Faith, recovery, and honest repair.
Pure Desire Podcast sits at the meeting point of faith, recovery work, and hard family conversations. Led in recent episodes by Nick Stumbo with rotating co-hosts and guests, it treats compulsive sexual behavior as a deeper story of wounds, fear, shame, desire, and repair.
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Pure Desire Podcast is a Christian recovery show centered on sexual addiction, betrayal trauma, relapse prevention, and the slow repair of trust. It speaks plainly about painful material. Recent episodes show a consistent habit of moving beneath outward behavior to the fear, shame, desire, wound, or false belief that may be driving it. Nick Stumbo appears as the named host in the recent run, often joined by rotating co-hosts such as Heather Kolb, Stuart Blade, and John Begum. The conversations are interview-led and practical. A book-focused series brings in guests including Dr. Gary Chapman, Dr. Andrew Bauman, Shanti Feldhahn, Dr. James Sells, Jay Stringer, and Dr. Jake Porter, using their work as a doorway into recovery questions. Another series focuses on avoiding relapse in later recovery. Those episodes challenge ideas like sexual addiction being just about sex, or early sobriety meaning the deeper work is finished. The show is comfortable with church language, but it rarely stays in slogans. It asks what happens when unaddressed sexual brokenness affects church leadership, how communities speak to women in betrayal trauma, and what churches can do when hurting people arrive with mental and emotional health needs. It also gives attention to marriage repair, empathy, shame, control, and taking responsibility for wounds caused in close relationships. The mood is warm without being soft. There is enough humor to lower the temperature, but the subject matter remains serious. The show’s best moments come when a familiar recovery phrase turns into a usable next step, such as naming the emotional impact of a behavior or asking whether a choice is moving someone toward or away from intimacy. It suits listeners who want faith to remain part of the conversation without replacing careful emotional work. It also suits spouses, group members, church leaders, and helpers who need clearer language for betrayal, relapse, and accountability. Pure Desire Podcast is not built around shock or confession for its own sake. It is built around honest naming, patient repair, and the belief that recovery has to reach the root system, not just the visible behavior.
Made for: For people affected by compulsive sexual behavior, betrayal trauma, relapse patterns, shame, or trust repair, especially listeners who want Christian faith and recovery language held together. It also fits spouses, group members, church leaders, and helpers trying to respond with care and clarity.
What sets it apart: The show treats sexual addiction as a whole-life recovery issue rather than a single behavior problem. Its blend of pastoral warmth, interview structure, recovery tools, and church-facing accountability gives it a grounded niche among mental health and faith podcasts.
Your biblically based and clinically informed approach to breaking free from compulsive sexual behavior and healing from betrayal.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · August 2026
Pure Desire Podcast gives Christian recovery listeners practical language for relapse, betrayal trauma, accountability, and repair after compulsive sexual behavior.
Pure Desire Podcast is a Health & Fitness show for Christian listeners dealing with compulsive sexual behavior, betrayal trauma, relapse, and the hard work of repair. The sampled episodes mostly use host-led conversations with co-hosts, Pure Desire staff, or a guest.
Relapse gets a root-cause conversation here, not a fresh coat of "just try harder."
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A steady, practical conversation about empathy, impact, and ownership in later recovery.
Pure Desire Podcast episode 452 looks past the usual relapse conversation and focuses on a quieter danger in later recovery: failing to fully own the harm compulsive sexual behavior has caused people they love.
A practical conversation about the beliefs and hidden consequences beneath sexual addiction.
Pure Desire Podcast episode 451 focuses on a belief that can feed relapse: the idea that sexual addiction is mainly about sex, sex drive, or simply stopping a behavior. Nick Stumbo and Stuart Blade work through the five "brain bugs" named by founder Dr.
A grounded look at how bare-minimum effort can keep deeper recovery work at arm's length.
Pure Desire Podcast's episode 450 turns toward later recovery from compulsive sexual behavior, where the question is less about stopping old patterns and more about what sustained change asks of a person over time.
A compassionate, recovery-minded episode on helping children talk honestly while parents hold trust, boundaries, and hope.
Episode 359 sits with a difficult parenting moment: what to do when a child has been exposed to pornography. The conversation is anchored by a parent's two talks with a son, first after a threatening pop-up and later, at 16, when he wanted to step away from the behavior himself.
A steady Christian recovery conversation about finding hope in small steps when betrayal, addiction, or relapse feels overwhelming.
Hope is framed as something people can learn to notice and practice, even when betrayal, addiction, relapse, or long-held pain dominates the day.
Jonquilyn Hill chases one listener question per episode to the experts who can answer it.
Hard conversations, patiently held, with room to laugh.
Fearne Cotton interviews guests like Boy George and Bryony Gordon about mental health and identity.
Dr. Joy Harden Bradford pairs therapy insight with Black TV recaps, maternal health, and history.
Trevor Windsor and Nick Stumbo host Barb Winters, author of 'Sexpectations' and founder of HopefulMom.net.
Host Nick Stumbo and co-host Ashley Jamison interview Pure Desire staff members Bob VanderMeer and Heather Kolb about the theme 'Anchored in Hope' for the upcoming Pure Desire Summit.
Pure Desire Podcast episode 482 features Archbishop Joseph Nauman, a priest for 51 years, on pornography addiction and recovery.
Nick Stumbo and John Begum interview Dr.
Nick Stumbo and Heather Kolb discuss an interview with Dr.
Shaunti Feldhahn and psychologist Dr.
Nick Stumbo and Heather Kolb introduce a new series on recommended books for recovery, starting with an interview with Jay Stringer about his book 'Desire' and how desires can reveal unhealed wounds.
Nick Stumbo and Stuart Blade introduce a series on avoiding relapse in later recovery, focusing on the persistent message of shame with Dr.
Nick Stumbo and Stuart Blade introduce a series on avoiding relapse in later recovery, focusing on the danger of controlling others to control one's own life, with insights from clinician Debbie Flanagan.
In Pure Desire Podcast episode 452, host Nick Stumbo and licensed professional counselor Eileen Fagan explore why failing to take full responsibility for wounding loved ones leads to later-recovery relapse, identifying defensiveness as the central symptom rooted in childhood trauma.
In episode 451 of the Pure Desire Podcast, host Nick Stumbo and clinician Robert Vandermeer examine the 'brain bug' — identified by Pure Desire founder Dr.
In episode 450 of the Pure Desire Podcast, host Nick Stumbo and co-host Stuart Blade open a new five-part series on avoiding relapse in later recovery with clinician Harry Flanagan, who has been part of Pure Desire Ministries since 1993.
Nick Stumbo and Ashley Jamison introduce a roundtable conversation with Bob VanderMeer and Heather Kolb about being anchored in hope at the upcoming Pure Desire summit.
Nick Stumbo and Ashley Jamieson introduce Dr.
Nick Stumbo and Ashley Jameson introduce a conversation with Adrian Hickmon about hope and recovery from compulsive sexual behavior and betrayal trauma.
Nick Stumbo and Ashley Jamieson introduce the Summit Speaker Series and preview an interview with Dr.