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Episode 206: Depression, Why does mad girlfriend ignore, 25 year relationship no sex
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all right dear doctors depression often gets talked about as being a biological condition and that just like having a broken arm treating depression with medication is similar to treating a broken bone with a splint what is the opinion of dr. Lisle and dr. Hawk about treating depression with medication versus taking an evolutionary approach to helping individuals improve this team dynamics in their life the combination of medication and therapy is often viewed as the best treatment but I don't think most therapies take the approach that dr. Lisle and dr. Hawk do mm-hmm very true I'll take this yes so are our colleagues in the social sciences have have that and that includes psychiatrists who have wandered into psychology actually apparently nobody nobody's paying any attention to the notion that this is a evolved organism and that its nervous system is exquisitely accurate so if you if you go to an ophthalmologist and you say something is really hurting in my eye they don't say oh well that's okay we've got a you've got a an anesthetic we can stick in your eye so you won't feel the pain they treat the the pain in your eye is something very serious that there's some some problem there's something wrong okay but the and that they don't say that the signal of the pain is in error they look to figure out what's causing the pain they look at the signal of the pain as a signal of a problem of a relationship between the organism and its environment the same thing would be true if you go to the dentist and your tooth hurts they don't say well here take an opiate so that you don't feel the pain or you go to an orthopedist and you know your knees excruciating pain and they don't say oh well here take a bunch of percocet or something like this so that you don't feel the pain that would be insane the we look at the signals that the body sends that the nervous system is evolved to be unbelievably good at trying to tell you what to do so if your knee hurts you don't cover up your ears because you have excruciating pain because of sound coming in your ears you're the pain in your knee tells you be very careful of your knee there's a problem and don't don't work hard on it unless you have to same thing if you you know if you have a toothache yeah it doesn't hurt in your big toe so the signals are specified they are they do their best to coach the organism into helping avoid further exacerbation of the problem and the same thing is true with all feelings so we've been talking about is the sensations of pain but we can also now talk we can further explain that all feelings our signaling devices to orient the organism is the relationship between self and environment good and bad and in fact the good and bad we those useless words to describe pleasant and unpleasant feelings feelings that on the good side tell you to continue to do what you're doing or move closer to a stimuli that is resulting in a positive feeling inside yourself and that is something that it's causing you to you know feel bad a stimulus that's causing you to to get a signal that tells you that your likelihood of survival reproduction is dropping so whether that means literally you know a rock in your shoe that the fact that the rock in your shoe is uncomfortable it seems amazing and absurd almost the notion that the rock in your shoe and your foot hurting is you step on that rock but it would be a signal of the likelihood of your survival and reproductive success but it is in fact true so the fact that the rock hurts tells you that it is over evolutionary time a threat to the tissue integrity of that magnitude was sufficiently worth avoiding that it was worth signaling the organism and trying to get them to avoid it so also we wouldn't say for example on oh you know you just lost the Super Bowl that you've been you know working your whole life to win so you go when you go out into the parking lot to go home you suddenly feel like an immense euphoria and love you know for your cousin just why would that happen that would never happen okay your feelings are orderly the the information processing of the mind is following biological law so the notion that if you are depressed that there's something wrong with your brain that the signaling is wrong and that we have to change the signal that the signalling system is incorrect okay this is the first assumption is that oh no the signaling system is wrong really is that what the ophthalmologist says when you're going with excruciating eye pain that it's not what they say so how we got from you know to this point is really something it's a matter of spectacular history of Commerce and the pharmaceutical industry etc and this all really began in the 1970s and it began as a result of as the wars were being fought the turf battles that were being fought between psychology and psychiatry and actually medicine fighting you know allopathic medicine fighting very very serious turf wars with everybody and then winning with major court cases in the 1950s and getting essentially the oligopoly type control over over medicine that then leads to you know that whole that whole that the MD becomes the highest status highest paid profession in the country the and incomes relative to everybody else rose dramatically after that the was always respected but it now became far more lucrative the in the 1960s and 70s something interesting started to happen there was you know a new profession in the world the new treating profession clinical psychology