from. What is it that I'm trying to numb in some way? What is God calling me to do to connect?

The good news about attachment research is we don't have to remain this way. The research shows that if we came out of childhood with a learned insecure attachment style, in adulthood we can earn a secure attachment style. But earning is work, and that's the whole premise of my book. How do you earn a secure attachment style? For somebody who's Avoidant, you've got to lean the opposite way. You've got to learn to look inside and understand what it is that I'm feeling.

You may need a list of emotions. At How We Love, we use the soul words list. You can find a list of emotions on the website. It's just a prompt to be able to start to think about what it is that I'm feeling because avoiders have pushed their emotions down so far, they dismiss and they suppress them, that they're not aware of what they're feeling. But we all feel. There's no baby that comes out of the womb without feelings. It's just that they get conditioned to push them away because their needs aren't being met.

A way for them to recondition is to learn first of all to learn how to start to identify what they're feeling and learning to connect with that. The definition of empathy is, "I know what it feels like for you because I know what it feels like for me." I've got to know what it feels like for me first to be able to enter into your experience. As they learn to feel and engage in that part inside of them, they'll be able to learn to engage in that with other people and start to build that emotional connection.

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JJ West: So we've talked about primarily what the male avoider looks like. You talked about how the female avoider typically will dislike or even despise sex, and I've seen that in my practice over and over. What often happens is the female avoider will offer sex as a way to placate you so that you leave me alone, so that I don't have to have an emotional connection with you. I just use my body to give you what it is you're looking for so that then you leave me alone and I can go do my thing.

Marc Cameron: Correct. I've also seen Avoidant females be okay with their spouses looking at pornography. Because if you're getting your release over there, then you won't be coming after me and bothering me. They can be very dismissive, and it's not like they approve of it, but they're okay with it, and it can seem like an implicit approval for a male.

JJ West: Exactly. And yet, there is still that low-grade resentment. Like, "I'm fine, you go look at your porn, you go engage in masturbation, because I don't have to then deal with you, I can just do my own thing." And yet, because we all come out of the womb having feelings and needing connection, there's still that resentment of, "Why don't you pursue my heart and why don't you find that connection with me?" even if they've tamped it down so far that they're not consciously aware of it. There's still that need.

Marc Cameron: Yes. That's where a husband of an Avoidant wife can feel stuck because my wife doesn't want to have sex, and I do have this need, not just a biological need for a man, but I also have a relational need. When you have a spouse who pushes you away and doesn't want physical touch or sex, you can feel stuck.

However, it is also important, especially for a male who's an avoider, that if his wife doesn't want to have sex, not to think, "Well, she's just an avoider, too." Women are primed primarily through an emotional drive for connection. So if sex is incongruent, you're not building that emotional connection, but you're expecting your wife to perform, she's not going to have what seems like a high sex drive. It's not because she doesn't have a high sex drive, it's that she's not getting the connection that she needs to feel that sex drive. Her responsive sex drive isn't being activated. Women primarily have responsive desire when it comes to sex, whereas men have spontaneous desire and are more visually motivated, and women are more emotionally motivated.

JJ West: Exactly. Okay, so let's shift then to the Pleaser. In the literature, it's the Anxious-Preoccupied, but what does the Pleaser look like? What are the sexual propensities of the Pleaser?

Marc Cameron: There are actually two anxious types. The preoccupied is actually the Vacillator, but the Pleaser is more just anxious. They can also be fearful and Avoidant, too. They can have some tendencies to avoid conflict just like the avoider does, but they avoid for different motivations.

A Pleaser grows up in a home where they typically have a parent's mood that they're managing. They may have a parent who is angry or critical or highly anxious or depressed, and so they become the "good kid." The Avoider becomes the performer; the Pleaser becomes the "good kid" because they want to just keep their parent calm. They want to manage their parent's mood because when their parent's disregulated, they feel anxious on the inside. They're primed to do that throughout childhood and grow up going into adulthood, and they do that with others. They're "Mr. Nice Guy" or "Ms. Nice Girl," and they just want to calm other people down. They want other people to be okay.

A drive for sex for somebody who is more anxious, especially that Pleaser type, is really to calm their own anxiety. Because if I can calm you down and relax you, especially if it's a wife who is a Pleaser, if I can help relax my husband, then I'm going to be able to relax because if he's not relaxed, then I won't be able to relax. The drive often can be to calm the anxiety on the inside. A Pleaser wife can actually be very permissive and can give in to sexual acts that they don't really want to do because they don't want to upset their husband or they have an angry husband who can be demanding of that, and so they think, "Let me just calm that person down."

