When You Leave the Religion but the Religion Doesn't Leave Your Sex Life
Key Takeaways
People who leave a religion can still feel its influence during sex. Researchers call this religious residue: beliefs, habits, and moral associations that persist after a person stops identifying as religious. Studies by Daryl Van Tongeren and colleagues found that formerly religious people often fall between currently religious and never-religious people on moral foundations, with purity showing an especially large effect. Applied to sexuality, this may explain why guilt or self-monitoring can interrupt sex long after a person's conscious beliefs have changed. Sex therapy can help people identify inherited beliefs and choose sexual values that fit who they are now.
This year at the American Psychological Association conference in Washington, D.C., I found myself in an interesting talk given by Division 36, the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. I asked a question of the presenters about how individuals overcome deeply held religious beliefs around sexuality and purity culture after leaving their religion or no longer identifying personally with those views.
In my practice as a sex therapist, it is common for individuals seeking sex therapy for sexual dysfunction or dissatisfaction in their sexual relationships to have a history of sex-negative beliefs learned during childhood—beliefs they no longer consciously identify with, but that still intrude upon their thinking at the most inopportune times during sexual activity.
The speakers recommended that I check out the work of Daryl Van Tongeren, who studies how individuals navigate changes in religious identities and beliefs. This body of work provides a very helpful lens through which to understand why people can continue to be negatively affected by beliefs they may no longer consciously hold.
You Can Stop Believing Something Without Immediately Stopping Its Influence
Van Tongeren and his colleagues call this phenomenon religious residue. The basic idea is deceptively simple: people who once identified as religious but no longer do are psychologically different, in some important ways, from people who were never religious in the first place.
In a series of studies conducted across the United States, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and New Zealand, Van Tongeren and colleagues compared people who currently identified as religious, people who formerly identified as religious, and people who had never identified as religious. Their findings suggested that religious identity can leave behind measurable effects on cognition, emotion, implicit attitudes, behavior, and even prosocial behavior after a person has stopped identifying as religious.
In other words, changing what you believe does not necessarily erase what you have learned. This distinction may be particularly important when we think about sexuality. Van Tongeren's studies did not examine sexual functioning or purity culture specifically. Applying religious residue to sexuality is an extension of their framework rather than a conclusion of the research itself. But as a sex therapist, I think it offers an intriguing way of understanding something I encounter clinically all the time.
A person may say: “I don't believe masturbation is wrong anymore,” or “I don't believe sex is dirty,” or “I don't believe I have to be married to have sex,” and they may mean every word. Yet when they become sexually aroused, initiate sex, masturbate, experience orgasm, communicate a sexual desire, or simply allow themselves to experience pleasure, something entirely different can happen internally. Guilt appears; their body tightens; they begin monitoring themselves; and a thought intrudes: “I shouldn't be doing this.” Psychologically—and even physiologically—something remains.
Religious Beliefs Can Become Schemas
One explanation offered by Van Tongeren and colleagues involves schemas. Schemas are mental frameworks through which we organize and interpret our experiences. Religious identity can become one of these frameworks, influencing how individuals understand themselves, other people, morality, and the world around them. Because schemas can become deeply established and resistant to change, the psychological effects associated with an identity may persist even after the identity itself changes.
This becomes particularly interesting when religious beliefs are learned during childhood. Children generally do not encounter religious teachings as detached philosophical propositions to be objectively evaluated. Religious beliefs can be communicated through parents, families, churches, rituals, authority figures, communities, expectations, rewards, prohibitions, and repeated experiences.
Van Tongeren and colleagues discuss the importance of childhood exposure to what researchers call credibility-enhancing displays, or CREDs—essentially, observing caregivers behave in ways that demonstrate that their religious beliefs are serious, meaningful, and worthy of personal sacrifice. Their work proposes that repeated exposure to these experiences can contribute to enduring implicit religious associations.
