Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Does Your Wife's Chronic Pain Or Depression Uniquely Impact One Area Of The Marriage Called "Having Any Sex Ever"?

Transcript

Does Your Wife's Chronic Pain Or Depression Uniquely Impact One Area Of The Marriage Called "Having Any Sex Ever"? · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the dr.
• 0:07
  Psych mom show today we're going to be talking about the
• 0:10
  situation where your wife's chronic pain or depression,
• 0:13
  uniquely affect one area of your life called you never get laid
• 0:18
  and before we get to that exciting topic, I want to tell
• 0:22
  you to subscribe. The most recent one was about
• 0:24
  how you're caught between a rock and a hard place.
• 0:27
  You can't tell your wife that she's always beautiful but you
• 0:29
  can't tell her that. She looks better in some slutty
• 0:32
  ass lingerie than usually so you know.
• 0:34
  You're kind of fucked but I unfuck you in that episode so
• 0:37
  please do subscribe. So you can get on fucked.
• 0:41
  So anyway, let's go to this topic which, of course, you
• 0:46
  know, I've got to amuse myself somehow.
• 0:48
  So I make the headlines, much more, you know, obviously I
• 0:53
  catching then. Well, no, I mean, I think these
• 0:56
  podcasts are pretty, you know, interesting.
• 0:58
  But I try to make the headlines even more interesting.
• 1:03
  And so, So it can dry you in especially if you're like.
• 1:08
  Well, that's a load of shit. Like, you know, if you're a
• 1:10
  woman you're like my chronic pain does impact me from having
• 1:14
  sex. I can never have sex because of
• 1:16
  my chronic pain and that's just some garbage.
• 1:18
  She just must be super an empathic listen.
• 1:20
  I'm pretty empathic like my entire career is empathizing.
• 1:26
  So I mean if there's any career where you got to be empathic,
• 1:29
  it's this one but what people don't seem to understand is that
• 1:34
  when You say that you cannot do something because of something.
• 1:39
  Then, you know, you can't just like randomly say that like
• 1:44
  there have to be like other areas in which you also can't do
• 1:48
  something because of something. So so let's get more granular
• 1:51
  here. So if you say that your chronic
• 1:53
  pain and what is chronic pain migraine which I suffer from
• 1:58
  fibromyalgia. Chronic fatigue IBS back pain.
• 2:03
  Some people have Vaginismus or vagina pain that people have all
• 2:08
  sorts of fucking pain. I mean, they have idiopathic
• 2:11
  pain and your Pathak means, you know, there's we have no idea
• 2:14
  why you have it and that doesn't always mean it's psychosomatic
• 2:17
  either. You know.
• 2:18
  Like you could have pain for very real reasons, you know,
• 2:21
  nerve damage or or whatever. I mean, obviously maybe some
• 2:25
  obvious to you just like whatever your job is would not
• 2:29
  be obvious to me but what? All of these things cry.
• 2:34
  Neck pain is associated with depression.
• 2:36
  That doesn't mean that it's fake because depression is not fake
• 2:40
  depressions. Real and chronic pain is real.
• 2:42
  You feel you are in pain for sure, you know, like I've had
• 2:47
  disabling migraines, you know, and frequently do and I've tried
• 2:51
  really everything but and and same with depression.
• 2:55
  I constantly talk about depression, can be intractable
• 2:57
  treatment-resistant depression is more common than people
• 3:00
  think. So, what and the by
• 3:03
  treatment-resistant, I Funny. I always have to go down I-5 to
• 3:07
  like, explain a lot, so I guess bear barely can get through a
• 3:10
  sentence without having to explain another layer.
• 3:12
  I would use parentheses if we were writing but we're speaking.
• 3:16
  And what treatment-resistant means is that you've tried at
• 3:18
  least, I think it's like three or something antidepressants and
• 3:21
  it didn't work and so or other treatments but usually three
• 3:25
  rounds or medication from what I remember could be more than that
• 3:29
  but most people with depression of tried infinity and nothing
• 3:32
  works. So for the treatment, Stan
• 3:34
  people for some lucky people, something does.