was starting to come of age they had begun their lives essentially as testers people that would get tests but then they started to do therapy and that started threaten psychiatry that was doing sitting on the couch three times a week psychoanalytic garbage and that's how they were making a lot of money but suddenly people started to get the idea that maybe I can talk you know three times a week to the psychologist for a third the price and it seems about as good and they did and so Sakaya tree as a talking therapy profession started losing substantial market share and pretty soon the psychologists started losing market share to the social workers so pretty soon and you know the bartenders were always holding down there I don't work there and so the this is sort of how things were happening and they were actually psychiatry was in a crisis in the 1970s as this was you started to get major health insurance he started to get psychologists essentially fighting their way onto into into being able to be insured and so an insurance companies all obviously were then facing a problem of paying for you know any major long-term insurance for psychotherapy they started say hey we're not going to do this so it's going to be short term so psychiatry is the way it is sort of made its living was in trouble and it was a top-down very aggressive purposeful move on the part of psychiatry to move into pharmaceuticals and they knew that that is how that they would be okay they were they were at the bottom of the heap in medicine in terms of making a living I think if we went back on with the data you know in 1975 they were in trouble they were making less money than everybody else in their field and maybe not everybody but maybe might might be true the they were they were not doing well and so the they got saved by a but it may a conscious and deliberate move on the leadership to Wed psychiatry to the pharmaceutical industry and along with that became a great deal of time and attention and effort and marketing and everything else towards the DSM so the American Psychiatric Association then became the the authors of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for you know for psychiatric disorders and the the subtext of this is that there's all these diseases and these diseases are just like the diseases of you know Ebola and everything else and therefore we have to have medications for these diseases and and that's what happened and so on with this there has been you know certainly this this makes some sense to the general public in the same way that if you have have a disease and you have a medication that can help that disease then you take a pill and then it helps it and so what would actually happened again not by accident this is by top-down corporate design was that the phrase if taking your antidepressants is just like taking insulin for diabetes mm-hmm this very very was not added effort to normalize this was yep this was absolutely not an accident and so it this is a concerted diabolical plan on the part of pharmaceutical industry and wedded to the psychiatric profession the American Psychiatric Association this is all about this paradigm shift away from what what they had been was psychodynamic you know neo Freudian therapists that's what they were completely outside of the scope of any training in the science of psychology so they were completely they were their own Road people but because they were smarter than everybody else then that meant that that was cool and that's who was allowed to charge big fees and would be expected to get your great treatment from your three times a week analysis of your childhood traumas okay so that's what it was and then it got into trouble because it turns out that psychologists could talk about those things just as well as they could close enough and so then so then what happened was hey if we're going to make any big money we're going to be rolling pills that's how we're going to do it and that's exactly what they did and so psychiatry is now very successful relative to other other what do you call it we call that in medicine when you have these sub sub professions specialties okay special so the psychiatry is a yeah perfectly very nice highly respected they're just like real doctors and they've got real diseases and they got real cures form to all the way to the our questioner here who asks an incredibly innocent very direct honest question to us and saying hey how come nobody thinks about it the way you do doctor awhile doctor hawk how come everybody else says that the best thing to do is you know do some talk therapy but make sure you get your medication because you would need medication right I mean just like just like insulin for diabetes just like a splint for your arm well when you have your arm hurt what do you feel like doing not moving it okay what what does your body do it does what it can do in evolution to immobilize it that's exactly what's going on where do you see depressed people that you know Joe that just whose girlfriend broke up with them did you start chewing some kind of leaf that has the chemical that's in you know there's some serotonin boosting chemical that'll increase his serotonin to stop his depression no that's not what happens he goes and talks to his buddies and then goes down to the river and contemplates suicide and he thinks about how unattractive he is and the stupid things he said and he reviews his display is what he does he is brooding and thinking about what mistakes he made he's trying to figure out how he can improve his esteem situation that's what he does so no the mind is not broken and it doesn't need to be altered