David has been married 29 years with no sex for eight years. His wife's strict religious upbringing taught her sex was only for making babies. The hosts call it codependency and debate whether he should try therapy, separate, or stay.
David from Facebook says, married 29 years, no sexual intimacy for the last 8 years. Oh, she doesn't understand why I still want to be intimate. She claims that the act is not necessary for a good marriage.
I don't understand either. It's been 29 years, 8 years, no sex. I don't understand it either, quite honestly. But continue.
We've been— we have been to a marriage therapist 11 years ago for about 1 year. Well, that didn't really click. At that time, we had only been intimate once in the past 7 years. Okay, so this is just dead of the— deader than dead bedroom.
Deader than dead.
He encouraged us to have more intimacy. Yeah, that'll do it. And she agreed, and we had a good and special date that ended with a mutually great sexual experience. So a one-off deal. Unfortunately, the next day she was upset with me as to why I was in such a good mood. She didn't think that I should need intimacy to be in such a good mood. Oh God, now that I give this to you, you're in a good mood. That shouldn't be that way. You shouldn't be so dependent upon your, your sexuality, mister.
So shaming you for being in this relationship. I'm sorry, how old is this man and why is he still in this relationship?
David, that's the ultimate question here, buddy. At the very end of all this, we could continue reading. You're basically selling us on something. You're selling us on the fact that your wife is a kind of a broken individual, especially when it comes to being a wife. I'm sorry, that's mean of me to say, but she's— something's going on and it ain't good. And either you two are just wildly mismatched or she's got issues or you got issues, that it's just— this ain't good. Um, she was, she was, she was raised in a very strict religious household. Um, she admits she rebelled against her very strict father who said that sex is only for marriage and procreation. So she's got a lot of childhood baggage that has colored her, what you're seeing.
She had a lot of childhood baggage in being a rescuer because there was red flags about this. It was a red flag factory, and they are locked in this codependent thing. And this man needs some sort of, um, individual help. And there is this no coming back from this one. It is not gonna— she's postmenopausal now, I'm sure, and there's— it's never going to turn into a good intimate life with this kind of history.
Another way to look at this, David, there's a large group of men that exist out there, believe it or not, who decades ago, decades ago, into this kind of relationship would have said, oh, this is— this ain't good. Sorry, sweetheart, it's been nice knowing you. No hard feelings, I love you, but this ain't gonna work out. And that is a perfectly healthy way of looking at this. What— and here's the key— what is it, David, that is so different from those guys and you? Why do they have that mindset and you have the complete polar opposite? That's what you got to look at and go, family of origin, David.
David, look into your family of origin, my friend. There's no way you did not see this enabling and martyr tendency, at least one parent. You are nailing yourself to the cross here, and you had to have seen it somewhere, and I think that that is what you should have as a takeaway.
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