This past winter, my oldest Samson friend asked Angie and I to "double-date" with he and his wife to a local 2023 summer concert. The tickets for said concert were about to be made available (February), and since we'd very much enjoyed ourselves over the course of a few evenings with these two (throughout the past 8 years), we agreed to shell out the cash for our two adjacent tickets. Keep in mind that my Samson friend as well as his wife are concert aficionados (live music lovers), and we most certainly are not. Too, this particular artist we'd absolutely no interest in hearing in concert. Nonetheless, we really liked the idea of double-dating with these beloveds, knowing that this couple, based on past experience, were reliably fun to spend time with.
The night before the concert, my Samson friend called to announce that his wife no longer had any interest in attending the concert. As a result, my Samson brother too decided to abandon us (out of "respect" for her). Earlier that week (perhaps over the weekend), this friend had shockingly confessed that he and his wife had been separated for close to a month. In spite of our time together earlier in the year, we weren't privy to their marriage woes, nor would we have ever recognized it.
Angie and I did decide to attend the concert. We saw a number of familiar faces in the (mostly) inebriated crowd. The vocalist sang about a pig, and from there, we decided to leave at intermission, having felt as if we had literally set ablaze +/-$300 (the retail price for our two tickets).
I felt duped, but too, very thankful that my Angie has never relationally humiliated me in an attempt to control / punish me.
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A wife who attempts to control her husband, primarily via criticism and posturing, combined with insisting on being his moral nanny, is one of my greatest revulsions.
But some Samson guys are literally wired for this treatment as husbands, thereby giving these ladies the utmost respect and servitude.
I have seen it time and time again.
The easiest way to spot these husbands is via their speech.
If you were to take a week's worth of their verbiage and examine its content, a decided portion (high percentage) would center around the wife. As if she's primarily what he thinks about and thereby he can't stop talking about (approval?).
At the tail end of last year (off season), our family was vacationing within the same Gulf Coast resort area as a (fairly new) Samson brother (he too was there with his fam). I excitedly recommended we merge our clans for a shared meal (restaurant / one of our condos) in hopes of having the opportunity to mingle with his fam. He relayed to me that was not an option due to the fact that his wife refused to "dirty herself & her children" with her husband's perverted Samson Society friends (me & my girls). Hence, he and I agreed to a meet up early one morning (coffee) before either of our respective vacations expired. He spent the majority of our time together talking (& weeping) incessantly about, can you guess?
His wife.
I pitied this man. For it was obvious that he was moreso in bondage to her than any sort of compulsive sexual sin. Yet, he dutifully seemed to feed off of said bondage / attention.
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During my time working as an architect (during the late '90s), I had a colleague who no doubt had codependent tendencies (I had no formal understanding of this word at the time), and it was his wife who obviously fulfilled that role. It was the creepiest marriage relationship I'd ever seen. I remember becoming nauseous (along with most everyone else) every time I'd see the two of them together (which thankfully wasn't that often).
Fast forward.
A longstanding Samson brother too fell into that same codependency camp. His marriage though was decades and decades in length, and shockingly, this couple had only engaged in intercourse three times throughout their entire betrothal (both husband and wife were perfectly healthy, middle-aged white people). It was during one of those three fucks that his wife became pregnant with their only child.
My friend would lament that his wife would privately berate him incessantly regarding how he had destroyed / was destroying their marriage due to his compulsive online porn use (among other things).
And he seemingly fed on this criticism / nagging. For he was hooked onto her criticism like a babe is latched onto his mother's teat.
Whenever I rub shoulders with this couple today, I have to resist the urge to fall to my knees in order to thank God for my Angie.
But that's just me.
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All this leads me to a young Samson friend who's agreed to his wife's demands relative to real-time slip-up ("acting out") communication / confession.
I've told him how stupid this agreement was / is, but he refuses to stop doing it. And, of course, his wife uses it to control him, knowing full well that she's receiving privileged information that's giving her the emotionally-strategic upper hand.
I could go on and on. There are Samson guys who take regularly scheduled lie-detector tests for their wives or provide their wives with pocket computer apps that allow them to read their husband's text messages - in real time.
I've seen Samson guys who share an email address with their wives, encouraging them to read them in kind.
I've even befriended a Samson guy who allowed his wife to install a camera in their bedroom in order for her to be able to spy on him - at her discretion - whilst away from the house (via her pocket computer).
Weird shit, indeed.
All of this, ultimately, puts the wife in the marriage's (emotional) driver's seat, and these husbands are absolutely thrilled to be relinquishing that responsibility.
Thanks be to God for my sweet wife, Angie, who has no interest in behaving this way within our marriage, but again, this is how I'd prefer it.
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In closing, what should you do if you befriend a married Samson brother as I've described here?
Hold your nose, and never, under any circumstance assume that he's not parroting every word / detail you speak to him back to his "mommy" (I've made this mistake!).
