Hi, my name is Ruby, and I'm Dr. Jennifer Finlays and Fife's assistant, and you're listening to the Dr. Finlays and

Fife podcast Archive. The podcast that you'll be listening to today is called

Singles and Sexuality, navigating with clarity and integrity,

originally uploaded to SoundCloud by Mormon Singledom.

Welcome and we hope you enjoy this episode.

Okay, so I have, this is going to be 20 minutes and now I have a pretty long presentation. me

so when I told a friend recently that I would be presenting in New York City on singles and sexuality.

She smiled and asked me, is there any overlap

between those two topics?

What on earth are you going to talk about?

Of course, what's comical about her question

is that it exposes the deep-seated desire among us,

especially among those of us who are married,

to pretend that the sexuality of single Mormons does not exist or shouldn't exist if one is good.

We are a faith that values marriage and family and sexual chastity very highly.

And equivically, the way we talk to you, singles and marriage about sexuality

exposes how much we want all sexual fun and behavior

to be contained to the presumably safe context of marriage.

And given our religious ideals and desires, it makes having this conversation about singles and sexuality in a meaningful, I'm sorry, in any meaningful or substantive way in the chapel no

less quite challenging for me. When I was first asked to present on this

subject it was intended to be more of an academic conversation and it's since shifted to be more of a church event.

And here I am talking about a very sensitive subject which makes it challenging to speak with any candor but I will do my best.

...