chemically anymore than the inside of your eye needs to be altered chemically if you've got something in it you need an ophthalmologist to actually restore the appropriate relationship between self and environment if you're depressed the depression is giving you clues so in principle the first thing that I see when I see a depressed person is I'm looking for the domain in their life where they're in trouble you know is it romance okay is it trade is it friendship you know is it family is it their health those are the five major domains of human value now in principle someone could come in to me and say you know doc I have great romantic relationship love my wife everything's great I'm attracted to her she's attracted to me sexual dynamics but that's not the problem got good friends we we get together once a week with you know these three other couples we have a great time that's not the problem I'm making a really good living I'm respected on my work I enjoy it I feel fulfilled in terms of my my potential and where I'm going to life that's not the problem got two great kids one boy one girl - both - and well they're cute I love them to death that's not the problem my health is good I just a full checkup that's not the problem but I'm miserable yeah I've never seen that never I've never seen it 30 years of practice yeah could hey peanut yeah in principle it could happen I'm waiting all right okay when I when I start questioning and when doc dr. hawk starts questioning we know that if they're so animal hurt where is beautifully said where is it hurt and yeah and we're Leah colors are open around oh yeah and it probably hurts in several places but it hurts more in one of those places in another place so that's where you start and that's all we do we're not magicians we're just we're just looking for where the injury is and other psychologists are not yeah in other words even if they are they're intimidated by the zeitgeist that has now come down from the gods of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry and is intimidated everybody into thinking that the brain is broken and that there's magic stuff to fix it so no the answer isn't we'll make sure you take your medication along with any pathetic little talk therapy that you do okay because you've got an underlying problem no that's not it and a reading you know anybody that's on any psychiatric medication at all if you're smart enough to to read a reasonably you know an intermediate level complex book if you're smart enough to take college class and get a B in anything then you're smart enough to read Robert Whitaker's anatomy of an epidemic and if you're on NT any kind of psychiatric medication it it would behoove you to read that book to being informed so that you're making an informed decision about what it is that you're doing to your brain so yeah we do think differently I think very differently than most of my colleagues do most of my colleagues don't really have too strong opinions in psychology there they're intimidated by psychiatry they like they're second-class citizens they didn't have good enough grades weren't smart enough to get into med school and the psychiatrist's can talk circles around them in those people got A's in organic chemistry and therefore we just shrug our shoulders and we're glad to get the over paid compensation that's more than we deserve for what is that we do for people which isn't much so as a result you know the right move on the chess board is to just you know duck your head and your shoulders like a turtle and say well maybe I ought to talk to the doc about you know get some get some prozac or something like that so they can help you and then all I'll be working with you to will work as a team sounds reasonable it's not what's reasonable is the correct identification of where does it hurt and then from there your nervous system is attempting to have inform you very clearly and loudly about where where the deficiency is in your execution and performance in the competitive domains of life and so we need to look at that carefully and figure out what we're going to do differently and then we're going to make the most reasonable efforts to make those changes so that we can have some success that's what we do okay and when we have success we start to have success gets what happens the depression magically goes away okay in fact something that that's bent it's a great joy for Gen Hawk and Rick Seidel my good friend who's a psychologist back in Virginia and myself is that by taking this approach victimes when we are actually able to identify a clear mistake and the person's competitive plan and outline for them how they're going to do things differently we've all had the experience of the person literally starting to grin in the room like god it I didn't think of that okay it's like you know we didn't have to now go through four years of therapy we didn't have to go through 20 weeks of CBT to quote change our thinking we just needed some insight how we were going to do something differently talk to the source code and the person says Oh that'll work that's going to work that's going to do it yeah going to do it and that that's a we can't say that that's going to be true in every case of course not because a lot every case is different in every person's issues are different the reason why they're hurting are different but I've yet to see a person that's hurting because their brain has some biochemical imbalance okay know that what's happening is is that you know if you're suffering from depression you're suffering from failure feedback kids and when we get you more successful the depression goes away just like it's