Dating and Desire Podcast

Cedric Dale Hoard, mental health therapist, spoken word artist, and author, joins Lauren and Bridgett to talk about the messages Christian men often receive about desire, lust, masculinity, and relationships. Drawing from his work with men and his own experience, Cedric looks at how purity culture can leave men ashamed of attraction or afraid of desire without helping them understand what may be happening underneath it.The conversation gets practical about what healthier dating can look like. What do you do when someone you like is not ready for physical affection? How can a man say no to sexual attention without feeling weak? What is the difference between attraction and lust? Cedric talks about emotional regulation, boundaries, vulnerability, and learning to express disappointment without turning it into pressure or manipulation.They also talk about male friendship, loneliness, and what happens when men begin to let safe people really know them. For men who want to date and love well, this episode offers a way to move beyond shame without pretending desire does not exist. And for women who care about the men in their lives, it offers a fuller picture of the emotional work many men are doing to become healthier partners, husbands, fathers, and friends.
WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBESHOW RESOURCESThe Head & The CrownAnchored In LightCONNECT WITH CEDRIC HOARDWebsite: https://cedricdalehoard.comInstagram: @cedricdalehoard
If something in this episode resonated with you, here are two ways to go deeper depending on what you need:

🩷 Work with Bridgett
You don’t need more rules. You need a deeper understanding of your sexual desire.If you still feel confused about how to navigate dating without shutting down or crossing your boundaries, Bridgett helps you build sexual self-trust and honor your values
→ ⁠⁠⁠ RECLAIM Cohort⁠⁠⁠
📓 ⁠⁠⁠Free Guides and Ecourse⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠  

💙 Work with Lauren
If you’re feeling unsure what to do next— whether that’s meeting people, choosing who to pursue, or trusting your judgment in dating, Lauren helps you move forward with clarity and confidence.
→ Work with Lauren
📔 Get the free guide ⁠⁠⁠Dating Apps Don’t Have to Be Confusing⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠

Have more questions?
Email us at datinganddesirepodcast@gmail.com

Being single for a long time changes the way you build your life. You learn your routines, make your own decisions, carry your own responsibilities, and often become very good at doing life on your own. Lauren and Bridgett talk about what happens when you genuinely enjoy the life you have built but still want someone to share it with.

They get honest about the good and hard parts of long-term singleness, from knowing yourself well to carrying the financial and mental load alone. They also explore what can happen when independence becomes hard to give up, when preferences start turning into requirements, and when dating feels harder because you have spent years building a life that already works.

If you have been single for years and wonder whether you have become too independent, too selective, or just tired of trying, this episode is for you. How do you stay open to love without putting your life on hold? How do you make room for grief when dating hurts? And how do you keep taking small risks when you do not know how the story will turn out?

WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE

If something in this episode resonated with you, here are two ways to go deeper depending on what you need:

🩷 Work with Bridgett
You don’t need more rules. You need a deeper understanding of your sexual desire.If you still feel confused about how to navigate dating without shutting down or crossing your boundaries, Bridgett helps you build sexual self-trust and honor your values
→ ⁠⁠⁠ RECLAIM Cohort⁠⁠⁠
📓 ⁠⁠⁠Free Guides and Ecourse⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠  

💙 Work with Lauren
If you’re feeling unsure what to do next— whether that’s meeting people, choosing who to pursue, or trusting your judgment in dating, Lauren helps you move forward with clarity and confidence.
→ Work with Lauren
📔 Get the free guide ⁠⁠⁠Dating Apps Don’t Have to Be Confusing⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠

Have more questions?
Email us at datinganddesirepodcast@gmail.com

Dr. Camden Morgante, psychologist and author of Recovering from Purity Culture, joins Lauren and Bridgett for a conversation about dating after deconstruction and what it looks like to rethink the beliefs you inherited about faith, sexuality, and relationships. Drawing from both her clinical work and her own purity culture experience, Camden offers a hopeful reminder: you do not have to have your faith completely figured out before you can date, connect, and keep discovering what you believe.