• 3:37
  So anyway, if you have treatment-resistant depression
• 3:40
  or chronic pain, that can't be really gotten ahold of or
• 3:44
  anything. Most of this is situated.
• 3:47
  Now, people are increasingly thinking, interesting, childhood
• 3:50
  trauma, and genetically. Some people are also wired to be
• 3:55
  more neurotic. That's the actual name for the
• 3:57
  personality trait or highly sensitive and wired for
• 4:01
  depression and anxiety. So all of these things the Areas
• 4:05
  in the brain, are implicated in depression pain.
• 4:08
  Like just bad, you know, like that the area of your brain for
• 4:11
  bad lights up. And so there are people that are
• 4:14
  more sensitive to that stuff than others and who had more
• 4:16
  difficult childhoods and who, you know, were caught off track.
• 4:20
  But you knocked off track by something like, you know, an
• 4:23
  actual assault of some sort to the senses.
• 4:26
  So for example, you know, like you could have been kind of
• 4:30
  doing, all right? And then like you got into a car
• 4:33
  accident, right? And From that point on even
• 4:36
  though nobody can understand how the car accident is related to
• 4:38
  later, having chronic pain somehow that knocked your whole
• 4:43
  look. Your fragile system was knocked
• 4:45
  off course, by this Onslaught and it's a it's a stretch
• 4:49
  diathesis-stress model of mental illness.
• 4:52
  You had a pre-existing issue like a pre-existing existing
• 4:57
  predisposition for something and then there was a stress to the
• 5:00
  system that knocked you off track.
• 5:02
  And then that manifested whereas in A different sort of situation
• 5:06
  had you not had a car accident. Maybe you never would have ended
• 5:08
  up with chronic pain but had you had maybe a divorce.
• 5:12
  You would have ended up with chronic pain or another trauma
• 5:15
  because it's kind of like your system was just almost waiting
• 5:17
  for a trauma to happen because it had that innate genetic
• 5:22
  predisposition to have whatever whether it's depression or pain
• 5:26
  or whatever. The point is, you people with
• 5:29
  chronic pain or definitely experiencing pain.
• 5:32
  But But but there's the there's all levels of pain right?
• 5:39
  And there's all levels of what people tell themselves they can
• 5:41
  do with it. So let's just say that the pain
• 5:42
  is out of 10 but you got to look at what the person's doing with
• 5:46
  the rest of their life, right? So if the person is getting up
• 5:49
  every day and you know getting on the subway and going to work
• 5:53
  or they are you know watching your multiple kids with some of
• 5:58
  which are toddlers and running around and doing a lot of
• 6:00
  physical shit. You know, they can do things.
• 6:04
  They are, they are Mobile in the world, they're not bed-bound,
• 6:07
  you know, they're not bedridden the end.
• 6:10
  It's a matter of values. Quite honestly, it's really a
• 6:14
  matter of values because people could have the most intense pain
• 6:17
  possible but if they are getting up and moving around and doing
• 6:21
  other ship then what is the issue with the sex life?
• 6:25
  You know, then we start to think that this is a an issue with how
• 6:31
  they prioritize and view sex. You know, because it seems like
• 6:35
  many other things including for many people, even going to the
• 6:38
  gym and socializing and taking walks with the kids and doing
• 6:44
  all sorts of shit with the kids and driving and there's just a
• 6:48
  lot of stuff that gets done, you know.
• 6:50
  And not all of these are in situations with a.
• 6:54
  None of these are definitionally for my purposes in situations
• 6:57
  where they are single parents because I'm addressing couples
• 7:00
  in this situation. So these women are all all in
• 7:03
  situations where there is a co-parent.
• 7:07
  You know, so it's not as though we're in a situation where
• 7:10
  through sheer adrenaline, they have to power through to keep
• 7:13
  their kids surviving. These are situations where if
• 7:17
  God forbid, they could not get out of bed because of a horrible
• 7:19
  debilitating condition. The husband will have to take
• 7:22
  over. I mean, that's just how it would
• 7:23
  be when you have a co-parent, you know, even if you are
• 7:26
  divorced, but we're talking about situations where that is
• 7:29
  not the case. And so at this point, It becomes
• 7:34
  where you have to really look. At fact, guys want to be nice.
