Chat LIVE With DSO!

Alright! Hello everyone— my little program here says that I am live but I'm going to verify that before I start blabbing away here. I guess it's too late; I am already blabbering aren't I? Oh Ralph... alright let's see here. Do doo doo doo hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm. Skitty bop-a-doo. All right, we be live. So now I can switch over to— all right, bear with me here. There it is. Hello world, how are you guys today? I got my comments up here, I got this up here. What else we got going on here? And then I'm looking at it, it captions what I say on here apparently on Facebook when it's muted, and it thinks I said Darius. Hello world, I didn't say Darius. I don't know if I should make that clear to everyone. I don't know who Darius is. Why would I? Anyway, howdy, how are you guys doing? Got my glasses ready to rock and roll. Just ate me a protein bar, so no complaints about me being hungry. Diet Pepsi, breakfast of champions. Got my first like already. All right, if you guys could say hey howdy, uh, let me know you're here. Give me a like, give me a— what do you call it— share. Thank you. Wow, my brain's not clicking today. Give me a like, give me a share, give me a follow wherever it is that you are watching this. I would greatly appreciate it. For those that don't know, my name is Ralph Brewer Brewer. Sorry, not the sexiest name in the world. It's the one they gave me. It was my dad's name too. I don't know if I ever mentioned that. I go by the fake name online of DSO, which stands for Dad Starting Over, which is the name of my business organization. There's a website, dadstartingover.com. I invite you to please check that out. You could do a search on all the social media channels for Dad Starting Over. Let me move this over so it looks like I'm talking more into the camera. Do a search for Dad Starting Over. Twitter, which is now X. Instagram. TikTok. Facebook. YouTube. Usually on these live things, I always mention how YouTube really sucks for me. Well, guess what? My numbers have tripled, like, in the last 2 weeks or so. Very cool. Finally. What the hell? Took you guys long enough. So, thank you to all who subscribe. When I say numbers, I mean the number of subscribers. So thank you all so very much for watching. If you're watching this on YouTube, welcome, thank you. I got a Joe. Hey, there's Joe. He's American living in Germany, checking in from Deutschland. Willkommen, Joe. My wife is from Germany. I may have mentioned that before, so I have a little bit of German connection there. And I was born in Bitburg, Germany. There was American military base there. My dad was in the Air Air Force many, many years ago, and I was born there. So that's my German connection. Pardon me while I adjust my microphone. This will probably make a lot of noise. Meh. That didn't really help much, did it? Just want to make sure you guys get me loud and clear on here. Anywho, dadstartingover.com. Like I say, all the social media, check out the website. Things that you will find on dadstartingover.com. I started off writing articles. Lots and lots of articles, lots of me writing. That has since morphed into a podcast, which is free to the public, Dad's Reading Over Podcast. I don't know how many episodes are on there, a couple hundred maybe? I don't want to lie. I should know that, but I don't. That since then morphed into videos. You may have seen my bald head in little clips online. You can see that on like all the social media channels. Very big on TikTok, and Facebook Reels has taken off on those two. The videos have taken off on those two platforms. And like I mentioned, YouTube is starting to do well on the longer form. Um, what else? And, uh, the, the videos way outperform the, uh, the podcast, way outperform the articles, any other form of media that I have posted over the years. Excuse me, um, video is it, man. I get a lot of, uh, a lot of people see me or find me and Dad Starting Over World because of video. And, uh, I've written books. One book in particular took off, and that was— the subject of the book was sex and marriage. I wrote about a bunch of different things after I was starting over as a guy post-divorce. I wrote about, you know, taking care of my kiddos. I wrote about physical fitness and finances and all kinds of stuff. This is years and years ago, and nothing really clicked. Nothing took off unless I talked about sex. Sex sells, right? So, um, with that in mind, I wrote a book on the topic of my past marriage intimacy. It didn't do so well versus new relationship that I was in at the time writing the book. I since married that woman. I'm married for the second time, 4 kiddos by the way, and, um, What else? So that book took off, did really, really well. The book is called The Dead Bedroom Fix. The Dead Bedroom Fix. You can find it— any retailer has it. Amazon, Audible audiobook version read by myself. I've written several other books. One's called Divorce Panic. Another one's called Real Talk, No Bullshit Life Advice for Young Men. If you have a young man going through puberty, getting that girl crazy phase, get him that book. And it's the book that we wish we all had. When We Were Young. And then a very small short read called Red Flags, which is the 20 red flags for if you're looking for a full-time or what's a long-term relationship candidate, what to look out for as a dude. What I've learned is a lot of guys are pretty clueless about that, so that's why I wrote that quick read. Anyway, those 3 other books that I mentioned, the totality of their sales do not even come close to the sales of The Dead Bedroom Fix. That's how popular of a topic that is. That's how big of an issue that is for basically every Not every man on the planet. Every man on the planet can relate to it somewhat. Some have really, really bad issues of no intimacy for years while in a marriage. We're dealing with codependency issues and all kinds of stuff. So if you see, some people see the Dad Starting Over stuff online and they'll watch it and they go, why is this guy talking about like sexless marriages and dead bedrooms so much? Isn't this Dad Starting Over? I don't get it. Well, I did talk about a lot of stuff, but if I want people to actually see my stuff, I got to sprinkle in some sexless marriage stuff in there. The other topic that gets the needle moving, so to speak, is infidelity. More specifically, women cheating in marriages. Men, men that have been hurt love to go back into the old pain well, if you will, and do some pain shopping, as we call it, and ingest a lot of information about that topic, unfortunately. And so I've written a lot on it, done videos on it and so forth, and it's covered a lot in that book Divorce Panic. If you're a man that's been cheated on, went through an unexpected divorce and all that stuff, Divorce Panic is probably your book, so check it out. Since that Dead Bedroom Fix book really took off, that got a lot of people to see my website and all my material and everything else, that allowed me to create a private group for men only, which was sorely missing in the world. You know, we have this public page on Facebook, for example, and I can post something and men and women alike can get on there. And sure as shit, that really pisses off a lot of men. Like, what are the women doing here? Well, it's public. I can't kick women out. Not that I would want to. Their voice is just as valid as any other, just because they don't have a peepee. So we need to get over the whole sex gender war thing. But I recognize there's a lot of value in having a men's only space. Obviously I didn't come up with the idea. There's this idea of the fraternities that have been around forever, right? Men-only space. It's very, very important. There are fraternal organizations all over the world and they're going away. They're not nearly as popular as they used to be. And there's a lot of men married, divorced, never been married, single, whatever, who are just hurting for male companionship, camaraderie, guys they can commiserate with over, you know, life stuff. And more specifically, there's not a lot of spaces out there for men to sit and talk about relationship stuff— how the relationships failed, finding Mrs. Right, dating, dead bedroom situations. All these are all intermingled— the infidelity, all that stuff. As much as we would want to kind of put all the— all this information into silos, like, let's just put the dead bedroom guys here, let's just put the divorce guys here, and so forth, they all intermingle. They all have the same issues. They, you know, dead bedroom guy eventually becomes divorce guy, eventually becomes— they're all combined. So to try to split them up and rebrand as each whatever, it's not going to work. These are male issues, men in relationships issues, to be more specific. And anyway, we have the private group and it's called the DSO Fraternity, and you can learn more at dsofraternity.com. I have a little special deal if you want to check it out. For free. I mean, can't get much better than that. Try it out for a whole whopping month, 30 days. And here you go, I'm pasting it in the comments. There's a link to try it out for free. And the group, what does it consist of? The DSO Fraternity, we have a private forum, members only. Nobody in the world, nobody else in the world outside of the group can see what you put in this forum. They can't see that you even belong to this forum, so don't have to worry about that. Very, very active. We've had over 50,000 individual discussions started in that group over those last several years. That's pretty huge. That's pretty busy. In addition to that, we have live meetings conducted by myself and other guys on the DSO team. Speaking of team, those guys are what we call coaches. They, they've been there, done that. They got the experience, myself included. And you can work with myself one-on-one and any of those guys on the DSO team in what's called coaching. And if you're a member of that DSO fraternity I mentioned, the coaching