The deeper tension is that purity culture often promised certainty. Stay pure, follow the rules, find the right Christian spouse, and a good marriage would follow. When that formula begins to fall apart, dating can feel confusing. Together, they explore how to move beyond the pressure to make every date a potential marriage, loosen rigid ideas about the “perfect” Christian partner, and approach dating with more curiosity, self-trust, and room to grow.

For anyone recovering from purity culture while still wanting faith to remain part of their dating life, this conversation offers a way forward without simply replacing one rulebook with another. What to pay attention to… is whether your relationships are helping you grow in honesty, wisdom, safety, mutuality, and connection. Healing is not about getting every belief or boundary perfectly settled first. It is about becoming more free to date, discern, and love with integrity.

WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE

SHOW RESOURCES
Book: Recovering from Purity Culture by Dr. Camden Morgante

CONNECT WITH DR. CAMDEN MORGANTE
Website
Instagram: @DrCamden

If something in this episode resonated with you, here are two ways to go deeper depending on what you need:

🩷 Work with Bridgett
You don’t need more rules. You need a deeper understanding of your sexual desire.If you still feel confused about how to navigate dating without shutting down or crossing your boundaries, Bridgett helps you build sexual self-trust and honor your values
→ ⁠⁠⁠ RECLAIM Cohort⁠⁠⁠
📓 ⁠⁠⁠Free Guides and Ecourse⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠  

💙 Work with Lauren
If you’re feeling unsure what to do next— whether that’s meeting people, choosing who to pursue, or trusting your judgment in dating, Lauren helps you move forward with clarity and confidence.
→ Work with Lauren
📔 Get the free guide ⁠⁠⁠Dating Apps Don’t Have to Be Confusing⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠

Have more questions?
Email us at datinganddesirepodcast@gmail.com

Kendra LeeAnne Kuntz, a gospel-centered Bible teacher and writer, joins Lauren and Bridgett for a conversation about divorce, healing, and what it means to risk your heart again after an abusive marriage. Drawing from her own story, Kendra shares how well-meaning Christian teaching about purity, submission, and marriage shaped the way she understood herself, and why it took leaving her marriage to begin recognizing some of what she had been living through as abuse.

The deeper tension here is that Scripture and the character of God can become distorted when marriage is treated as something that must be preserved at the expense of safety, dignity, or truth. Kendra talks about learning to separate God's character from the messages she had absorbed, the pastors and community who helped carry her through divorce, and why conversations about biblical divorce and remarriage need more humility, discernment, and room for redemption.

But this episode does not stop at what went wrong. Kendra shares what helped her begin trusting herself again, including therapy, learning to recognize red flags, and inviting trusted people into her dating life. Lauren, Bridgett, and Kendra also talk honestly about attraction and compatibility, dating with children, when to introduce a new partner to your family, and the fear that divorce or motherhood may have somehow made you too complicated to be chosen again.

For anyone wondering whether healthy love is still possible after heartbreak, this conversation offers a deeply hopeful picture of what can come next. Healing does not require pretending the past did not happen, and wisdom does not mean closing your heart forever. What to pay attention to… is whether you are becoming more able to use your voice, trust what you are noticing, welcome safe people into your discernment, and choose a relationship where you and the people you love are treated as a blessing rather than a burden.

Watch this episode on YouTube

SHOW RESOURCES
What the Bible Actually Says About Divorce: Kendra's larger Bible study explores difficult passages surrounding divorce and what Scripture actually says about the topic. https://www.kendraleeanne.com/store/p2/whatthebibleactuallysaysaboutdivorce.html
Kendra also offers mini studies addressing difficult-to-understand Bible verses and questions surrounding abuse and divorce for Christians: https://www.kendraleeanne.com/store/c3/Mini_Scripture_Studies.html
CONNECT WITH KENDRA
Website
Instagram: @kendraleeanne
Substack
FacebookWant help applying this to your dating life?
If something in this episode resonated with you, here are two ways to go deeper depending on what you need:

🩷 Work with Bridgett
You don’t need more rules. You need a deeper understanding of your sexual desire.If you still feel confused about how to navigate dating without shutting down or crossing your boundaries, Bridgett helps you build sexual self-trust and honor your values
→ ⁠⁠⁠ RECLAIM Cohort⁠⁠⁠
📓 ⁠⁠⁠Free Guides and Ecourse⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠  

💙 Work with Lauren
If you’re feeling unsure what to do next— whether that’s meeting people, choosing who to pursue, or trusting your judgment in dating, Lauren helps you move forward with clarity and confidence.
→ Work with Lauren
📔 Get the free guide ⁠⁠⁠Dating Apps Don’t Have to Be Confusing⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠

Have more questions?
Email us at datinganddesirepodcast@gmail.com

Ellie Berry, a Sexual Addiction and Recovery coach, joins Lauren and Bridgett for an honest conversation about women, pornography, and what the path toward real freedom can look like. Drawing from her own experience with pornography addiction and recovery, Ellie names the isolation many women carry when their story does not fit the common assumption that pornography is primarily a man's struggle.
Together, they explore why healing takes more than shame, willpower, or simply trying harder. Ellie shares how understanding triggers and the brain's addiction cycle changed the way she understood recovery, why telling a safe person became such an important part of her own healing, and what it can look like to become curious about the deeper needs for connection, relief, pleasure, and care underneath unwanted sexual behavior.
The conversation also makes room for a question many Christian women may not know how to ask: What do I do with sexual desire when I'm single, recovering, or choosing not to act on it? Lauren, Bridgett, and Ellie talk about learning to listen to the body without treating desire as dirty or dangerous, finding healthy ways to move that energy toward life and connection, and discovering that sexual wholeness is about much more than whether or not a particular behavior stops.
For any woman who has struggled quietly, wondered whether she is the only one, or felt like she should have figured this out by now, this episode offers both practical first steps and a deeply hopeful picture of recovery. And for the friend who may someday be trusted with someone's story, it offers guidance for how to respond with care instead of shame. Through it all is a reminder that healing does not begin with earning your way back to God. His delight has not disappeared because you struggle.

WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE

SHOW RESOURCES
Beyond the Porn Phenomenon from Pure Desire Ministries and Barna Group
Fight the New Drug
Ellie offers a free First Steps in Recovery PDF for women who want to begin taking immediate steps toward healing and recovery.

CONNECT WITH ELLIE BERRY
- Website
- Instagram: @elliebe_
- Ellie also offers an individual coaching package that includes six sessions over three months for women who want more personalized support in their recovery journey.

ABOUT ELLIE BERRY
Ellie Berry is a Sexual Addiction and Recovery coach based in Northern Idaho who is passionate about empowering and equipping women through individual coaching, resources, and group sessions.Outside of her coaching work, Ellie is getting back into running as a hobby and enjoys sitting in a cute coffee shop and walking her two golden retrievers, Margo and Maple.

Want help applying this to your dating life?
If something in this episode resonated with you, here are two ways to go deeper depending on what you need:

🩷 Work with Bridgett
You don’t need more rules. You need a deeper understanding of your sexual desire.If you still feel confused about how to navigate dating without shutting down or crossing your boundaries, Bridgett helps you build sexual self-trust and honor your values
→ ⁠⁠⁠ RECLAIM Cohort⁠⁠⁠
📓 ⁠⁠⁠Free Guides and Ecourse⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠  

💙 Work with Lauren
If you’re feeling unsure what to do next— whether that’s meeting people, choosing who to pursue, or trusting your judgment in dating, Lauren helps you move forward with clarity and confidence.
→ Work with Lauren
📔 Get the free guide ⁠⁠⁠Dating Apps Don’t Have to Be Confusing⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠
→ ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠

Have more questions?
Email us at datinganddesirepodcast@gmail.com