• 7:38
  They want to think that their wives love them frequently in
• 7:43
  spite of evidence that the woman does not prioritize them, and
• 7:47
  may not love them. That's why I wrote a post
• 7:49
  recently called 10 signs your wife is just not into you you
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  know and I could talk about this in the inverse gender-wise for
• 7:57
  10 times or husbands and Just Not That Into I think I've
• 7:59
  written a post like that already but Usually does not manifest
• 8:04
  that a man Blaine blames a chronic pain condition for not
• 8:07
  being able to have sex. So that's the unique situation
• 8:09
  that I'm describing here. It would be the equivalent and I
• 8:14
  have frequently seen things like the man says that he can't
• 8:18
  search for a new job but he could play video games or the
• 8:21
  man says that he cannot do housework.
• 8:24
  But then somehow he plays golf you know like he may say that
• 8:27
  his back hurts too much to go to the gym but his back doesn't
• 8:31
  hurt too much to Want to have sex, you know.
• 8:34
  So like you know, I mean it's all different.
• 8:37
  So what we're basically saying is there's a prioritization
• 8:40
  issue going on. If your wife has with chronic
• 8:44
  pain or depression is doing other things.
• 8:46
  If she's not doing other things, that she's on her back in bed,
• 8:49
  you know, then just don't be an asshole and leave somebody in
• 8:53
  that condition, right? I mean, try to get her
• 8:55
  treatment. And I've wrote written posts
• 8:57
  about what to do. When your wife is depressed,
• 8:59
  what to do when your wife has chronic pain and they basically,
• 9:02
  We all say, get them treatment and be empathic and really
• 9:06
  scheduled them to see doctors and do your best to help them
• 9:10
  and to pick up all the slack in the interim while they're
• 9:12
  getting back on their feet. But, you know, kind of like what
• 9:16
  you would do, if your wife had cancer, you know, you're not
• 9:18
  going to be worrying about having sex, then hopefully
• 9:21
  you're not a huge sociopath, right?
• 9:23
  That would do that. But the point is, is if somebody
• 9:26
  has a chronic pain condition but somehow they could still live
• 9:29
  the rest of their life, you got to look at it as a priority
• 9:32
  issue. And if they just cannot have
• 9:36
  sex, because it hurts so much, but yet, they engage in other
• 9:41
  physical activities. Let's not forget, the
• 9:43
  Intercourse, is not the only way to have sex, right?
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  So, I mean, there's obviously many ways that they could have
• 9:50
  sex with you and that would not hurt their vagina, or put them
• 9:54
  in a certain position or anything.
• 9:56
  So that's what people do when they love their partner.
• 10:00
  And, for example, they have Of a vagina issue, you know, like
• 10:04
  some people have have pain there or some people have had nerve
• 10:09
  damage after a birth, that's kind of a common one, and if you
• 10:13
  still want to have an intimate life with your partner, of
• 10:17
  course, you could still make it happen because you still have
• 10:19
  your hands, you still have your mouth, you know, and so this is
• 10:23
  possible. So when it's not possible for
• 10:27
  some unknown reason, when you think about it, you got to
• 10:31
  understand that the Children are prioritized work?
• 10:35
  May be prioritized. You're not prioritized.
• 10:38
  Now is does this mean that you're a horrible victim of your
• 10:41
  terrible wife? Obviously not I never say
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  anything like that but what you are is putting your head in the
• 10:47
  sand and that probably goes with other aspects of your
• 10:50
  personality that are not wonderful.
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  You know, such as ad has a desire to ignore problems in
• 10:55
  other areas of the relationship, the family.
• 10:58
  What have you? Maybe there's passivity going on
• 11:01
  your passive in a Of areas I don't know what's going on.
• 11:04
  Maybe your wife's just found in love with you anymore.