is way cheaper. It's like half the price than what the public sees. If you go on the website on dadstartingover.com and go to coaching, you see the pricing, you know, a little high for me. Join the club, so to speak. You could try it out for free for a month, then you get the coaching for half off. So we've covered— we got a forum, we got live meetings. And those live meetings, we know not everybody's able to attend them. We have hundreds and hundreds of members. And typically on a meeting, we'll have a good meeting, like 30 or 40 guys will attend. And the rest get to listen to the meeting in a recording. And we actually make it so that you can listen to everything right on your phone. You can listen to all the meeting recordings. We have over 600 hours of meetings recorded and archived that you can listen to just like a podcast on your phone. And then we also have a DSO Fraternity podcast, which is basically monologues, myself and others talking about stuff. We have articles just for DSO Fraternity members. We do have live meetups in-person meetups. We get together. We have our 4th annual conference that we call BroFest, and it's coming up in New Orleans, Louisiana in April of this year. And we have our, our folks in Australia are getting together for their 3rd meetup. That is to be announced, all the details of that, but it's coming up in October of this year. Yeah, we have a pretty big contingent in Australia, believe it or not. So much so they have annual meetups, and the Third one is coming up. And what else we have going on? All kinds of stuff. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but check it out. DSO Fraternity. I put the link in the comments. You can try it out for free if you're a dude. Sorry, ladies, not for you. Nothing against you, but we need our own space away from the ladies so we can talk about this stuff. Uh, Mr. Joe says, thank you so much for all the content you provided. It has been so helpful. Well, thank you, Joe, for, um, um, watching, reading, how, whatever content I, I Greatly appreciate it, man. Appreciate it a whole bunch. Thank you so much. Do we have any questions, stories to share, anything at all, you know, to get this train rolling? Is that the right term? I don't know. Okay, well, my, my thing is kind of frozen here. I'm gonna refresh to make sure everything is good to go on my end. I assume everything is good. Where are you guys from? Anybody want to say hi? Can't speak today. Anybody want to say howdy? Hello? Tell us where you're from, what brings you— there's a good opener— what brought you to my world, the Dad Starting Over world? How'd you find us, me in particular? Just happened upon a video somewhere? Were you seeking out this information, Googling something? Just see my book at a bookstore, Audible, something like that? Let me know. I'd be curious to see where you guys are. I are coming from. I'm going to put a couple of other links here. Pardon me, here's my mouse noises that I always hear on my recordings. Those are annoying. I'm going to put a couple of links here. This one is, that I'm posting right now, is a link to sign up for an email newsletter. Who doesn't want another email? Well, if you want to keep up to date on all the latest on the DSO world, I am making it a point of sending out a new email every week. So I'll have, you know, here's the latest article, here's the latest video, me pontificating about whatever, and then maybe even some special deals and links. So if you want to join the club, so to speak, and get on the newsletter, there you go. And then we have something brand new, and that is— Christopher says he's from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, going through a divorce process. Well, sorry to hear that, Chris. Or am I? I don't know, you tell us. Is that a good thing? Some guys, when I say I'm sorry to hear that, they're like, oh no, this is the best moment of my life. So anyway, next link is something new. This is a link to— I call this an email course. It's just a series of emails with information I think you guys will like, and it is an email course all about the dead bedroom stuff. We call it DBF, stands for Dead Bedroom Fix. So we have a free Dead Bedroom Fix email course. You will get an email email on a regular basis. How often? Maybe every 3 days, I believe the emails are pumped out. Again, I should know that. I don't. Too much shit going on in my head. But on a regular basis, you will get an email with information. So if that appeals to you, learn more about this whole dead bedroom thing, which is a really hot topic for married dudes or guys that were married that don't want to do that shit again. Check it out. Free email course. Sign up. And then you'll also get on our email list if you do that, and you'll start getting our newsletters. And if you don't want them anymore, you can just unsubscribe. No big deal. I'm not trying to annoy the shit out of you or steal money from you, whatever. Just trying to get the word out, help some dudes out. And that's why I started all this, because I went through some shit 11 years ago now. I can't believe it's been that long. Wow. So 11 years ago I went through my stuff, and I've devoted myself to helping dudes out. And as of about 2 years ago, maybe longer, um, yeah, longer than that, 2, 2 and a half years ago, This became my sole means of making a living. So I get, I get paid through book sales. We have videos and courses on the website. I don't think I mentioned that. I get paid through that. If there's a somebody else that created the course hosted on my site, one of our coaches, I obviously, they get the majority of the money and I get a little bit of that. So that's part of my compensation is that Mr. DSO, as well as I get the private membership fees if you want to join the private group. So if you would like to support me, the Dad Starting Over world, if you want to help get the word out, like, share, buy a book, buy a course, join our members group. All kinds of ways you can say thank you to old Ralphie boy. And that's me, by the way, in case you guys are just joining us. My name is Ralph. You may know me as DSO, which stands for Dad Starting Over. And, um, What else is going on? Anybody else have anything to share? Anything? I don't like to sit here and talk to myself. I would much rather get some info interaction from you, my friends. Anything? What else is going on in the world lately to talk about? Let me text my wife here real quick. I got my iMac Mac Messenger and tell her I'm on a live right now so she can stop pestering me. She's just telling me about her day. Um, all right, we're getting into it. I'm going to get my glasses because this is a little fuzzy for me. This is— I can't ever get these clean. Hi from Sask. I apologize if I get any of this wrong. I'm trying to read sans glasses here. Hi from Sask, Canada. Uh, the Dead Bedroom— oh, TDBF, that threw me for a loop there, sorry about that. But he says, the Dead Bedroom Fix, great book, excellent info, and it works. Well, all right. Um, only made a few small changes so far and I'm already seeing a difference. I found you and Dad Starting Over That Way through the book, the Dead Bedroom Fix. Uh, the book was referred to me, looking into joining now. Well, great, Doug, thank you so very much. I love it. I love the fact that it was referred to you by somebody else. Here, check this out. And looking into joining the group? Check it out, free for a month. What do you got to lose? If after 30 days you're like, I don't really think this is for me, or I don't have time to devote to this and it's not really worth my dollar, then cool. You know, I don't want to take your money just for the sake of taking your money. I want people to join the group that are going to be involved. They're going to get a lot out of it, and they're going to share their wisdom and learn from others and take advantage of all the cool stuff we have available. And if that sounds like something you're able to devote time and energy to, we would love to have you. But check it out for free for a month. What do you got to lose? Uh, Joe says, from PA here, I have a topic question. Love it, keep it coming. Uh, why is it so easy to ruminate constantly over a wife's affair even though it happened a long time ago and the divorce is finalized? You also realize there's no way you even want a relationship like that anymore. So what you are saying, Mr. Joe, is— pardon me while I get situated here. What are you saying? I muted for a second there so you don't have to hear the noises of me moving the microphone. You endured a trauma. Been there, done that. If you don't know, I went through this. That even the toughest dudes in the world— it's so funny, uh, I bet you right now if I polled like the majority of men out there and said, let's play, let's play pretend you just found out your wife cheated on you, what are you gonna do? A lot of men will puff their chest and macho, pseudo-macho bravado things. They— I'd probably take all their shit and throw it out in the driveway and change the locks on the doors and call the divorce attorney that night and be done with her, move on, and I'd be, you know, banging new chicks the next day, that type of thing, you know. You know what most guys do when the reality hits them and that really does happen to them? They go to the wife and go, uh, can we, can we work this out? Do we, you know, can we talk about this? Can we not throw away everything, please? I know you just did something really horrible to hurt me and the family and everything else, but Can we not work on this? Um, relationships, romantic relationships in particular, are extremely addictive. The, uh, I'm no scientist, I've read on the topic quite a bit, uh, a lot of really good books out there on the topic, but basically what happens to your brain is akin to what happens with a drug addict. They get their drug, makes them feel great, get their drug, makes them feel— eventually it's not such a great feeling like the honeymoon stage, you know, when you're first