supposed to alright doctor well beautifully yeah beautifully said I really appreciate that so dawn barely here we never coming there Nate yeah every year about olders yeah well it's hard to add anything to that and sweeping Magisterial tour tour de force of the history hypothesis and medication that's that's beautiful I think the only thing that I I would throw in there is that it's a you know there's a reciprocal dynamic between you know there was this sort of you know as dr. Lao says a concerted diabolical effort to to normalize the medication of mental illness and depression and anxiety and this chemical imbalance model but there's also on the part of the consumer there's there's the energy conservation impulse and the you know there's a magic feel that I can take to feel better and not have to you know do the work and go through a process and feel uncomfortable for a while and pay the price of of changing whatever it is that I need to change to make myself more competitive and to experience better feedback because I thought very often you know depending on the individual very intimidating prospect and this is what drives people into ego traps and and you know motivates them to just avoid the competitive process in all kinds of ways in one of those one of those ways that is very normalized and very no this is this is just what you do is that you take a pill because you've got a chemical imbalance and certain personalities are more prone to taking that road than others and just like you know how many times have you heard someone say something like oh if there's a pill to make me sin I would take it rather than go to all the effort to change your diet and change your lifestyle and and make make big changes in your in your process to meet a goal so I think there's this is a two-way relationship and so we don't want to completely underestimate that because they're they're feeding each other for sure I will I just always I think I've told the story on the podcast before but I always remember I was quote-unquote depressed because I had been you know dumped by the love of my life and I went in to go see the the university psychologist and or the university psychiatrist rather and you know little chitchat and she tries to medicate me she tries to prescribe me prozac or whatever it was and I'm like nah you know I'm really not interested in this was a long time ago and I haven't read anatomy of an epidemic yet that I'd read enough and I was weary enough that I knew that I didn't want to go down that road and she pushed in she pushed and I refused and I refused and finally I left and I was checking out at the desk and she literally ran out into the waiting room and said you know in front of everybody that was out there are you sure I can't write you a prescription for something like this amazing like could not comprehend that I wouldn't take that shortcut and that I would be willing to just go suffer for a while and experience the failure feedback and move through it and allow it to organically change my behavior just like it's just like it's supposed to so yeah this is this is how these relationships evolve and why this is so incentivized on both sides of the equation so it's a total mess god beautiful fascinating I always forget about that all right thank you guys for the answer it's wonderful because I know it's just in my life like looking back my grandmother was always minded towards don't take the drugs don't take the pills there's just something something about her explanations was just like telling us don't you know there's something about the drugs and she didn't have a eloquent explanation like like both of you did but it was just something in my genes potentially we just didn't want to do that but but I remember you know feeling bad getting rejected whether through jobs or mates or whatever it is we're friends and those seem to be the best parts of my life because that seemed to motivate me to improve a particular set of circumstances so you know looking back it wasn't a bad thing it was actually the thing that the big driver of improvement sure yeah there's no question comes down to personality though I mean we really can't underestimate that like you know your your grandmother has this inherent wariness of it and my grandmother was absolutely flying the flag for better living through chemistry you know if there was a pill that she can take to feel better quicker and to avoid you know struggle and suffering she she was first in line and she just had that kind of personality she's a little little impulsive little you know Darleen human and I I just absolutely adored her but absolutely wired to take the shortcut avoid the pain avoid the competition and so there's a lot of variation among people in sort of just how predisposed they are to be responsive to a suggestion like that and obviously as we've seen there's a very substantial market for it yeah fabula that's wonderful Gail so for listeners listening if you are feeling a little bit of hurt or you know have some questions I guess you can get you can contact dr. Lyle or dr. Hawk on esteem dynamics comm so just go there and have them phone constable dr. Hawk dr. well okay so our next question a dear doctors I'm a male and I've noticed that in numerous relationships if my girlfriend was mad at me then she just flat out ignore me I don't understand this behavior as anger would usually need to talk through issues and maybe try to resolve them whereas the girlfriends just ignore my calls and messages sometimes days at a time and so it's caused me tremendous stress to the point of getting no sleep and significantly impairing my life functioning how do I deal