• 11:07
  Maybe you have had an empathic rupture due to something.
• 11:10
  Maybe she has nerve damage from the birth, but you know, what?
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  During the birth you were an asshole.
• 11:14
  I don't really know. But what I do know is that if
• 11:17
  somebody is engaging in other life activities that are
• 11:20
  physical and they're just not having any kind of sex with you
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  at all. And the reason is because of the
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  chronic pain / exhaustion /, depression, you know, I'm There
• 11:33
  are so many ways that people get creative for things that they
• 11:36
  actually prioritize. So, for example, if your wife
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  suffers from depression and she's like, really shit at night
• 11:43
  and get super exhausted at night, which happens to a lot of
• 11:45
  us women with depression, then she met, front-load, her work
• 11:49
  hours to the, to the start of the day and she may be up and
• 11:53
  Adam really early, you know, she made, that's what she may take
• 11:56
  her walk and that's when she met make the kids lunches or
• 11:59
  whatever it is so that she can use all of her energy when she
• 12:02
  has. Is it or maybe there are days
• 12:04
  where she feels better than others?
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  And in those days, is when she takes the kids to the park or
• 12:11
  when she snuggles with your kids and reads to them.
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  But, you know, like maybe it's it's based on the time of the
• 12:18
  month, you know, maybe it's very bad before her period.
• 12:21
  So she decides that she's going to do things that aren't before
• 12:24
  her period. You know she's going to engage
• 12:26
  with the children or schedule social activities or whatever in
• 12:29
  the first two weeks of her menstrual cycle.
• 12:31
  I don't know how your wife It's with her stuff.
• 12:33
  But if she does cope with her stuff, but yet to the only thing
• 12:38
  that she cannot do is have any form of sex with you.
• 12:41
  That's when you have to go deeper on, why?
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  Because a lot of guys like the, you know, whether it's
• 12:49
  depression or it's chronic pain, or it's some other idiopathic
• 12:53
  illness, you know, they feel like they're being just a total
• 12:57
  asshole if they were to say, but why can you do these other
• 13:02
  things? But not a sex with me.
• 13:04
  But that is a question. I mean, that's pretty fucking
• 13:06
  relevant, right? I mean, what are you expected to
• 13:09
  do, right? Or your expected, probably to
• 13:11
  work to bring home a paycheck to do shit with the kids.
• 13:15
  If you said that you were like too depressed to work but you
• 13:18
  still were able to socialize. I don't think that's going to go
• 13:21
  over pretty well, do you? I mean, it wouldn't for me, you
• 13:25
  know it it wouldn't for anyone that I know I mean like it just
• 13:31
  wouldn't because that's saying You would prioritize, like just
• 13:34
  hanging out with friends over having a job when there was an
• 13:38
  implicit contract, and this is an important key point that you
• 13:42
  would be a working person that was providing for the family,
• 13:45
  either alone, or with your wife's help and her working as
• 13:48
  well. There's also an implicit
• 13:50
  contract called we are intimate in our marriage, and that's what
• 13:53
  a lot of men have a lot of trouble saying because makes you
• 13:57
  sound, like an asshole or an anti-feminist or something, but
• 14:00
  it's true and I've written it out.
• 14:02
  It before, sex is part of a marital contract and that does
• 14:05
  not have to be intercourse and quite honestly, if you don't
• 14:09
  want to give like a blow job and you can't have sex and you also
• 14:13
  think a hand job takes too much time than I mean, there's not
• 14:16
  too many ways to say you mean nothing to me, you know, that
• 14:20
  are easier than that. Like, it's it's pretty obvious.
• 14:24
  So I bought two these woman's credit, some of the men don't
• 14:27
  even ask. So then they tell themselves and
• 14:30
  they want to believe. And thus, they do believe
• 14:32
  because we, Convince ourselves that things that we want to
• 14:34
  believe that the man just doesn't really care that much.
• 14:37
  And he's just being a good guy and it's the same to him either
• 14:40
  way to masturbate or to have sex.