dating somebody and it just feels so amazing and you just can't get enough of them. And you think about it when you go to bed at night and you think about them first thing in the morning and it's hypersexual and it's very validating and everything else. And woohoo, they're my soulmate. And then that just naturally kind of dissipates with time and eventually they just become your new normal. You need them, your drug, just to function. That's where a lot of, like, your narcotics users, they go from intense high to basically, if I don't have this drug, I just feel like I want to die. So I need it in order to feel normal. If I stop taking the drug, I vomit and convulse, and it's not a pretty sight. Well, similar to the— with the relationships, everything's, you know, the relationship machine, marriage machine is just running smoothly, and then all of a sudden you're Partner says, uh, I don't want you anymore, go away, I've picked this person over here. Your drug goes away, the relationship stops, and you go through major withdrawals. You're traumatized. I don't care how tough you are. Uh, the irony is also, I don't care what kind of bullshit you're going through in the relationship that is bad at the moment. You know, it could be you've had these people, you have these people that are like, we grew apart for years, we were just very disconnected. Stress and in and out of marriage counseling, and it's obviously the writing was on the wall that we just need to call this quits. And then they discover affair, and instead of saying, "Eh, saw that coming, is what it is," but no, instead it's like, "I feel just as much trauma as if I had just, you know, discovered this 10 years ago before the wheels started falling off the relationship. It's still that traumatic to me." So in other words, Joe, give yourself a break. This is, you say it happened a long time ago. You're divorced, you're finalized, and yet you ruminate constantly over this. So rumination is constant spinning thoughts, presumably negative thoughts on whatever. So a lot of people who are very high in anxiety, which I'm going to say, Joe, you may very well be, Tend to ruminate constantly on things that really, from an outside observer, we just say, "Why bother with that, dude? You're just stressing yourself out over nothing. You know, stop, just stop thinking about it." Yeah, like it's that easy, right? "Hey, you don't want to be anxious anymore? Then just don't be." It's not that simple. It takes some work to get there. To get over the hump. There seems to be, for a lot of people, this hyper-anxious trauma, trauma, and then they slowly get over the hump and they're like, okay, that's better now. And you haven't quite gotten over that hump yet. Um, these are a multi-layered, multi-faceted thing, and I have a lot of questions for guys in your shoes, such as, are you still in contact with her? You still see her quite often? It always surprises me, some guys are like, yeah, we text pretty regular basis. I'm like, about what? Like kids, stuff like that? Well, yeah, that for sure, but then we'll also talk about, like, friendly conversations about whatever. Um, you can't get over your drug if you continue to take hits off your drug over and over and over again. You have to put the drug down and away as much as humanly possible. I understand some days you're going to be in the same room with said drug, or you're going to walk down the street and somebody else is going to be taking the drugs, and you can't avoid that, but Don't purposely put yourself in a situation where it's just you and the drugs, you and the wife, and because it sets you back in your disconnection. Your journey now is to disconnect, find your own path, put that trauma behind you, and you can't do that if you're consistently in contact with this person. That may not be your case, Joe. You may not be in contact with the person, but if you are, You gotta limit it to just business stuff, kid stuff, done. There should be days that go by with no contact with her. So that's just one thing to explore. Another is, are you just an anxious person that needs to maybe go to therapy, um, and talk about working on your anxiety? Do you have a healthy lifestyle? You know, there are, uh, prescription medications for people that suffer from depression, high anxiety, and so forth. Do they work? Yes. And for some, they're a godsend. For some, it's the difference between putting a gun in your mouth or not putting a gun in your mouth. Well, take the damn pill, please, to at least get you over the hump. And, um, but for a big chunk of people, the science seems to show us, uh, there is a series of very normal life prescription things that have just as much, if not more, of a positive effect on an anxious person than the little SSRI pill, for example. And some of those things, nobody likes to say it because it sounds so boilerplate and duh, and it sounds like some rah-rah bullshit, but guys, it's true. Get a good sleep, eat right, move your body, exercise, exert yourself, and be social, interact with other human beings in a meaningful way. You've got to do all those on a regular basis. They need to be part of your daily prescription of life. It keeps you sane. If, you know, if you're the type that's like, uh, I tend to ruminate a lot, blah blah, how's your sleep? Well, I can't sleep because I'm ruminating so much. Well, are you smoking? Or, yeah, I'm a chain smoker. Okay, got to stop the smoking. It's not helping anything. How's your diet? Well, I eat like shit. It's time to start eating right, dude. You're a grown man. It's time to stop eating the chicken nuggets and everything else and the milkshakes. Do you drink? Yeah, I drink 2 or 3 a night. Well, then don't drink anymore. Try that out for like 30, 60 days. See how that helps. There's so many little incremental things you can do. And I know you're just asking about ruminating and not being able to get over it, but all this is symptomatic of a person who's high anxiety, Neurotic is a— neuroticism, rather, is a personality trait. You're probably pretty high in neuroticism. An example I often give for how to illustrate a neurotic person— it's a propensity for negative thought— is my favorite often-used description of neuroticism. You give a neurotic person a million dollars that you won in a lottery and say, here's, you know, I won a billion dollars in the lottery, here's $10 million, my neurotic friend. Neurotic friend is going to sit there and just go like, "What do I do with the money? Are you sure you didn't steal this? Is the bank going to take all this? My family is going to try and steal this from me. Somebody is going to rob me." They'll just go on and on about the negatives of an extremely positive thing, which is somebody just handed you millions of dollars. Instead of saying, "Thank you, you've changed my life, this is wonderful," a neurotic person looks at all the negative of how this is just going to ruin his life. You're probably, if you're like a lot of men that I speak to, kind of high in neuroticism, and that doesn't help you in life. So maybe therapy, your daily life prescription, medication if needed, which I would hesitate and say use that as a last resort. But keep busy doing all this daily prescription stuff. Eventually you get to the point where days go by and you don't think about Weeks go by, you don't think about the traumatic thing that you endured. Months go by, years go by, there you are, you finally are over the hump. But there's still a little, a little twinge in there, don't get me wrong. And it will always be there. Such is life, dude. Life is not rainbow and sunshine. There are people in this world who have endured awfulness in their life. They've seen loved ones die in front of them. You know, people that are in war zones and so forth. We're just spoiled in that way. And those people have trauma that they deal with from now till the end of time, for the rest of their life. And this is something that you will have to endure. This burden will, you know, hang heavy on you for a while, and then there will be days, weeks, months where it won't. Just the way it is, man. And Joe says one of the best pills is called exercise. Yeah, absolutely. And Joe also says that he found, uh, Dr. Robert Glover because of Dad Starting Over and been consuming a lot of his information lately. Very good. Uh, Dr. Glover is a good one, um, one of the godfathers of this men's self-improvement sphere world, if you will. Uh, his book is No More Mr. Nice Guy. Um, I've done an interview. If you go on YouTube, search for Dad Starting Over and Robert Glover, Dr. Robert Glover, and you'll see our interview. We've done a couple of the most recent ones up there. And, um, basically the book No More Mr. Nice Guy deals with codependency in men. And that's a very, very big issue. So much so that I think that may be one of, if not the biggest selling self-help, mental self-help books. I don't know what the proper category is, but it's a big one. He sold a lot of those and he's done very well. And I've personally met Dr. Glover, spoken to him several times, and he came to our BroFest gathering that we had in Austin, Texas years ago. And he hung out for an entire weekend with us. Very cool guy. Hmm. And this person whose name I apologize I cannot pronounce, it starts with an N. Mr. N says, I lost my source of income a couple years back, and because of this I've been balancing two realms of keeping her happy and getting my source of income back, but it seems I'm failing at both. That's relationships. There's a lot of things that can stress a relationship. And the lack of cash coming in certainly affects a relationship. Dare I say, does it affect women more so than men? I think our knee-jerk reaction as men is, oh, hell yes. For men all over the world, regardless of where you live, regardless of socioeconomic status. I don't care if you're a tribal person in Africa or the Amazon, all the way up to a guy who's sitting in a multimillion-dollar apartment in New York City, whatever. People who study human behavior, anthropologists, historians, they will all tell you the same thing. There is a universal thing, item, if you will, that everyone can point to and say, that's what makes a man attractive. You know, we could go on and on about looks, confidence, youth, or whatever it may be. All these things are, you know, depending on who you talk to, important. But there's one that's universally mentioned again and again and again, again, regardless of where you're at in the world, and that is status.