with this types and if this and is this a male female difference in conflict resolution or is it an esteem dynamic where I'm actually over rewarded yeah I can I can tactical this one first it probably won't be nearly as comprehensive as the last answer that dr. Lisle gave but I I have been the ignoring girlfriend when I've been upset because that's very congruent with my personality so I feel like I've got some special insight into this one so so the the main the the overarching idea here is that you know all all communication is some kind of manipulation you're you're not going to any kind of effort to communicate anything no matter how you're communicating it unless you're you're making there's there's an estimated benefit that that your circumstances will improve your statistical likelihood of gene survival after you you execute that communication but that estimate of your improvement to your circumstances is always being filtered through your personality so you know I'm always just beating this personality drum because I just really want people to get it in their heads this is where you start like you can't understand anything until you understand the variation of human personality and how profound it is and how much it is affecting how you're seeing the world and how you're behaving in the world so so different people can face the same situation and be upset for the same reasons but they're going to they're going to communicate differently because they're manipulating the situation to get what they want and to improve their circumstances differently because they're they're filtering it through their personality so you know that this question makes me think of my my two dogs so my two dogs can want exactly the same thing can be subject to exactly the same dynamic they both they both want to go outside for example but the one that's more disagreeable is is pushy and bossy and she's going to go over to the door and sort of swat at it and stare at me and you know make a nuisance of herself and the sweet one is going to come up he's going to gently bought me with his nose he might just sit there and look at me in chirp a little bit like it's a different strategy they're asking for the same thing but they're they're coming at it through their innate personality traits and the sweet one can escalate you know he if I ignore him long enough and he starts that I start to push his threshold of what's unfair he will hit the a point where he starts to get pushy err just like she's starting off there so if you've got a girlfriend who's upset with you and she's she's avoiding you or stonewalling you or she's she's avoiding competition for some reason this doesn't have anything to do with the fact that she's a female there's no there's no inherent difference there other than women being a little more agreeable on average than males and so they're a little they're a little less prone to overt conflict at least at the same at the same threshold but more likely what's going on is that you are on the more disagreeable side and you are winding up in relationships with women who were on the more agreeable side and they are less seeking of overt conflict and so the way that they are trying to manipulate the situation ie communicate with you is through avoidance what we would call passive aggressiveness and anything short of a big screaming fight that's just not in everybody's nature it's certainly you know people can be pushed to it if they're perceiving the situation is sufficiently unfair even the most agreeable person can eventually be escalated to a point where they get there but people get there at different rates according to what their their baseline personality characteristics are like so so that's that's most likely what's going on she you know and there's also the dynamic estimate of not not just how she's communicating naturally because of her her general personality traits but how she is communicating dynamically with you because of how she estimates your response to her her her anger or her discontent or whatever it is so you know you say you're kind of keeping yourself up you're not getting any sleep it's impairing your life functioning you know there's a couple of using this question that you you might be a little on the disagreeable side and possibly a little of the emotionally unstable side and I can tell you from my from my perspective when I have been in relationships with people who have those personality characteristics I'm much more likely to retreat into something that would look like the behavior you're explaining because I'm anticipating sort of a an unstable response or a volatile response from the other party relative to what I would feel comfortable with so it's better to retreat better to ghost better to be passive-aggressive rather than get to get into some kind of situation where I'm going to feel insecure unsafe for just unsure of getting what it is that I want to improve my circumstances of obtain survival so I think that's likely what's going on she she may just be she may be defecting and these are the ways that she's cueing you that she's defecting she wants out of the relationship she doesn't want to have a big fight about it and break up so she's sort of pushing pushing you to do that and if she is over rewarded or if you're over rewarded she's probably not particularly motivated to talk it out with you anyway so all of all of those different components could be happening we'd have to know more about the specifics of the relationship but I think fundamentally this is this this question comes down to personality and strategies related to personality to get what you want in life Wow just