• 14:41
  He knows that sex bothers you. So, you know, he's being a good
• 14:44
  guy, good partner and we're, you know, he's just kind of
• 14:48
  diverting his desire elsewhere. And if you've allowed your wife
• 14:51
  to think this, then you are at fault as well.
• 14:53
  You know, it takes two to tango. So if you have thought that
• 14:57
  like, you need to divert your desire elsewhere, but you're
• 15:01
  secretly extremely sad. Dad and lonely but you've never
• 15:04
  said that then how is she to know it?
• 15:06
  I've gone over and over the fact that men and women think about
• 15:09
  sex entirely differently. She really thinks as I've said
• 15:13
  numerous times likely really thinks that sex is about the
• 15:16
  orgasm. If you're giving yourself an
• 15:18
  orgasm there was no trouble. You're being a good guy and
• 15:21
  diverting your desire into something that you could just
• 15:24
  take care of yourself, and you guys are basically committed to
• 15:27
  raising the kids staying in an intact family and, you know, and
• 15:31
  you sure you love each other. Yeah, sure why not, you know,
• 15:34
  but that love is not really manifested in any sort of
• 15:39
  physical way, because in her mind, she doesn't think too
• 15:41
  deeply about it. She really has zero desire.
• 15:43
  She doesn't want to prioritize the sex life because she doesn't
• 15:46
  have any spontaneous desire. Just like all other women women
• 15:49
  with chronic pain or depression or certainly no different.
• 15:51
  You know, they too have no spontaneous desire but they
• 15:55
  never ever get themselves into the situation where they could
• 15:59
  see if they have responsive desire because they're using.
• 16:02
  In the chronic pain, or the depression is like a way out.
• 16:06
  But yet there are plenty of women who are happily and
• 16:10
  closely connected and intimately connected with their Partners
• 16:13
  who do have pain and chronic conditions of All Sorts, you
• 16:17
  know. I mean there, there's women who
• 16:19
  have, I mean, I've worked with women who have all sorts of
• 16:23
  problems quite honestly and there's a normal distribution in
• 16:26
  the way that they deal with their sex life and if they
• 16:29
  prioritize it in the way that they prioritize hanging out with
• 16:32
  the Children or going to work or going to the gym or going to
• 16:36
  whatever then it is. It's a very different thing.
• 16:39
  Then it's something like okay well we can only have sex in the
• 16:42
  morning you know, because that's when I don't have pain levels
• 16:44
  and we don't usually do intercourse but we do these
• 16:47
  other things. And then when I can you know
• 16:49
  like then we do do intercourse or whatever else.
• 16:53
  But most of the time we cuddle, we do a hand job.
• 16:56
  We do something like that. And you know, this is kind of a
• 16:59
  regular part of our life, and that's how we do it.
• 17:02
  We do. When I have the energy and when
• 17:03
  I can, you know, fully devote myself.
• 17:05
  But we do it fairly frequently and buy that for married couples
• 17:09
  at this stage. It would be like 12 times a week
• 17:12
  maybe every other week but it's not never when it's never.
• 17:16
  But yet the woman can do other things is when you owe it to
• 17:20
  yourself, if this is a major source of sadness for you, then
• 17:23
  self-advocate and say something. Say I noticed that you do like
• 17:27
  all these other things but then somehow we can't have any form
• 17:30
  of sexual contact at all. Oh, and what is that about?
• 17:35
  And maybe that's something that we should talk about it to with
• 17:37
  a counselor because, you know why?
• 17:40
  I feel really bad about it. And I'm sure that there are ways
• 17:44
  that I could be being a better husband, that would make you
• 17:46
  want to do this, because I do see you do other things, you
• 17:49
  know. And and it's like kind of The
• 17:50
  Emperor's New Clothes here that I'm not allowed to say that but
• 17:53
  I do I see you doing other things.
• 17:56
  I see you went out, you know, with your girlfriend's.
• 17:58
  I see that you go to this, I to go to that again.
• 18:01
  I'm not talking about somebody. God.
