Bethany Joy Lenz Recalls Having a 'Sex Schedule' When Married to Christian 'Cult' Leader's Son: 'I Had So Much PTSD'

Mar. 15, 2025

Bethany Joy Lenzis looking back on a dark time in her life.

In a new episode of theCall Her Daddypodcast, Lenz, 43, opened up about her time in what she describes asa “high-control group” and others have labeled “the Big House Family cult”— and her marriage to the leader’s son. She explained that she and her ex, who she called “QB,” started off with an “easy” relationship, but the two “didn’t have a lot in common.”

“There wasn’t a lot of intellectual stimulation,” she told hostAlex Cooper. “But I had kinda run out of options. Like, I couldn’t date a non-Christian and I couldn’t really date anybody outside of the group… So it just became this sort of arranged situation.”

“It felt like this promise that I had been given as a good evangelical was a big crock,” she continued, going on to say that she had a “crazy sex drive” that QB didn’t fulfill. “Like, what the heck? I thought if I save myself for marriage, then the promise is amazing sex and super deep intimacy, and nothing’s ever as good.”

“And then we have sex, and it’s like, ‘Why do I feel so sad? I don’t feel more connected to you. I feel farther away from you.’ And I don’t think that necessarily had anything to do with saving myself for marriage,” she continued. “It was just that I married the wrong person.”

Bethany Joy Lenz.Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

This issue led to her and her then-husband creating a “sex schedule” in an attempt to maintain intimacy in their marriage, theOne Tree Hillalum claimed.

“Because I was so disinterested in sex, I was then asked to go on a schedule,” she alleged. “Basically of like, ‘You just have to do it. Just do it. This is your duty. This is your job as a wife. Your emotions will fall in line. If you do it enough, then eventually, you will find a way to enjoy it.’”

“It was a routine that I had to participate in in order to keep the peace in my marriage,” she added.

Revealing that she “hated” being intimate with QB, Lenz said he would leave town for work and return expecting sex, which made her even more unhappy in her situation.

Bethany Joy Lenz.Rodin Eckenroth/Getty

Rodin Eckenroth/Getty

“My stomach dropped every single time,” she shared. “In fact, it really affected my relationships afterwards [with] other boyfriends when I had to go pick them up from the airport. I had so much PTSD from showing up at the airport to see him knowing that I was gonna have to start this sex schedule for the next, like, two weeks or three weeks or whatever.”

“Everything about my career started to then funnel through the group because I didn’t trust my own instinct to know if I was on the right path or taking the right job,” she said. “I was cast as Belle inBeauty and the Beast[on Broadway] and gave that up at the advice, the heavy handed advice of [one of the group’s pastors] Les. There were some really big movies that I was on a shortlist for, audition for, was pinned for, and then I had to call my agent and be like, ‘You know what? I actually don’t wanna do this.’”

Bethany Joy Lenz.Mindy Small/Getty

Mindy Small/Getty

Looking back, Lenz said she realized the group’s decisions to keep her away from acting jobs was “just control” they wanted to have over her.

“The more that I worked, the less they would see me," she said. “The more that I worked, the more confidence I would be gaining in my abilities and my creativity. If I just stayed playing one character for 10 years and I never did anything else, then they know where I am all the time.”

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“I had always been looking for a place to belong,” she said in the October cover story. “I wish someone had just told me when I was young that this is the universal human condition, but I didn’t know that.”

source: people.com