— or as the Brits like to say, status. If people can point to you and say, "That is a man of high import. He is a dude we look up to. He's a dude that is in charge. He's a dude that everyone goes, 'Oh, him. He's a cool man. He gets things done. He's the president of, the vice president of,' or he's this guy who owns this business in so many locations," whatever it may be. Is if he's a man of high status, that is considered by men and women alike a point of attraction. He's up here on the little pyramid, the hierarchy of dudes who are seen as attractive. So when we get a ding to our income or job, that does knock our status down, doesn't it? And our partner understandably goes, I don't know if this is a guy I could trust. I, you know, I don't know if I feel secure with him. Is he the type that can help me go through life? Is he the type that can help our kids go through life and properly raise them? And to a more shallow point, can he buy me stuff that I want? Or is that going to now fall on me to take care of stuff that I want? That's understandable, but not nearly as attractive as Mr. High Status who you know, pays for my car for me or whatever, buys me that fancy purse. That's not necessarily shallow, that's just human nature. So how many times do you think I hear from guys? It's usually, you know, when do the wheels fall off the relationship? Usually the number one thing I hear is when we had kids. Another one is, well, I got laid off from my job so many years ago. Or I got really sick and was unable to work, so the money situation got hurt. And they in turn, because the men are so, they're so hurt by seeing their partner across from them basically flip a switch and tune out in the relationship. She went from loving, sweet, understandable, understanding, kind, feminine, bubbly, all the things that us men love. Then he loses his job and he watches that switch go, And she becomes stressed out, not understanding, not empathetic, not kind, not bubbly, not sweet. Now she's every other day asking, "Don't you have a new job yet?" And then she's ruminating on, "What are we going to do now? We're going to have to move. We're going to have to do this, da da da." And the men want nothing more than to have a cheerleader to say, "I trust in you. I believe in you. Go get 'em, tiger, and go get that next job. I'm your biggest cheerleader." relatively rare, and that's bothersome to a lot of guys. And then you'll hear guys go on and on about, well, this just proves that I'm not loved for who I am, I'm loved for what I provide, as Mr. Chris Rock, the comedian, so famously said in one of his specials. Men are not loved unconditionally, that's for women and dogs, he said. Men are loved on what they provide. Another way to look at that is men are loved and appreciated and admired for our status in the, in the group, in the social group. So you lost your income a couple years back, and because of this, you've been— it's been difficult keeping her happy. Welcome to real life, dude. What can I tell you? 2 years ago. So what's been going on in the last 2 years? Why are we not able to get income? I don't know where you're at in the world. It's easier said than done. I tell you, you know, there's one case to be made. You know what women in a man's life is good for? Keeping him on his toes and keeping him churning, keeping the money-making machine churning, if you will. I mean, if you really look at human nature, what it is, the history of man, why does a man try to hyper-achieve? Why does he try to get things to exhibit the status to show the world, look, I'm a big shot? So he can get the girl. That's why he does all that. He can make the case of, "No, no, no, I do it for me and it's—" Bullshit. The deep-seated programming within us human males is impress woman so that she will give me access to her, form a bond with her so we can make babies. That's basically the whole thing, right? Not to be crass or really cold about it, but Let's be honest here. And so you lose your job, you lose your status, you lose— it doesn't work well in that whole formula, and the whole thing disintegrates. Apologize for my pausing here as I read messages that are scrolling by. Mr. Mike says, found DSO just over a year ago and now I'm a frat member. Yay! DSO fraternity is what he's referring to. If you're on the fence considering, I strongly urge you to try it out. It's an amazing resource that will help you be the best you. Very good. And Joe says 100%, and so Joe's agreeing. Excellent. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it a great deal. And thank you, Joe. Um, yeah, this, um, It is a tendency of men, more so than women I argue, to be Mr. Lone Wolf. I don't need the social group around me to help me do whatever. What kind of little child am I? I'm a man, damn it! You know, there's a lot of men have this daydream of saying "F you" to society and going off to the woods somewhere and living in a little cabin with his dog. You know, a little wood-burning stove, a rifle, and a dog. What more do you need, right? And get away from and disconnect from everything. Yeah, it's not healthy. You need that human interaction and you're inevitably going to run into issues in life. Life is not easy, in case you didn't notice. And so as you run into issues in life and things get difficult in any kind of endeavor, in any discipline, whatever it may be, The shortcut to getting from here to here, as far as competency or expertise, whatever is concerned, is to take on a mentor, to grab somebody who's been there, done that, and say, teach me, show me, show me how to do it. And then you just skip all these steps and you go right to basically the solution. You're— the guy's like, yeah, I've been there, done that. I've made these thousand mistakes. Let me show you what I did. Here's how you get to the promised land, so to speak. Here's how you get to the end. It's like, if you have such a relationship, it's worth its weight in gold. Any kind of person who's done any kind of business or some kind of self-development will tell you the same thing. Get a mentor. And if you find a good one, hang on to them for dear life. Well, that's in essence what this— our group and groups like it are for. The DSO fraternity, dsofraternity.com. And go back in the comments if you guys are just now joining us, and you can see I put a link to join for 1 month for free. No strings attached. And you'll see if the group is for you or not, if it's a good match. But it's a bunch of guys, hundreds of guys from around the world who are just like, I just want to get better. Maybe I want to be a better husband and father. Maybe I've already been there, done that, got the divorce. Now I want to be a better single dude. Now I don't want to make all those same mistakes again of connecting with the wrong woman and going through all that nightmare again. I want to learn from others so I don't do that anymore. Or something as quote-unquote shallow or simple. It's neither, but that's how people look at it. I just want to get healthier. You know, maybe I've been a chubby dude my whole life and it's time to get my ass in shape. I'm gonna get some muscle. I'm gonna lose a bunch of fat and I want some help with that. All these are issues for being a dude going through life. And if you want to get to fill in the blank, the quickest way to do that is to say, help. And that's what groups like the DSO fraternity are all about. So check it out. Pardon me. Mr. N says, in South Africa, it is directly translated as, quote, "A man's beauty is through his cows," which is the dowry paid for the bride in the courtship and life. Thanks for the reminder, my good sir. So it's funny, isn't it? These little universalities. It's no matter where you're at in the world, it's kind of the same thing said in different ways. A man's beauty is through his cows. I'm gonna start using that one. It's a good one. Joe says, it's amazing how much being a, quote, nice guy and the whole dead bedroom correlate. But I also don't want to be an asshole. Building boundaries can be a bear. So yeah, Joe is using some of the vernacular in our little world, in the male relationship talk sphere, if you will. Let's start with nice guy. Another word is— another word for, as I've mentioned earlier, codependent guy. A lot of people don't like to belittle the term nice guy because who doesn't want to be nice? A lot of women hear that and go, uh-oh, he wants to be an asshole. If he's reading some book called No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover, check it out, that means he wants to be a dick. He wants to be a jerk. Somebody told this guy that in order to get laid and get ahead in life and all that other stuff, you just need to be an asshole. That's not what that's about. And Joe will tell you more than anybody after reading all that material by Dr. Glover and so forth. It basically means stop being a people-pleasing codependent. Yes sir, yes ma'am, whatever you say sir, whatever you say ma'am, happy wife, happy life. Just, I'm gonna stop, um, Oh, what's the word? Uh, I don't want to— brain's not working today, apologize. Um, I'm going to keep things nice and smooth and steady. I don't want to rock the boat. That's what I was looking for. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to keep things smooth. I don't want to cause any trouble. I don't want to put up boundaries. They don't say that verbally, but this is what they're saying is basically, I just want to go along with whatever. I want to be very passive. Because I'm afraid— this is the essence of a lot of the nice guy codependent stuff, the anxious attachment stuff, whatever you want to frame it— is if I stick up for myself, if I, if I show what I'm really thinking, if, if I tell a person no, I run the risk of losing them. And the idea of losing them fills me with a lot of pain. And a lot of anxiety, and I can't imagine going through life without them. Therefore, I'm gonna set my very real and normal healthy needs aside, my feelings aside, any kind of vulnerability, forget that, I'll just get hurt. It is in essence, to use the term that is way overused and not very nice on the internet, although I'm seeing it less and less, it's a very quote unquote beta mindset. You've heard the alpha beta, which basically means manly and not so manly, masculine and not so masculine, strong and codependent. It's a very codependent beta mindset, if you will. Don't want to rock the boat, don't want to do any of that. What will cause me the least amount of drama and the least amount of anxiety going through life? That's my path, that's what I'm going to do. And sure as shit, if you have that mindset going through life Um, he talks about dead bedroom is the other term he used here, which means basically sexless relationship. Yeah, you're going to be the kind of guy that's not going to get any, or very little, compared to the guy who has boundaries, compared to the guy who's not afraid to say no, I'm not doing that, compared to the guy who says, uh, this is— these are my needs, this is what I want, I'm not going to hide from it, I'm not ashamed of who I am, that's who I am. Sure as shit, that guy gets more out of life professionally. He gets more out of life friend-wise, and yes, romance, sex-wise. Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. Codependent— I've heard a lot of guys call themselves, I'm an empath, and all this other stuff. They point across the aisle and say, those other guys are just dicks, they're jerks, and they're getting a lot more than I am. And you know what? That is Proof, Exhibit A for women just like jerks, and women suck for that reason. And dudes, you just don't get it. You need to get out more. You need to interact more, socialize more, date more. Yes, get a lot of nos, get a drink thrown in your face. You got to get out there and live, and then it will eventually click for you. You'll find your, your rhythm. You'll find out who you are as an individual. In this dating world. Again, this all bleeds together. This isn't just dating and courtship and romance and sex. This, this bleeds through every facet of your life, this codependent Mr. Nice Guy, meek people pleaser kind of behavior. If you squash it, a lot of things improve in your life, a lot of things. So if any of that clicks with you, check out our group, DSO Fraternity. I'm going to paste again the link for those that may have missed it the first time. Link to our group, 1 month for free. Can't beat that, ladies and germs. Apologize here, got a message that came up. Josh asks, do you feel it's normal to have some guilt over the divorce process even if it's what I want and I know that's what I need to happen? Well, of course. Josh, buddy, you'd be some kind of sociopath not to feel bad about ending a relationship, a marriage, especially if there's kids involved and everything else. Even if your partner is an adulterous, abusive, whatever monster to you and just treats you like absolute dirt, and you know, any sane person says you need to run away from them, even then, if you end the relationship, there's— you're going to feel pain. I alluded to at the beginning of the conversation, welcome to being a human being. Relationships are very addictive. Relationships, you form a very real bond. And when that person goes away, whether it's you saying go away, whether it's them saying go away, however it ends, it causes pain, causes trauma. You're going without your drug, so to speak. And so give yourself a break. You're a human being, dude. It's gonna suck, and it's gonna suck for a while. Employ— that's not the right word. Don't be afraid to say help. Don't be afraid to socialize with others and be in the presence of a lot of men in your life, friends, people to help you go through it. And we talked about it earlier in the conversation— stay busy, do those little daily prescription life things to keep your anxiety and negative feelings at bay as much as humanly possible. But even with all that, you're still gonna feel something negative. I don't know what to tell you, dude. Um, he says the pain he can understand, but the feeling of guilt surprised him. I mean, you're like, this is all me. If it wasn't for me, I'm the one destroying— well, the fact that you filed right away puts you as quote-unquote the bad guy. I know you're not, you know what I'm saying? Um, and in a lot of people's eyes, well, F them, they don't understand the full story here. And I don't know your full story, or Josh rather. Um, and what you're— what you went through. But, um, it's okay to have those negative feelings. It's okay to feel— you know, I had, uh, um, somebody the other day say to me in a one-on-one coaching session, he began his thing with, I feel bad because I dread— and then he talked about his situation, what's coming up. He dreaded going through that. And I'm like, it is okay to feel dread. It's okay to feel sadness. And he's like, no one has ever said that to me before. Everyone has basically, to him, framed it as you're feeling bad, therefore that means something is bad that you need to fix right away. Um, that is your brain's indication of, uh-oh, thing bad, must fix, fix, fix, fix. And I'm like, I'm telling him, no, there's— any sane human would feel bad, any sane person would feel dread when it comes to thinking about this bad thing coming up that he was going to go with. It's okay. And you feel a little bit of guilt over this? It's okay, dude. And Joe says, don't worry about the whole one month free DSO fraternity thing. It'll take about two days to realize the frat is worth the money. Well, thank you. Especially if you get involved in the discussions and the live meetings. That's when you really go, oh, this is actually a very big, cool thing. This isn't just some little log in once in a while thing. This actually becomes kind of a part of the lifestyle for a lot of men. They're friend group. And, uh, you know, log into the frat, join a, join a meeting, listen to a meeting recording. It becomes part of their daily prescription for keeping healthy and succeeding in life. And I'm proud to be a part of people's life in that way. And Joe says, um, you wouldn't be human if you didn't have some guilt, regardless of whose fault it is. Exactly. Anybody have anything else? I'll pause here. I will mute while I get a drink so you don't have to hear me Talk amongst yourself. All right, as I burp and cough, fantastic. I mute myself only to come back on and say I burped and coughed. This makes no sense. Well, all right, anybody have anything else, any comments? Questions, comments, conclusions, any stories to share, anything at all? If not, I will wrap this up, ladies and germs. We certainly don't have to have these go on for hours. We have done that in the past, but this has been 50 minutes, 5-0 minutes so far. That's pretty good. Um, check my messages here. Anybody have anything else? Anything you have seen video-wise, article-wise, anything that you would like to discuss at all? Oh, Doug. Oh boy, you just really couldn't let a sleeping dog lie, could you? You had to kick the horse here. Uh, Doug says a few more strategies about how to work through Menopause. Oof. Uh, when wife's interest drops suddenly. Um, oh boy. If you've watched my stuff, you've heard me preface these menopause, um, discussions with the caveat of this is a very, very sensitive topic. Way more so than I ever thought it would be. There are teams of women, and men for that matter, I guess, to be fair, in the medical community and otherwise. Something as— I was going to say as innocuous, as everyday, as normal, as healthy as menopause can be such a hotbedded, hotbedded, hot whatever, hot-blooded topic, hotbed issue. I don't know what the right phrase here is. It's controversial. And it splits people into factions. There are— I've been introduced to this world— there are women out there who genuinely believe that menopause is kind of like a conspiratorial made-up thing, that it doesn't happen, that there are some women in this world in certain cultures who don't even have a conception of menopause because they live a healthier, more holistic, nature-based lifestyle which keeps menopause at bay and they never have to go through it. It's bullshit. Menopause is a very real thing. I'm sorry if that's your thought pattern, but you are wrong-o. For those that don't know, menopause is basically Mother Nature's way of saying your baby-making days are over, we're shutting the machine down. Sounds cold, but it's basically what it is. And in doing so, there's a whole series of hormones Picture them as dials on a machine. Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and all these other brain chemicals, and oxytocin, serotonin, all these other things that all work in concert with each other to make what we call a fertile woman, a woman who can make babies. Well, at a certain point in life, and that certain point varies from woman to woman, some women the process begins, and that early process beginning is what we call perimenopause. Young as their late 30s, sometimes earlier, early 40s, mid-40s, late 40s. Then they start going through full-blown menopause when it's just like the machine says shut it down and then meow, all the dials get slammed down. And this is when the women start saying I have hot flashes, I have difficulty sleeping, I'm irritable, I'm angry. And for a lot of women, this is, I'm sorry for the, quick menopause lesson, but it surprises me how many people, men and women alike, don't know what menopause is. For a lot of women, part, not every woman, part of the awesome, and I'm being sarcastic, cocktail of what makes up the new menopausal woman's life is a reduced libido, a reduced sex drive. For some women, a completely eliminated libido or sex drive. As in, the thought of doing that is repulsive to me. I used to have feelings for that. The thought of doing that would get me excited. I used to be responsive in nature. I didn't really think about it much, but once we got into it, I enjoyed it. Well, new me doesn't even enjoy when I get into it. This is a lot of women say post-menopause. It is zero fault of their own. It's a biological thing. And like I say, some women are very much affected in that way. Some women are like, you know, talk about the different factions and groups that menopause is split into. Some women are like, actually, menopause is a godsend because after I went through it, number one, my period stopped. Hallelujah. Some women really have very heavy, painful periods. And some of those women say, and actually, my libido increased. I became a horn dog after it. Relatively small group of women. But they exist. And some women say, "I didn't even know I went through the whole process of menopause until I went to the doctor because of my irregular period and some spotting, and I was worried that something was going on." And they were like, "Sweetheart, you're going through menopause. You're 53 years of age." And she's like, "Really?" She didn't feel anything, never felt anything negative, never had any symptoms beyond the spotting. That happens. It's all over the place. So Doug's thing is his wife is of the camp of interest in any kind of intimacy just stopped with the old menopause. And a lot of men are in your shoes, and a lot of men in your shoes are like, well, mine hasn't stopped. What do we do here? There's a, there's a lot of camps. When I talk about the different factions, there's a lot of factions and camps as far as What does a couple do, or more specifically, the man do or don't do to help deal with, live with this new dynamic? So if you're like a lot of marriages, it used to be, hey honey, do you wanna? No, maybe tomorrow. Hey honey, do you wanna? No, I don't feel like it. Okay, let's go. And then when you looked at the calendar, a lot of men keep a literal calendar for when they do it, which is kind of sad, but I get it. They were like, we're good for 2 or 3 times a month kind of thing. And it goes that way for years and years and years. And then suddenly, plunk, stops. And like, 2 or 3 times a month was minimum to keep me sane so I didn't go up on a tower somewhere and start picking people off with a rifle. Now that's gone and I don't feel good. My mental health is suffering, physical health. All I can think about is doing the act. You know, healthy American, still virile, red-blooded American male here, and I still have a desire. Well, a lot of people, the solution that they say is, suck it up, dude. You got a wife, till death do you part. Um, who gives a shit about your needs in that way? Grow the fuck up. You're married to an older woman who's gone through menopause, and you made vows to her that you wouldn't step outside of the marriage. So what are you saying? You want to go get some tail on the side. You can't do that. Most men hearing that go, no, I don't want anything on the side. I want my wife. Well, then you go to wife and wife says, that's cool, but I'm off limits. Now what are you going to do? There's no easy solution here. Um, there are solutions. I'm making air quotes for people that may be listening to this later, not seeing the video. Solutions may include hormonal replacement therapy for the woman. Oh, you want to talk about something controversial. Years ago, there was a study done on hormonal replacement therapy in women, and since that study has come out, it's basically been picked apart by anybody in the know, anybody with any kind of scientific knowledge in regards to hormonal therapy. It was not— it was a very flawed study, not definitive in any way, shape, or form. But what the study showed was that a sizable chunk of the human female population, when administered exogenous estrogen, for example, their cancer— certain types of cancer rates increased. Breast cancer, for example, uterine cancer, whatever. Give them a lot of estrogen, all of a sudden tumor growth went through the roof. Take that study, put it out to the general public, and now probably— I was going to say the majority, I don't know, maybe like half the women— if I were to go on the street and say, what do you think about hormonal replacement therapy post-menopause, probably half the women out there would say cancer. Doctor told me cancer, I can't do that. Um, I would just say to ladies, you may be part of the very small percentage of women who are predisposed to estrogen-sensitive types of cancer in the body. If so, yes, don't take exogenous extra estrogen. Don't do that. But for a lot of you, it may very well be a godsend for you. Not just in terms of sex drive. Rates of heart disease go down. Osteoporosis, brittle bones. Brittle bones are as a result of your hormonal, those dials getting turned down. Yes, sex drive, skin quality, everything improves for a lot of women. Not every woman does the proper hormonal replacement therapy regimen. Proper is the key. You got to go to a place that knows what the hell they're doing. Not every woman going through that says, 'Oh, I'm a new woman, born again,' but a lot do. And they get regularly checked and their blood works fine, there's no cancer, their heart does— their blood pressure goes down, libido goes up. And there's their man over there going, 'Got my wife back, this is awesome.' Um, but now we're getting into some sensitive stuff because, uh, there is kind of this overall sentiment thought pattern that I and others have noticed, and that is this. Uh, I'm kind of backing up. This is going to sound like a left turn, but this will all make sense. If I go to a group of people, half men, half women, let's say 100 men and 100 women, husbands, wives, we split them up, and I go over to the husbands and I go, husbands, listen up, um, your wives have confided in me something. I go one at a time and I tell the men this. There's some things about you, your behavior, things about your physicality, whatever, that she doesn't like. She's turned off by them. It makes her not like you very much. From what I have seen based upon surveys that I have done, based upon content that I have put out there and so forth, the reaction from the, dare I say, vast majority of men is that they sit upright and go, Well, tell me, what is it? What can I do to improve? I don't want to lose my wife. I want to be the most attractive guy I can possibly be. Oh shit, I'm a shithead who dropped the ball here. I'm not being a very good husband. What can I do? I don't want to lose my wife, my family, and everything else. Same thing. I go over to the women one at a time and I say, look, your husband over there, he's confided in me. There's something about you physically there's something about things you do that he doesn't find very attractive. What do you say about that? The majority of women that I have polled, that have responded to videos I've done and so forth, it's almost the exact inverse. Let's say it's like 90% of the men said, what can I do to improve? I don't want to lose my wife. 90% of the women on the other side of the aisle basically said, you can go fuck yourself. So we have like this cultural thing which gets in the way. Now, what's the source of that cultural thing? Trying to empathize with women. I think go fuck yourself will be quickly followed by, do you realize all the shit I do? I'm the one who takes on the emotional burden of fill in the blank. Uh, my husband doesn't have clue one about— he couldn't even name one of my kids' teachers. He doesn't know about all this event coming up. He doesn't know about this other event coming up. He doesn't know about this. I'm the one who sets the schedule. I'm the one who makes the doctor appointments. I'm the one who does this. I'm the one who does— I'm the logistical manager of the domestic life that we have. On top of I work, on top of I spit out 1, 2, 3 kids and it just ruined my body. And that's something I've been emotionally trying to deal with and physically trying to deal with for years. All this stuff is just weighing very heavily on me, my shoulders as a woman. And here comes Jackass Husband, or somebody speaking for Jackass Husband, saying, um, not very attracted to you. Knee-jerk reaction: go to hell. For men, knee-jerk reaction: oh shit, I don't want to lose my wife. So we in turn as men say, oh, there we go, it's just she doesn't give a shit what I think. I think that Right or wrong, that cultural whatever, trend, whatever you want to call it, it kind of bleeds into this whole world with the menopause thing. So if you husband go to postmenopausal wife or wife who's going through menopause, perimenopause, and say, "You've changed," in a roundabout way, I know you wouldn't say this, but in a roundabout way, what you're saying is, "I don't like it." I've even heard some men say to the wife, and this makes me go, "Ooh, ouch." I wouldn't have married this version of you. That says a lot, doesn't it? Um, this is unattractive in your behavior. You're grumpy, you're angry, you're snapping at me all the time. You don't want any kind of physical intimacy. I can't touch you, I can't talk to you, I can't do anything with you. I don't like this person. And this has happened ever since you went through this menopause thing. Uh, have you thought about hormonal replacement therapy? Knee-jerk reaction on the part of the woman: you can go F yourself. We know why you're trying to get me to do this. It's not for my health. It's just because you want my pants. Let's be honest here, mister. And if man was honest, he would say, that's a big part of it, sure, but the other part is that, again, I just don't like this new you, and I'm hoping— I hear that there's hope here for a change. Maybe you want to look at that. And a lot of women again