Now consider what happens when religion is also teaching a child about sexuality. The message may not simply be that sex before marriage is prohibited; it may become:
Good people control sexual desire.
My body can lead me into sin.
Sexual thoughts reveal something about my character.
Purity makes me worthy.
Sex makes me less pure.
Other people are evaluating my sexual behavior.
God is evaluating my sexual behavior.
Sexual pleasure is dangerous unless it occurs under very specific circumstances.
These are common phrases I hear in sex therapy, and these messages can become much more than opinions about sexual behavior. They can become part of the person's developing understanding of morality, identity, relationships, and the body.
Why Purity May Be Especially Powerful
A second Van Tongeren study makes the connection to sexuality even more interesting. The researchers examined whether religious residue extended to five moral foundations: harm, fairness, ingroup loyalty, authority, and purity. They generally found a "stairstep" pattern: currently religious individuals showed the highest endorsement of moral foundations, formerly religious individuals tended to fall in the middle, and never-religious individuals showed the lowest endorsement.
Purity is particularly relevant here. In one of the larger adult studies, formerly religious participants differed significantly from never-religious participants across all five moral foundations, with a particularly large distinction between currently and formerly religious participants on purity. What this means is that even after leaving a religion, internalized beliefs and schemes around purity persist.
The researchers also found evidence that religious residue may diminish with time. In their longitudinal study, people who had more recently left religion looked more like currently religious individuals on some of the "binding" moral foundations, particularly authority and purity. As more time passed after religious deidentification, some of this residual effect appeared to decay. But it did not necessarily disappear altogether. That is fascinating when considered through the lens of sexual health.
Sexuality is one of the places where the concept of purity can become intensely personal. Sexual behavior can become associated not simply with what a person does, but with whether a person is good, clean, respectable, worthy, lovable, or moral. When sexuality becomes connected to moral identity in this way, changing one's conscious beliefs about sex may not automatically dismantle the deeper associations built around them.
The Sexual Beliefs We No Longer Believe
This helps explain an experience that can be deeply confusing for people. Someone may have spent years reconsidering their religious beliefs. They may have intellectually rejected the sexual teachings of their childhood. They may wholeheartedly support sexual autonomy and no longer believe that consensual sexual pleasure is morally problematic. And then they enter the bedroom and discover that their nervous system apparently didn't get the memo.
Van Tongeren and colleagues offer another possible explanation for religious residue: habit. Habits are learned patterns that can become relatively automatic and can be activated by contextual cues without deliberate awareness. Religion can repeatedly prescribe certain behaviors while prohibiting others, allowing particular ways of thinking, feeling, and acting to become habitual over time. Those patterns may continue even after religious identification changes.
Applied cautiously to sexuality, this suggests an interesting possibility. Imagine spending your formative years repeatedly practicing that when you have a sexual thought → monitor it; or if you feel sexual desire → suppress it; or when you feel sexual pleasure → anticipate guilt. That sequence can be practiced hundreds or thousands of times before adulthood. Then, at age 25, 35, or 45, the person decides, I don't believe that anymore. That cognitive change matters, but years of learning do not necessarily vanish because the person has reached a different intellectual conclusion.
The Bedroom Is a Terrible Place for an Internal Morality Trial
Sexual functioning generally benefits from the ability to become absorbed in erotic experience. Arousal asks us, at least temporarily, to turn attention toward sensation, pleasure, fantasy, connection, and the body. Many sexual difficulties involve precisely the opposite process: spectatoring. Instead of experiencing sex, the person begins observing and evaluating themselves having sex. For someone carrying sex-negative religious residue, another layer may be added around moral judgements.
Now the person is simultaneously trying to experience pleasure and conduct an internal moral evaluation of that pleasure. Those are not particularly compatible psychological tasks.
Your Sexual Values Get to Be Chosen
One of the most hopeful findings in Van Tongeren's research is that religious residue does not appear to be permanently fixed. Their longitudinal research suggests that some residual moral effects can decay over time, although the authors appropriately note that the findings were not identical across every study and that more longitudinal research is needed.