make all yes yeah dr. Lisle do you have any anything to add now that was just as comprehensive as my answer was from the previous one it has the time oh man these are gems dr. loud doctor hawk I wish the audio is even better but it will do I'll do my best to try to clip these oh all right crank it up okay no worries no worries yeah all right whatever he got ah all right we got a final question here dear doctors I've been living with my boyfriend for over 15 years and I've been with him for a total of 25 years I'm a young 60 he is 57 but are you ready to fall off your chair we have never had intercourse first ten years we did some other intimate things but nothing more he never pursues or initiates anything with me I used to try but I'm tired of being rejected I want to leave the relationship but I kind of don't I definitely need help but can you give me some insight and some guidance oh man I'll let you take this one sure it just to follow a formula so that everyone can follow the logic that is that the first place we start is by understanding that all all behavior is derived from cost-benefit analysis so there's a Seabee that's being run by this lady and and it began you know a long time ago so it began when she was 35 years old she meets this guy who's 30 - and she's sufficiently taken with him that they they become an item that is together 25 years later but he he never never initiates and never you know they never did sexual this is you know pretty amazing and so you know one has to wonder like is the guy gay one has to wonder or what other what other sort of odd-looking dynamics are going on in this situation but for one thing is for sure is there's some glue that's holding this together and it was probably evident for fairly early so there some kind of great friendship etc so all cool once she says she wants to leave but we know that there's there must be you know if you think of cost-benefit is sort of a scale you know like a I don't know n/a what's one of those like a scale injustice you've got like some stuff on one side then you got some stuff on the other there's obviously some stuff on one side that has said gee I'd kind of like to maybe have a sexual relationship in my and that that is crossed her mind for the last 25 years but at the same time there's been something weighing down on the other side of the equation that has basically blocked this from happening so so although this is historically interesting the the what's most important now is what are the cost-benefit factors that are in the equation now and you know I usually have some questions that I would poke around real subtly about trying not to be too direct but I have to wonder about financial motivations so I have to wonder you know is she dependent on this individual that that's a that's a possibility and that's one reasonable quote that we would quote want to lead but we can't or that we won't or some such thing because maybe there's some there might be some rather worried about the cold water and the brutal realities of actually having to to carve out a living or a bigger living than she has there might be a reduction in in standard of living or general financial security all kinds of things but let's suppose for example that that's not what it is let's suppose that this is a really fine friendship and that she's not financially dependent and that she could leave on that in that arena and not have it be a problem that he's clearly not not sexually interested in her uh why on earth wouldn't we open the relationship up you know nobody has to leave this friendship but why don't we just say you know what what why don't we change the rules you know I still want to live with you and we're best friends or whatever but hey I want to date other people and you know I've got a plan if I find somebody I like I'll sleep with them and if I fall in love with my mental need but short of that why not change the rules I just don't don't see any reason why we wouldn't so that's how I look at this so rather than leaving the relationship if leaving the relationship for some reason really for whatever reason including financial could be financial social could be the friendship itself it seemed it's too big a decision so so it's intimidating this individual indistinct so my attitude is well let's make a smaller decision so there's different ways we could make a smaller decision so we could obviously leave for two months and get our own place to see what that feels like that's not a bad strategy but if you're not really that unhappy but you're just in a you're in a warm supportive friendship loving friendship but there's no sexual chemistry then by all means try to piece it together and and see whether or not we can we can find some adventure and romance if you're craving that somewhere else and I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be something that wouldn't be attempted and if you happen to run into I don't know some strange funny little psychological characteristics and that partner that he gets all bent out of shape about it you know then then then we've got a very interesting discussion to have so but yeah I would at least poke around in there and see what's there Jen your thoughts on this yeah no I had exactly the same reaction to that question you know with the understanding that I'm still turning that somewhat through my own openness like that's my natural I would just go to like oh there's no rule here you know we and obviously there are some people out there are lots of people at various points in the bell curve that if that would just be unthinkable for all kinds of reasons but there are nine thousand different ways that