Episode 180 - That We Might Have Joy: Desire, Divinity, and Intimate Love with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife
What if everything you learned about desire, marriage, and faith was only half the story?
I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife to discuss her groundbreaking book That We Might Have Joy: Desire, Divinity, and Intimate Love. This conversation challenged much of what many of us grew up believing about sexuality, marriage, and what it means to be a woman of faith trying to live wholeheartedly.
Near the end of her book, Dr. Finlayson-Fife writes something profound: "This kind of intimate love requires our faith: faith that we are worthy of pleasure and care, faith in our lovability and our capacity to love. It asks for our courage—the courage to witness and to be witnessed, to know and to be known. Above all, it affirms our trust in a generous God who longs for us to know joy."
Not by avoiding our bodies. Not by transcending our humanity. But by choosing courage in our most intimate relationships—that's where we find the divine.
Who Is Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife?
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife is a therapist, educator, and coach with a doctorate in counseling psychology. For over two decades, she has helped individuals and couples, particularly within the LDS community, strengthen their relationships and develop a more integrated view of sexuality.
Through her acclaimed online courses, live workshops, and the widely followed Room for Two podcast, she has supported the emotional and sexual development of thousands of people. She's known for her clarity, compassion, depth, and humor when addressing topics that many find difficult to discuss openly.
The Four-Year Labor of Love
When I asked Jennifer what drew her to write this book, she shared that while she'd turned down many invitations to write, this particular project from Faith Matters struck a chord.
"I always had this sense that there is a spirituality that's fundamental to what I'm doing with couples," she explained. "I would watch couples grow in their capacity to love each other, grow in their capacity to be intimate with each other."
What she imagined would be a one-year project became a four-year journey of deep exploration. "It was very much something that I was really sorting through. What is spirituality? How is intimate love connected to it? How do I articulate the process I've seen couples engage in and evolve through?"
Is Desire Really a Spiritual Act?
This is perhaps the most radical claim in Jennifer's work and it is the one that can discomfort for religious people.
"Let me first start by saying what I don't mean," Jennifer clarified, acknowledging our right to be suspicious. Many of us relate to pleasure and desire in an indulgent way. Many using it to escape from life, avoid difficult things, or simply cave to bodily impulses.
"I sometimes call that wanting," she said, "because wanting is more like filling a void. We feel depressed or empty and we try to fill it with buying things or eating things or pornography. As we emerge from that, we feel even worse. That kind of indulgence will always entrap us."
Understanding Eros: The Higher Desire
But there's a different kind of desire. This is what Jennifer calls Eros.
"Eros is human longing to commune with divinity, with the highest in us, with one another, with mystery, with what we don't yet know," she explained. "It's this desire for more than what we are currently, and so that is fundamental to growth."
This desire is fundamental to love: the willingness to step out of our comfort, out of our ego, into the uncertainty of caring about another person, of becoming better, of learning something that transforms us.
"Maybe paradoxically, it makes us more fully true to ourselves, more who we were meant to be. I see it as a kind of faith. Faith in the goodness of God, goodness of the world, goodness of our own souls that we let life teach us and grow in the process."
From Role-Based Marriage to Collaborative Partnership
One of the most powerful concepts Jennifer discusses is the shift from a role-based marriage to a collaborative partnership.
What Is a Role-Based Marriage?
"A role-based marriage is one where people are executing the role they've been trained to see as important," Jennifer explained. "Men are supposed to be providers and leaders. Women are supposed to be nurturers and supporters. You do your job, I'll do my job, and we'll kind of relate that way."
While this structure can work initially—especially when raising children or building financial stability—it eventually becomes limiting.
"What often happens is you can feel lonely in that structure. You can feel unseen. You can actually enact the roles but not know each other very well, or not feel very known or understood."
The Shift to Collaborative Partnership
A collaborative partnership, by contrast, is built on mutual respect and genuine knowing.
"You're really trying to understand the other person, understand yourself, and collaborate together to build a life," Jennifer said. "It's much more fluid. Both people have to grow their capacity to understand themselves and to let themselves be known."
This requires tremendous courage because it means being seen, not just in your role performance, but in your full humanity.
"It's a willingness to really choose love. Love is a choice. It's not a feeling that just overwhelms you. You have to choose to step into knowing another person, which means being vulnerable."
The Trap of Ego Management in Marriage
Many marriages become exhausting because both partners are constantly managing each other's egos.
"Each person is trying to protect themselves and make sure the other person sees them in the right way," Jennifer observed. "If I think you see me as inadequate, I'm going to get defensive or try to explain myself. And you're doing the same thing with me."
This creates a dynamic where both people are afraid of conflict, walking on eggshells, hiding their true feelings, and performing rather than being authentic.
"You can't be unselfconscious and joyful when you're managing someone else's ego all the time," Jennifer noted.
