The Golden Bachelor alum Theresa Nist has responded to Gerry Turner's claims she made him sleep on the couch at her house while they were married and their relationship completely lacked intimacy.
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"I'm not sure if Gerry has a faulty memory or if he just wanted a more dramatic story for his book," Theresa told Entertainment Weekly in response to claims Gerry makes in his new memoir, Golden Years: What I've Learned From Love, Loss, and Reality TV.
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One week after Theresa and Gerry got married on January 4, 2024 for a live televised wedding special on ABC, Gerry said he drove 14 hours from Indiana to New Jersey to visit his new wife, only to feel "like a trespasser" in her "tiny two-bedroom" house.
"Physical intimacy wasn't going to bond Theresa and me... 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?'" Gerry wrote in an excerpt of his book obtained by EW.
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Gerry wrote that he "did not want to make waves" with Theresa but his silence was a mistake because he ended up sleeping on the couch for most of his stay.
"This was a very different Theresa from the woman I'd encountered in Costa Rica," Gerry claimed, adding how he felt rejected and it "rattled" him deeply for a long time.
But Theresa told a very different story of "what really happened" in her statement.
"We slept together the first night in my very small bed. After my husband passed away, I moved out of the master bedroom into a smaller bedroom with a full-sized bed and I turned the master bedroom into an office," Theresa explained.
"That first night of Gerry's visit, I didn't sleep at all -- because I had been sleeping alone for nine years, and sharing a bed again takes some getting used to."
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Theresa said the next morning, Gerry asked her how she had slept.
"I told him that I hadn't slept at all, and he offered to sleep on the couch going forward. I was extremely grateful and said, 'I promise you that when you come back, I will have a king-sized bed all set up in the master bedroom for us,'" Theresa recalled.
"After that visit, Gerry went back to Indiana, but we put our money together and I quickly went to work ordering a king-sized bed and all the linens for us to use."
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Theresa said her daughter helped her assemble the bed once it arrived.
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"My daughter and I put the entire bed together in a day and I sent Gerry photos of our progress. I was so happy that we now had a wonderful bed to sleep together in, but Gerry never returned," Theresa claimed.
"However, two of my great friends from the show, Susan Noles and Peggy Dercole, got to enjoy the bed when they came to visit me this past summer."
Gerry also alleged in his memoir that Theresa "criticized" the way he dressed for dinner one night during his trip to New Jersey, which left him feeling "bitter" and self-conscious.
"I was ready to leave when Theresa looked at me and pointed up and down like a kindergarten teacher. 'Oh no, you're not wearing that,' she said. 'Let's go over to the Lululemon and grab you something better,'" Gerry claimed, according to the excerpt obtained by EW.
"I was wearing jeans and an expensive REI shirt, but it was a plaid, which maybe she thought looked unsophisticated. I really didn't want to get bent out of shape over this... so I tried to turn my frown upside down... Truthfully, however, I realized I could never embrace the East Coast lifestyle."
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But Theresa insisted that she never slammed Gerry's wardrobe.
"Regarding the Lululemon story, we were lying on my couch when I received a direct message from someone on Instagram saying how excited she was that Gerry was in town, and that she worked at Lululemon and she would love for us to come visit the store," Theresa said.
"Gerry agreed. When we got there, Gerry saw a shirt and asked me if I thought he should try it on. I enthusiastically said yes, and we went into the dressing room together. He asked me if I thought he should buy it and I said, 'Yes, you look great in it!' And he bought it."
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Theresa claimed Gerry was "grateful" for her "encouragement" at the time.
"Because he said in the past, he always hesitated to buy things that he knew he should have," Theresa alleged.
"As for the shirt he was wearing before dinner, that was an entirely separate occasion where I gently suggested he wear something different because the restaurant was upscale -- something any good wife or partner would do."
Theresa added that the Lululemon and shirt-change incidents "were entirely two separate stories" that Gerry "decided to combine together for effect."
Gerry and Theresa got engaged on The Golden Bachelor's Season 1 finale, which aired in November 2023.
Just a few short months after the pair tied the knot in January 2024, Gerry announced in April that he and Theresa were getting a divorce.
Gerry and Theresa's divorce was finalized in June 2024, and Gerry has since moved on with a retired Indiana teacher, Lana Sutton.
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Gerry announced that he's engaged to Lana in early October, about six months after they had begun dating.
Gerry wrote all about the demise of his relationship with Theresa in his new book, which hit shelves on November 4.
Gerry claimed he felt "trapped" in his relationship with Theresa, whom he alleged went on The Golden Bachelor for the wrong reasons.
Theresa recently said on the "She's All Bach" podcast that Gerry's words really hurt and offended her.
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