you can you can approach opening it up you you can you can go to some kind of you know have a discussion where you're going to full-scale polyamory you can have it you can have a sort of like what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas kind of situation where you know people people are pursuing flings and maybe not even discussing them like it depends on what you're looking for and what you're missing and what works for your personality and what works for his personality and so it doesn't have to look like any particular kind of of open relationship that you've read about or seen in the movies or anything like that there are a ton of different ways that you can kind of approach that question and find some kind of arrangement that that might work or at least is worth experimenting with to see if it would work and and yeah I would say if you if you broach that subject and and he really makes a fuss about it and really can't tolerate the idea of opening up the relationship that that is bizarre and it makes me wonder what his cost-benefit if he's financially dependent on you and yeah I mean there's there I think this is just worthy of discussion and basically going into it with all options on the table to find out what kind of what kind of situation could possibly be better than the status quo the the idea that it's ever going to change is complete a complete delusion like he's not going to suddenly get sexually interested after not being sexually interested for 25 years so we want to just dispatch of that idea and you know focus on how to improve your your life circumstances going forward and his as well you know he he may have an interest in a different kind of arrangement and it has just never felt like he's able to discuss it so no no reason not to have that conversation at this point he had a good point dr. Hawkes I was gonna I was going to ask you what what the relevance of his reasons for not having sex but I think you kind of answered that saying that doesn't matter right I mean would you have any thoughts on that that relevance he hid that relevance meaning what like why rowing meets how he described why he doesn't yeah like would it would it be useful to ask the guy asked the guy why don't you feel like having sex you know I mean could it yeah well yeah I mean I think often people you know people will have that conversation at again to go back to the previous question in kind of a manipulative way trying to get them to change their CD on it but but yeah if they are good friends and clearly they are if they've been living together for 25 years and you know they've shared a lot of life experiences together then then we would hope that they would have enough enough capacity in that relationship for crystal clear too if he has been closeted the whole time you know he's now 57 like maybe it's time to to confront that and start thinking about other alternatives but you know I recognize that people are just not always they're not always in a place where they can confront those truths about themselves and certainly have those conversations with other people and a lot of times that inability and unwillingness to confront those things is what keeps them in these sort of stable warm friendships that don't have a sexual component and so there is obviously a decent CD there where where everybody is getting some kind of benefit and enjoying the companionship and you know there's also no value judgment on that like that that can be a fun fine place for two humans to live their life the steps if that's where these people want to wind up and may and that works for them like not everybody needs to have the grand rainbow unicorn angel singing kind of romance in their life they're perfectly happy with this this kind of you know stable cozy warm situation where where there's a really nice esteem dynamic between two humans who enjoy and appreciate each other so if that's the case but she's she is leaking some you know a sadness about her lack of sexuality in her life and this question and so we want to see if there's a place that we can fit that into the existing dynamic with this otherwise decent human that she she enjoyed all good yeah it's kind of annoying well just yeah this is just hold on one second it's just totally redundant but it's just a because it's not anything conceptually different but the notion is that right now we're going to call her life as six out of ten with this relationship not bad okay not bad enough if it was a four she would have left a long time ago but yeah it's like that bad okay now she smells that there's a ten potential in her nervous system but not very many people hit that and they don't hit it for very long so a really good life might be at 80% of your happiness potential in other words you know of a high percentage of the hours that you could reasonably expect you to be very happy punctuated by a bunch of exquisite moments that would be just excellent okay she's sniffing that a six is a very conservative game she has played and he's feeling the sands as high and run out and realized wait a second am I never even going to try to hit an eight or a nine ever and I think it's bugging her okay as it should and so that's why what Jen and I are saying is a what uh there should be enough goodwill in the sound of this thing that it's you know if there is if it's if it's good enough to hold a guttural a sexless relationship to a six not too bad then it's probably strong enough to withstand the notion of hey what why don't we see if we can fiddle around with this and see if we can reach some higher numbers yeah that's the idea
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