"We are in a Dead Bedroom... But She Says I Can't Go to a Strip Club?" - With @drpsychmom

Here's a question for you directly. This comes from Mr. Randy from YouTube. He says, "Hey, DPM," that's you, "for a couple in a sexless marriage with no intimacy for several years, how and why can the wife feel upset if the husband goes to a strip club to see naked women? The wife is postmenopausal," just as an aside there.

Well, so Randy, so your wife is older. She has certain morals. And many women, especially if they were raised religious, feel that going to a strip club to look at naked women is somehow immoral or bad, you know. So of course she probably always felt that way, so of course she could feel that way now. And I, I very much doubt, Randy, that you had a sit-down discussion with her and you said, in order to cope with this intimacy-free marriage, I am going to want to look at naked women, and these are the boundaries when I do look at them. No, I would imagine she found out what you did And this was historically something that she assumed both of you found to be immoral, and you may have let her think that you thought so, and you may even have thought so yourself, you know, back when you were getting laid and you were a younger man. But to say— and I would bet anything this woman went to church and she was religious and she's an older woman, and it's, it's just disgusting to her. It's just literally disgusting to her. So if you sat down with yourselves or with a counselor and you tried to hammer it out, then perhaps you could understand and empathize with one another's perspectives instead of just you know, both feeling like the victim, which is what's going on now.

And sometimes, I'm not saying this is your case, Randy, but it's often, especially after a period of years of sexlessness, the man or woman, whatever the case may be, can get to the point of just feeling like, you know, eff this person, because they think and like and feel or whatever. And then the man's, you know, going out the door, and she's like, where are you going? He goes, gonna go to the titty bar. See you later. And she's like, what? And then, you know, just as a poke at her, you know, like, here we go. And I really don't care what you think, woman. I know your, your morals and values are such, but you haven't been doing anything with me for years. So what do you expect? Adiós. And I guess, Randy, you got to say, do you care if she's pissed off or not? Does that upset you? A lot of men are like, no, I don't care anymore. Well, that's a bigger issue.

Yeah, if she's like 60 years old, she knows these girls are like 20 years old. This is the age of possibly a grandchild, if not a child. I mean, it just feels very, very weird, you know. It just feels strange to her. It's also like joint money, not— I mean, like, there's like a million variables, you know. I mean, she knows you're getting drunk, probably. There's a million things going on. So just as you don't like her feeling victimized, you too should not just feel victimized. There's no benefit in anybody feeling just like the other person is an unjust perpetrator. You guys need to talk about your agreement moving forward. If this is going to be a sexless relationship, do you want to be in it? Do you not want to be in it? If you want to stay in it, what are going to be the boundaries and parameters? These are the sorts of discussions that need to be spoken about very openly. If she's postmenopausal, it's likely that you do not have kids in the house anymore, and that can change the frame for a lot of couples in terms of whether they willing to separate or divorce.

How often, Samantha, do you see the arrangement of older couple, postmenopausal wife, husband still has it going on, he still has desires and so forth, that they have an almost unspoken— he knows that she knows, she knows that what he's doing, and he's just doing his own little thing away, and she just knows that he's gone every Friday and we don't talk about it. Kind of thing.

Well, I mean, I don't see a lot of those couples in couples counseling because they have figured out how to make something work. I have spoken to many, many men that do whatever they want on business trips. Some of them think, or otherwise, or go to the, you know, erotic massage, or just get a hooker, you know, and, uh, or have a girlfriend. I mean, lots of men cheat, you know, and I work with a lot of guys who are kind of addicted sex, addicted to porn. And so those guys cheat with higher volume than other guys. And some of them think that their wives may know and don't say anything, and some of them don't, and they just consider it to be what they're gonna do to stay. And they actually, to a one, feel like it makes them a good guy because they are trying to make it work in what they perceive as an untenable situation. For some, an untenable situation is just her having regular sex with them, not as often, or nearly as excitingly as they would like. For some, it's just that she's old and they don't want to be with somebody that's old anymore. And they would like to still sleep with young women. But either way, they feel that it makes them be a good husband. And based on the relationship, who knows, you know, who knows.

He's a good— and he's a, he's a good husband because he's not leaving her.

Right, because he's not leaving her. He's allowing the grandchildren to still come over to the same place on Thanksgiving. Giving. The kids do not have to feel upset. They can continue to think of the family as united and the couple as happy, and he's still financially providing and allowing her to have whatever status she has in the community. They go on trips together. They may be friends. And he just feels— I mean, this is like a classic, like, of hundreds of years way to— I mean, not hundreds, because you used to be able to do whatever you wanted, but at least a couple hundred years way of thinking about cheating. By men, which is like, I am going to do that. And it has absolutely nothing to do with my love for you. In fact, the large majority of people surveyed that cheat consider themselves happily married, much more often men than women too.

Yeah, the 56% of men surveyed that cheat say, yeah, I'm perfectly happy in my marriage. And it was something like 30-some percent of women said the same. So it's pretty, pretty big number. Either way, you would expect that to be far lower.