say, go F yourself. So you have a lot to work against. My wife, I've mentioned, uh, I don't know if I mentioned publicly. I often get my, my DSO fraternity meetings, dsofraternity.com, fraternity.com, dsofraternity.com. Check it out, private group for men only. I host meetings on there, so I often confuse what goes through in that meetings with what's in public. So if I've said this before on here, I apologize, but my wife is 42 years of age. She's concerned about, uh, those hormonal knobs getting turned down. She's been way more tired than usual. It's tougher to stay in shape, to go to the gym, to energy to do that. She's like, "Ugh." And so kudos to her, part of her resolution for this is, "Let me go talk to a doctor about it." And they're like, you know, again, kudos to you, you're proactive, hallelujah. A lot more women are more proactive these days about this kind of thing. And they ran some tests and they determined, oh, your thyroid's kind of way under utilizing and working— not working to the level it should. Here's the little pill you can take on a daily basis, like Armour or whatever the thyroid med is called, and started from there. And then she just actually went back yesterday for a follow-up to do additional blood work, see where she's at with everything, how things are going. Why is she so proactive in this? I would love to say because her husband, me, is just so awesome and she has to keep up with me. No, um, maybe that's, you know, a lot of pieces of the puzzle. Maybe that's one little tiny piece over here. I want to be a good, uh, good wife to my husband and stay as sexy as humanly possible. Okay, maybe that's one little piece. But the— I think most of the pieces of the puzzle consist of culturally, that's I guess her family, her social group over the years. Her mother has been on hormonal replacement therapy since menopause, and she's 70-some years of age and still on it. So culturally, it's part of my wife's world. And also, my wife is a medical doctor, so she's well-versed in that world. She knows what's bullshit, what's not. She's done her research, and she's determined that this is something she wants to look into. So she's very proactive about it. Hey, doctor, do you think hormonal stuff is something I should pursue now? And the doctor says, no, you're not there yet. Maybe in the next few years, but as far as right now, look at all your levels, they're fine. So she's good there that way. So when I tell a lot of guys, my wife went to the doc and the thyroid thing, whatever, they all sit up and go, how'd you get her to do that? My wife won't even think about doing that. It's like, well, probably because her mom did and mom's friends do, and she's from Europe, from Germany, and maybe it's more socially acceptable there versus here. I don't know, but I think that's a big part of it. Uh, Casey says, don't scare me like this, David. I'm so terrified of the menopause age. Youth, stay on my side for as long as possible, LOL. In my mom's group on Facebook, we're mostly all in our late 20s. A woman recently asked how often we're intimate with our partners. I was shell-shocked at how many women said once a week or every few months. It was the majority. Oh, I'm talking young women. What gives? Do any of these women like their husbands? I can't relate. It's truly shocking. If they're like this now, imagine what they'll be like in menopause. Their poor husbands. Yeah, um, I, I've, I've, um, quoted, quoted surveys and studies before that showed some pretty— what I considered alarming numbers. It was basically the majority of people said, um, twice a month or less. Majority— it was, it was a barely the majority, it's like 53%, you know. So many percent said 2 to 3 times a month, if I remember right, all the way down to once a month, all the way down to once a year, all the way down to we haven't in the past year. That group right there, which to me is by my estimation not healthy, not enough, at least for me. I know my sex drive and what I would like, and not enough for me. Well, The not enough for Ralph Brewer category consists of the majority of people that were surveyed, and thousands of people, married people surveyed in America, more specifically, 53%. That's sad. And I wrote a book called The Dead Bedroom Fix, and it sold so many copies because so many men said, yeah, me too. Doubly sad. But yeah, they're out there. And you're right, menopause doesn't help anything. Hmm. Wordsmith from YouTube says, I've basically come to the point that I have to stay because I have 5 kids with special needs. I think I've heard you mention this before, and I apologize if I come across as insensitive. And take this for what it is, just curiosity. I just would like a little bit more. But 5 kids, each kid is a special needs child. That's, I would think, relatively unusual. So what's going on there? My first question. Um, he says, I'm gonna get my needs met elsewhere. Oh boy. I've had a few opportunities recently, but I have anxiety and guilt. Why? And then he follows up with, she hasn't touched me in 2 years. It's not going to get better. Why do I feel so much anxiety and guilt by straying? Ugh. I don't know, because you're human. Wordsmith, buddy, of course you do. I think it would be weird if you didn't. I think even the most, um, player, womanizer, whatever term you want to throw in there, dude, if he's committed to one person in a marriage or long-term relationship but still getting some on the side, is no matter how much of a dog he is or whatever term we use, it's going to feel a little bit of, am I an ass for doing this? Am I a dick for doing this? And should I do this? And I don't want to hurt my partner. You would have to be a sociopath not to have that twinge of guilt about that, my friend. Even though most men publicly probably wouldn't say, Ward Smith, I get it. But I'm speaking for most men when I say, listening to your story of 2 years and she hasn't touched you, and I know this has been going on for longer, I know all this, you're a frequent commenter on my stuff, that's been going on for so long. I can say to you, as far as stepping outside the relationship, I get it. And I'm not going to shame you for that. I understand that. But understand your anxiety and guilt over it. It's pointing to something, isn't it? That anxiety and guilt is there for a reason, and that reason is it probably goes against your values. You did make a commitment to this lady. You did have vows to this lady. It could be argued she had vows to you as well, as far as to stay connected and romantic and sexual with her husband, and how those things are very, very important. So that was the implicit understanding between you guys, is that when you get together, this— you're supposed to do this kind of stuff, right? Well, she doesn't want to anymore. And she doesn't have to if she doesn't want to. And you're like, but I do want to. And now you're stuck with— God bless you, dude— 5 special needs kids. I get it. That's, that's a tough hand you've been dealt there. I can't imagine going through that. That's a lot of stress and a lot of strain and a lot of reason why you want to be around 24/7. You don't want to be around 24/7, you know what I mean. You don't want to be week on, week off. And you certainly don't want to, uh, raise 5 special needs kids on your own, which is what you would do part of the time if you guys were to split up. So there's a lot of reasons I can see, as cold and awful as all of this sounds, let's be pragmatic about this. And this, um, sheds a light, although your situation is albeit extreme— 5 special needs kids and sexless marriage for years— man wanting to step out, all this other stuff is relatively extreme. It's kind of out there compared to most average people, right? But your ex— your extreme example is an illustration of a very, um, I guess, oft-agreed-upon, uh, phenomenon, thought pattern. I don't know what the proper word here is, but anyway, anybody who has studied marriage long-term relationships and what makes them work have come to the same conclusion, and that is the chances of that relationship sticking together as husband and wife long, long term— the chances of that go up if both people say, "I need them." When we go back to the old agricultural age, pre-industrialized farming the land. Husband needed the wife to do certain things while he was out doing other certain things to keep that farm going, keep people fed, keep the family fed, keep them warm. They needed each other. To think that she would leave the relationship and go elsewhere was just not heard of. To think that he would be like, I'm gonna go get my needs met elsewhere, screw you, wife, goodbye— unheard of. Um, because they needed each other. They didn't have time for all that shit, basically. And that's, you know, we look generations before ours. Why did great-great-grandma and grandpa stay together 60, 70 years? They needed each other. And this goes down some not so nice, um, thought patterns of why do so many women— why do women at such a higher rate file for divorce? Why is it that women that make exponentially more than their husband are way more likely to divorce, etc., etc.? Is because they don't need their husband. And if they don't need, then they start looking at, what am I doing here? I mean, I love the guy, but that's not enough to hang around a relationship and a marriage. There are these 20 other things I don't quite like about the guy and how he makes my life not pleasant. And I don't really need him anymore. So what am I doing with the guy anyway? I just, you know, summarized why a lot of women file for divorce. They don't need you. And you hear a lot of the more traditional conservative people push back against that. When you listen to a lot of guys, it really boils down to how can we strong-arm these women so that they really need us again? Because that's what kept them around to begin with. We need to put them barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, right? Get them out of the office. Dude, no. Cat's already out