Breaking Free Through Self-Validation
The solution isn't to stop caring what your spouse thinks. It's to stop being overly dependent on their approval for your sense of self.
"The more you can validate yourself—know your own goodness, know your value independent of whether your spouse affirms it in the moment—the freer you are to engage honestly," Jennifer explained.
"You can say, 'I see that you're upset with me, and I care about that. But I also trust myself enough that I don't collapse when you're unhappy with me. I can stay present and work through this with you.'"
Finding Truth and Courage in Long-Term Marriage
For couples who have walked on eggshells for decades, the path forward requires facing uncomfortable truths.
"I think it's facing the fact that you're enacting all of the dishonesty and the hiding, and you're living out that reality," Jennifer said. "If it's gonna change, you have to take what you both know but pretend you don't see and bring it into the present. Bring it into the conversation."
This might sound like saying, "I tiptoe around you because I'm afraid of your reaction to me," or "I don't often tell you how I feel, and I want to change that," or "I've been hiding parts of myself because I fear rejection."
"As much as that can hurt and feel scary, what actually destroys people is denying the truth," Jennifer emphasized. "When people can face more truth, they build more capacity, and as they build more capacity, they build more freedom into their marriage."
A Message for Women in Midlife
As we wrapped up our conversation, I asked Jennifer to speak directly to women navigating this season, trying to create stronger relationships while reconciling where they've been with where they want to go.
Her response was beautiful and hope-filled.
"For many women in midlife, it feels like something's gone terribly wrong. It feels disillusioning, or like maybe I've just not figured this out and there's something broken about me."
But Jennifer offers a radically different perspective:
"You've done a lot of good. Many good things have come from the years you have lived, and you are now in a position to receive more light, more possibility into your life, because of a certain disorientation and disillusionment that is natural."
The Gift of Midlife Awakening
This period of disorientation is actually part of the pattern of how people grow.
"You may actually find a deeper strength within yourself, a deeper trust in yourself, deeper wisdom, and in a way, deeper faith," Jennifer said. "I don't need to earn my value anymore. I don't need to prove anything. Maybe it's always been there."
She continued, "We don't tend to think of faith as having something to do with believing in our own implicit value, but sometimes that's the most courageous act of faith we can enact—that I actually have value, that I have value equal to men, that God sees me as worthy, that my joy in life matters and is not only good for me, it's good for my relationships."
Finding the Truest Measure Within
"Maybe I could even see myself more truthfully than I have in the past," Jennifer added. "Even as some of the outward measures of self seem to be falling away, I can find the truest measure of myself within me."
She's witnessed this transformation in countless women who are finding deeper capacity, deeper wisdom, and deeper gratitude.
"That self-trust is something they've often been lacking. When they start finding it, they find a lot more capacity to love and be loved."
Generous Receiving from God
One phrase that particularly resonated with me from Jennifer's book is the idea of "generous receiving from God," accepting joy, pleasure, and love not as things we must earn, but as gifts freely given to beloved children.
This requires faith. Not just faith in God's existence, but in God's generosity toward us specifically.
For women who've spent decades performing, proving, and perfecting, this invitation to simply receive can feel almost scandalous. Yet it's perhaps the most spiritual act we can engage in: trusting that we are worthy of joy simply because we exist, simply because we are loved.
Final Words of Encouragement
As we closed our conversation, Jennifer offered this simple yet profound encouragement:
"Just have courage, and goodness is real. Love is real. I just see it over and over—as people lean in that direction, they get stronger and they have more to offer themselves and others. So don't give up hope in that."
Taking the Next Step
If you're in midlife, if you're questioning the narratives you grew up with, if you're longing for deeper intimacy and authenticity in your relationships, you're not broken. You're awakening.
The discomfort you feel isn't evidence that something has gone wrong. It's evidence that you're ready to receive more light, more truth, more joy.
As I reflect on my own journey, stepping into the uncomfortable work of seeing myself, my spouse, and my adult children more clearly, I can testify that trusting it's all been for my best good (even the painful parts) has expanded me in ways I couldn't have imagined at the beginning.
Have courage. Goodness is real. Love is real.
And you are worthy of both.
Want to learn more? Check out Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife's book That We Might Have Joy: Desire, Divinity, and Intimate Love, explore her online courses, or listen to her Room for Two podcast by visiting her website https://www.finlayson-fife.com.
Meta Description: Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife discusses how desire connects to spirituality, moving from role-based to collaborative marriages, and finding joy in midlife relationships. Essential insights for women of faith.
Keywords: Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, faith and sexuality, midlife marriage, spiritual intimacy, LDS marriage counseling, desire and divinity, collaborative partnership, women of faith, intimate relationships
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About the Host: Jill Pack is a certified faith-based life + relationship coach and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She helps women of faith navigate their seasons of life with greater purpose and joy including how to transform conflict into connection. For more resources or to work with Jill, visit www.seasons-coaching.com.