Time alone, however, may not address every sexual association a person has developed. Sex therapy provides an opportunity to make some of those automatic processes conscious—to identify inherited beliefs, notice when they become activated, examine whether they remain consistent with one's current values, and gradually create new experiences of sexuality.
That work is not necessarily about rejecting religion. For some people, it means leaving religion behind, but for others it means remaining deeply religious while developing a sexual theology or sexual ethic that feels healthier and more personally authentic. The goal is not for a therapist to decide what someone should believe about sex; it is to help people understand whose beliefs they are living by.
Because sometimes the voice that interrupts sex isn't your partner's or your own; it’s an old voice, carrying an old rule, from an identity you may have left years ago. You don't have to hate that former version of yourself to recognize that some of what you learned no longer belongs in your sexual life. Perhaps that is one of the most useful implications of the concept of religious residue: we can stop believing something long before we stop feeling its effects. Understanding that difference may be the first step toward choosing what comes next.
To learn more about Dr. Van Toneren’s work on this topic, as well as a useful psychological framework to understand how religion may be negatively impacting your sex life, check out this video: Religious Residue: What Sticks After You Leave Religion.
References
Van Tongeren, D. R., DeWall, C. N., Chen, Z., Sibley, C. G., & Bulbulia, J. (2021). Religious residue: Cross-cultural evidence that religious psychology and behavior persist following deidentification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120, 484-503.
Van Tongeren, D. R., DeWall, C. N., Hardy, S. A., Schwadel, P. (2021). Religious identity and morality: Evidence for religious residue and decay in moral foundations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47, 1550-1564.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is religious residue?
Religious residue is a term used by psychologist Daryl Van Tongeren and colleagues to describe how religious beliefs, habits, and moral attitudes can persist after a person stops identifying as religious. In studies conducted across the United States, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and New Zealand, formerly religious people remained psychologically different in some measurable ways from people who were never religious.
Why do I still feel guilty during sex after leaving my religion?
Beliefs learned in childhood can become schemas, the mental frameworks we use to interpret ourselves and the world, and they can also become habits that activate automatically. Even when you no longer consciously hold sex-negative beliefs, guilt, tension, or intrusive thoughts can still appear during sexual activity because those learned patterns do not vanish the moment your beliefs change.
Why are purity messages so hard to shake?
In Van Tongeren's research on moral foundations, purity showed a particularly large distinction between currently and formerly religious participants. Sexuality is one of the places where purity becomes intensely personal, because sexual behavior can become tied to whether a person feels good, clean, worthy, or lovable. When sex is connected to moral identity that way, changing conscious beliefs may not automatically dismantle the deeper associations.
Does religious residue fade over time?
It may. Longitudinal research suggests some residual moral effects can decay as more time passes after leaving a religion, particularly on foundations like authority and purity, but they did not necessarily disappear altogether. Time alone may not address every sexual association a person has developed.
What is spectatoring?
A: Spectatoring means observing and evaluating yourself during sex instead of experiencing it. Sexual functioning generally benefits from absorption in sensation, pleasure, and connection, and spectatoring works against that. For someone carrying sex-negative religious residue, moral self-judgment can add another layer, so the person is trying to experience pleasure and conduct an internal moral evaluation at the same time.
Can sex therapy help with religious sexual shame?
Yes. Sex therapy provides an opportunity to make automatic processes conscious: identifying inherited beliefs, noticing when they become activated, examining whether they remain consistent with your current values, and gradually creating new experiences of sexuality.
Do I have to leave my faith to have a healthy sex life?
No. For some people this work means leaving religion behind, but others remain deeply religious while developing a sexual theology or sexual ethic that feels healthier and more personally authentic. The goal is not for a therapist to decide what you should believe about sex; it is to help you understand whose beliefs you are living by.
