‘Golden Bachelor’s Theresa Nist Fires Back at Gerry Turner’s Claims She Rejected Intimacy
What To Know
- Theresa Nist responded to various claims ex-husband Gerry Turner made about her in his memoir.
- She denied his recollection of why their relationship lacked physical intimacy and more.
- The Golden Bachelor couple was married for three months before splitting in April 2024.
Gerry Turner made a number of shocking claims about his ex-wife, Theresa Nist, in his book, Golden Years: What I’ve Learned from Love, Loss, and Reality TV, but perhaps most surprising was his recollection of the first time he visited her in New Jersey after they had already tied the knot.
In the memoir, Turner claimed that Nist denied his attempts at physical intimacy and even made him sleep on the couch during his three-night stay, but she shared a different version of events on the Dear Shandy podcast.
In response to Turner alleging that Nist “ignored opportunities for intimacy” when they got back to the United States after getting engaged on The Golden Bachelor, Nist insisted, “It’s quite the opposite.” While she admitted to “rebuffing” Turner during his post-wedding visit to New Jersey, she said it was because “so many times before that I had tried” and been rejected.
She recalled another instance where she approached him about the topic after a fight at his home. “I said, ‘Why don’t you ever approach me for physical intimacy?'” Nist shared. “He never did. There was a time I hadn’t seen him in so long, he didn’t even reach out to kiss me. It was a thing that he wasn’t doing. I felt it was quite the opposite [than what he wrote]. By the time he got to my house, I was just done with it. He did try to do something and I said, ‘It’s too little too late. I can’t do this.'”
Nist said she never felt “desired” by Turner in their relationship, either.
For his part, Turner wrote in the book, “I define intimacy in a number of different ways. It’s certainly not just sex. Sharing thoughts and feelings candidly without fear of judgment, that’s intimate. Making your partner feel special, that’s intimate. Being someone’s unmistakable number one priority, that is really intimate. Same with holding hands in public or cuddling at night. Even exchanging looks across the room so you know your partner is thinking the same thing you are. All those intimacies that I really hoped to have again with a woman seemed just out of reach in my relationship with Theresa.”
Nist also directly addressed Turner’s claim that she forced him to sleep on the couch. Specifically, she referenced this paragraph in his memoir: “My first night at her house, she took out sheets and pillows before telling me, ‘Tomorrow’s a big workday. I need a good night’s sleep. Do you mind sleeping on the sofa?’ ‘Yeah, no problem’ were the words that came out of my mouth, but I was really thinking, ‘Why? We’re married!'”
“He never said those words,” Nist insisted. “That never happened. He made that up. Does he have a bad memory? He should have called me. Or does it want to make it more dramatic?”
Nist explained that she’d converted her master bedroom into an office after her husband died and had been sleeping in a full-sized bed in her secondary bedroom ever since. She said that on Turner’s first night in town, they actually did share her bed, but she “didn’t sleep the entire night” because she’s “not a great sleeper” and wasn’t used to sleeping next to Turner, who is taller than her ex-husband, in the small bed.
She was open with Turner about not sleeping well, at which point she said he offered to take the couch. “I did not ask him to sleep on the couch,” Nist claimed. “I said, ‘Gerry, would you [after he offered]? I would appreciate it so much.’ Because I knew I would never get another single ounce of sleep if he was there. If he had asked me if I was ready to have a man come to my house, I wasn’t.”
Nist said she knew this wouldn’t work in the long run, which is why she started the process of re-converting her main bedroom into the master with a king-sized bed. “I ordered everything,” she said, specifying the bed, mattress, and linens. “He never came back. He doubted it.”