JJ West: Doug, I'm curious from your practice. Have you seen a lot of that where a Pleaser, especially a Pleaser wife, has lost her voice? They don't have that ability to say no and so they end up engaging in sexual behaviors or practices that are really uncomfortable for them, but they continue to do so because they're just trying to appease the emotions of their spouse.

Doug Barnes: Yes, totally. The result of that is now they're putting up with behaviors and actions and innuendo and all kinds of attitudes that with any other person, they wouldn't necessarily have the same reaction or response to. But over time, there's this bitterness and there's this, "I'm really angry on the inside, but I can't show it because I need to please and I need to just stuff that down because it helps calm my anxiety down," like y'all are talking about.

JJ West: Which brings up a good point, which is there's usually a point at which the Pleaser finally reaches their breaking point. They've ignored their emotions, ignored their needs, ignored their own voice for so long, and then they hit that breaking point. Then what happens?

Marc Cameron: That's usually around mid-life that they give and they give and they give and the strategy is not working for them. Overall it's not working, especially again for a wife who has a demanding husband. You have made that experience so one-sided, so unenjoyable for that person that they eventually find that they do get to have a voice.

Sex can be shut off at that moment because you're demanding as a husband. You've made that experience so one-sided, so unenjoyable for that person that that's their association with it. That shut-off is different than an avoider shut-off because an avoider just doesn't like sex typically, an Avoidant wife may not like sex. Whereas if a Pleaser wife shuts it off, it's because she doesn't enjoy sex. It doesn't mean that she doesn't like it, she's just not enjoying it in that moment. I can go to a concert, but if something was on my mind, I might not enjoy it even though I like the band, I like the performers, I'm just not enjoying it in that moment.

There's a difference between that, and then they can go the other way and be very stubborn and realize, "I do get to have a voice and I do have some power." Then there's a lot of recovery work that needs to be done in there for them to build that new association that sex can also be enjoyable.

JJ West: And I would say also, if it goes too far, if it gets to that point where sex is now shut off because I don't enjoy it, if that remains, if that isn't dealt with, if they don't do the work of recovery, so often that then leads to affair, divorce, separation. Like, there's something where I'm not enjoying our relationship, and I think that this over here will give me enjoyment, so I go over there. Boy, that's really hard to bring that Pleaser back because they've now defined this relationship as the source of all of my pain, where I've been forced to deny my voice. So I'm going to stay over here where I have life and where I have expression.

Marc Cameron: Yeah. If someone else shows them attention and they've found their voice and they're drawing a line in the sand, and somebody shows attention and this feels safe over here, of course you're going to be drawn more to this relationship.

It's a challenge because the Pleaser has been conditioned to not have a voice because it's all about the other person. If I was taking care of my parent's emotional state, I'm always other-focused, I'm not paying attention to self. To make that turn is really, really difficult. It can be done, but we're not in a fixed state. It's not a, "Oh, you were born as a pleaser, that's how you were raised, so that's who you are the rest of your life." No. It's how we are, it's not who we are. There are parts of us that are who we are—you're born an introvert or born extrovert—but attachment is programming. It's how we are and we can be reprogrammed.

For the Pleaser male, the Avoidant male uses sex as to de-stress, the Pleaser male uses sex for reassurance. Because they feel anxious, and so if we can have sex, then everything's good between us. I can be okay because you're okay. If you're willing to have sex with me, you must like me, you must accept me as I am, so I'm okay then. So sometimes it's about resolving things in the relationship. Other times, for men, we relax after we have sex. It's hard to be anxious if you are relaxed, and so that can be a tool to calm anxiety down.

JJ West: Boy, that's so good. Okay, so we've gotten through half of the insecure connections. We still need to do the other half of the insecure connections and then we need to talk about what it looks like to be a secure connector as a sexual being.

But we need to be mindful of the time. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a break here and we're going to invite Marc to come back and join us for a second episode where we tackle the second half of the insecure and we tackle what it looks like to be a secure connector as a sexual being.

Guys, thanks for listening. Can I remind you that as a listener of the podcast, if you go to the website NewLife.com, if you call 1-800-NEW-LIFE to sign up for the Every Man's Battle Intensive, you get $100 off of your registration fee if you just put in EMBPOD into the coupon code? That's going to save you that $100. We want you to take advantage of that because we know that it's a place where you're going to learn about how my attachment style, all the stories from my childhood, are impacting the way that I am living as a sexual being. We want you to experience that.

Listen, we don't ever want money to be the issue. So if finances are the barrier to you going to the workshop, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. There's scholarships available. We never want anyone to miss out simply because they couldn't afford to go. So please do that.

Marc, are you going to be able to join us again?

Marc Cameron: I will.

JJ West: Okay, fantastic. We can't wait. Second half of our discussion of the sexual propensities of the different attachment styles will start next week. Thanks again for listening, guys. Until then, let's keep walking in integrity.

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