• 18:02
  God forbid, that is like, literally in bed and cannot
• 18:06
  move, and is suffering so badly. I'm not talking about that
• 18:09
  situation and that situation. You got to be, you know, a grown
• 18:12
  man. And, you know, help the person
• 18:14
  who you love that is suffering. But there are a lot of people to
• 18:18
  talk to me about a wife, with depression, or anxiety, or or
• 18:21
  chronic pain of various sorts that yet is living a full life
• 18:27
  in the absence of one thing. So, that's the situation that
• 18:32
  I'm talking about So, that would be the situation, where, like,
• 18:34
  if your husband was like, unemployed, okay?
• 18:37
  So there's your husband's unemployed because he's going
• 18:38
  through a massive depressive phase.
• 18:40
  He hasn't showered in a month. He's like suicidally depressed.
• 18:44
  Okay, get it. I totally would get why that
• 18:47
  guys unemployed and he needs help stat but then there's a
• 18:50
  husband who's unemployed and he's going to the to hang out
• 18:54
  with the guys and he's going out drinking and he's going to play
• 18:57
  golf and he's carousing. He's playing video games, he's
• 19:01
  hanging out the kids. He seems happy.
• 19:02
  P. Why isn't he working though?
• 19:04
  You know how Ruby same thing if if the implicit marital contract
• 19:08
  was that both Partners worked and the woman stopped?
• 19:10
  You know, I mean it's the same thing.
• 19:12
  The reason that I use it is because obviously I don't stand
• 19:16
  on ceremony about being overly PC and that is what would be
• 19:20
  considered a pretty big breach of contract by woman is if the
• 19:23
  guy was just like, fuck it. I don't want to work anymore.
• 19:26
  Fuck this credit card debt. You could deal with it.
• 19:28
  Figure it out. No, I mean, that's like not
• 19:30
  allowed and it's but Also, the should not be allowed for the
• 19:36
  woman who the woman always wants to be taken care of this, like a
• 19:39
  female thing. You're going to be pregnant, you
• 19:40
  need somebody's going to take care of you at least in some
• 19:42
  regard and a male thing is to want physical contact.
• 19:46
  You know, I mean that's a guy thing and I've people telling me
• 19:50
  that chronic pain, you know, is stopping them from getting even
• 19:53
  the most cursory physical contact.
• 19:57
  You know, stuff that wouldn't make anybody hurt in any way.
• 20:00
  All right, so hopefully, This was interesting to you.
• 20:03
  I've enough people unfortunately struggling with this issue.
• 20:07
  I also have a post out that I've written about it that I could
• 20:09
  link you to if your if your wife is newly diagnosed with some
• 20:13
  sort of chronic pain, I wrote this years ago because of
• 20:16
  course, as I said, there's such a profound overlap with
• 20:18
  depression that in the mental health field, we see people with
• 20:21
  chronic pain a lot and I have nothing but empathy for them in
• 20:24
  this situation though. There's more, there's more going
• 20:28
  on and you got to look underneath the surface.
• 20:30
  All right, I'll talk to you soon.
• 20:31
  Have a great day. Oh here is a PS4 you guys.
• 20:36
  This doesn't usually happen. It's like finding and hidden
• 20:39
  song on a CD. For those of us who are old
• 20:42
  enough to have CDs. I will though say that if you do
• 20:47
  not know how to make your wife's, chronic pain, feel
• 20:49
  better by massaging her or in any way, helping her physically,
• 20:55
  basically, just by passage, which is a real big deal for
• 20:59
  women, especially with back pain, or my Migraine then, you
• 21:04
  know, you're not doing your part.
• 21:06
  So I am going to have a podcast coming up about that.
• 21:08
  I already have a post called if you massage your wife a lot more
• 21:11
  she want, she may want sex a lot more so you should also keep
• 21:14
  that take that into account. If you are listening to this and
• 21:18
  being like all, well, yeah, sure.
• 21:21
  I'm validated. Now, if you're not actually
• 21:23
  helping your wife's chronic pain in any way, then you're the
• 21:27
  problem to. So keep that in mind.
• 21:30
  All right. Bye guys.