Good Things Come to Those Who Wait? Untangling the Role of Memorable Messages for Evangelical Couples Coping with Painful Intercourse During Early Marriage

Women who internalize evangelical purity messages face heightened risk for persistent pain or difficulty with penetrative sexual intercourse. Guided by the theory of memorable messages, this qualitative study explores the messages that married evangelical Christian couples believe help and hinder their ability to cope when intercourse is painful or impossible. In-depth individual interviews were conducted with 20 heterosexual couples (40 participants) in which women currently or recently experienced persistent pain during (attempted) intercourse. Interview data were abductively analyzed at the individual level and couple level using flexible coding and assisted by thematic analysis. Nine memorable message types were identified and organized under three suprathemes that reflected how memorable messages functioned in the process of discovering and managing chronic sexual pain: (1) Anticipatory Socialization: From Worst Sin to Best Gift, (2) Communicative Disenfranchisement: When Helping Hurts, and Anticipatory Resilience & Message Disruption: Flipping the Script When the "Switch" Won't Flip. The interpretive findings reveal how memorable messages make their way through romantic relationships to impact individual and dyadic outcomes and illuminate how religious meaning-making may both facilitate and complicate the process of coping with painful sex for evangelical couples. Practically, the findings offer couples, practitioners, and faith leaders possible points of communicative intervention that may empower couples and facilitate adaptive coping.