of the bag. You've already given the women freedom. They're not gonna go back from that. You've already given them the career and the job and the— It exposes the concept of marriage for a lot of us and what it really is. It's a very pragmatic, business-like relationship. I need you, you need me. We partner to go through life together, raise some kids together. If it wasn't for you and me, we wouldn't be able to do this. And now suddenly, that's just not the case. And, uh, you're an example of that. I got 5 special needs kids. I kind of need her and she kind of needs me. I'm not gonna divorce over this. But, um, you do wanna sneak around. And if you sneak around, Mr. Wordsmith, your chances of splitting, I would think they go up exponentially. Getting caught, you having feelings for others and coming back home to a wife who doesn't wanna touch you. Yeah. Good luck with that. You're going to do that a few times and eventually you're going to say, yes, fuck this, I'm out of here. That's understandable. So you're playing with fire. I think you know it. Uh, Miss Rita, there's Miss Rita, the lovely Miss Rita says, uh, Casey, I'm having— this is in response to the whole menopause talk before— Casey, I'm having more and better sex and I'm 60. Well, good for you, Rita. Second marriage though. I hope these women are just not exhausted and not getting help from husband. Could be some of the reasons. Rita says, I'm pretty knowledgeable about hormone replacement therapy. I'm a nerd, so, and I'm also one of those nerds that if it's a topic that I have interest in, I tend to hyper-consume it. I'm one of those guys. Could probably on the spectrum in some way. ADHD guys tend to, when we like something, hyper-focus on it. Exhaust it to the point where we learn everything we can about it. YouTube videos, podcasts, books. I'm one of those guys. So years ago, I really got into the world of hormonal replacement therapy and what it involves, men and women both. Plus, my wife being a medical doctor certainly helps with that. We talk a lot about this kind of stuff. Um, so it's— but I am not a medical doctor. Don't take anything that I say as medical advice. Please go see your family physician, your general practitioner, your endocrinologist, your hormone therapy provider person or whatever. If anything, just maybe I'll light a spark to get you to take that step to talk to a professional, I would hope. Um, the helpful husband thing is certainly something. And Rita, that's a very— if you've read my stuff or seen videos and stuff, it's an often cited thing by a lot of women. Is, um, we try to look at, dude, this sexless marriage thing is just so goddamn common. What's going on? And a lot of women are like, I'm tired. That's what's going on, damn it. And, and maybe if I wasn't so damn tired, I would have more energy and to devote headspace to doing the sexy stuff that he wants so much. And men hear that. You've seen my— I've done countless videos on this, and men hear that and go, oh shit, something I can fix. Right? Let me bump up the chores 1,000%. I mean, if you tell a man, hey, doing XYZ will get you laid more, they will do XYZ and then some. Welcome to human nature. Welcome to the history of mankind. And with men and women, I heard somebody say, do you know why all those skyscrapers are— you know, when you're flying into some big city and you see all the skyscrapers everywhere and the fancy cars and the this and that, you know why they're there? So men can get laid. The world revolves around men trying to get in the pants of women. Sorry, it's crass, but that's what it is. So a lot of men hear this and become Mr. Mom. They take over everything. And what a lot of them— not all, but what a lot of them will tell you is it didn't move the needle in the sexy department at all. Men are more domestic now than they've ever been. I say that, and a lot of women say, yeah, right. Because in their little culture and their little world, it's still— they just see a lot of men sitting on the couch drinking beer while the women are doing everything in the kitchen and everything with the kids. Well, that's not my world. That's not my social circle. And from what I'm understanding from a lot of men, it's not theirs either. So I think we're the majority and the opposite is the minority. And, um, ask any therapist, like a Dr. Psych Mom, she'll tell you the same thing. She has male clients who do like just about every goddamn thing in the house on top of a full-time job. They're just Mr. Mom extraordinaire. And you know what they say? I ain't getting any. Now, is that proof positive that doing more chores won't get you laid? Not necessarily. There are cases where in fact, man needs to yank his head out of his ass and realize that he's just not doing nearly enough to help out around the house. And women lose respect for a guy who doesn't do his part around the house. You know, if you got a guy who's literally sitting on his ass playing video games all day— those men exist— who would respect that? Um, I hear this is going to make me sound like I'm trying to say how great I am or whatever, but I think it's an example that people can relate to. A lot of women can relate to this. Was— I've said this before on here, so I apologize again if you guys have heard this. Years ago, I was dating my, uh, then girlfriend. She's my— now my wife, but this was years ago, and she lived far enough away from me that I had to fly in to go see her. This was a temporary assignment that she had for her job, and so I had to fly out to go see her. And I land, and she's like— and she was a physician on call— so she's like, as soon as I get there, she's like, I'm sorry, I gotta go. I don't know how long this surgery— she's a surgeon— I don't know how long the surgery is going to take, blah blah blah. I'm so sorry that you flew all the way here, and now I got to say goodbye. See ya. So I'm like, all right. So I didn't have any work to do at that time. I didn't have really much anything to do except sit on my butt and watch TV while she was at work. And, um, before she left, I remember I looked over and I said, what's with this giant pile of white clothes that is laying in the middle of the living room floor? What's that about? She's like, that's all the stuff that I need to iron. I was like, ooh, see you, bye. And she left. And I'm sitting there on the couch watching Netflix, just waiting, you know, killing time. And I look over at the pile of stuff and I go, what kind of dickhead would I have to be to just sit here and stare at a giant pile of clothes and not do anything about it? I'm not doing anything. I don't have any work to do or whatever. And why not do it? I'm not trying to earn points and get Mommy to like me and get laid and all that other stuff. It's just called not being a dickhead. It's just seeing that something needs to be done and I do it. So I got out the iron board and the iron, and I watched Netflix while just ironing these things one at a time. Fold, put down, fold, put down. And of course she was elated when she got home. One less thing for her to worry about. One way that she looks at her man as a, quote, partner. He helps get shit done. He doesn't need a pat on the back. He's not asking to get laid as a result. He's just sees thing, does thing. That's it. I don't care if it's light bulb needs replaced, the car's making a funny noise, yard needs to be mowed, whatever it is, you just do your part. And I think where a lot of guys, where they err is when they say, honey, I did the dishes for you. Yeah, look at that, I vacuumed the floor. Nah, nah. And the wife's like, and the wife's thinking, do you see me say look at me, look what I did every time I do something? No, like, what are you, 5? It's like, no, the man just wants a little pat on the back. He wants love and affection. It's highly unattractive. It lowers you to the level of a child. And if you're going to be a grown-up in a home with another human being, there's going to be shit to do. It's going to be chores, and some of it's not going to be the most manly stuff in the world, but you still got to do it, right? And I think that's what a lot of women are getting at with that kind of thing. Mr. N is taking off, gonna go snuggle with a wife. Well, thank you, Mr. N, for joining us. I appreciate you a great deal. Um, Ward Smith talking about his 5 special needs kids, uh, 4 of them diagnosed as extreme ADHD, opposition defiance disorder, reactive attachment disorder, etc. Wow, that's a lot of disorders. Um, again, insensitive, but right away, you know, my first thought is, what are the chances of that? Is this a— is there a familial component, a genetic component here? Are you the one that brought that code into the mix? Did you and wife both combine, mixed, happen to create extreme ADHD children? Guys on— kids on the, uh, what do you call it, neurodivergent spectrum, if you will. I've heard it called neurodiverse, is the more politically correct way of looking at it. That's just very interesting that you're 5 for 5 on that scale and with the 5 kiddos, um, gotta be something going on there. So just curious what that may be. Um, and then Casey says, uh, couldn't agree more, help with what you can. Oh, foster parents. Oh, shitballs wordsmith. Oh man, so these, these are not your biological children? You adopted 5 kids that you fostered? Wife's idea? Your idea? Both your ideas? Well, I'm gonna come across as a complete dickhead, but good for you, dude, for helping out those poor kiddos, that you give, you know, a place of love and something. You'd hate for the— and I unders— that's, you know, the genesis of taking in these children is you don't want these poor kids on the street or orphanages or whatever. You want to give them a— show them love and so forth. But, um, basically nearly every person that I know that has gone down the road that you've gone down, it causes a lot of strife. It is tough because those kids come from troubled backgrounds and they bring with them all kinds of trouble. And, uh, it is fair to say, um, more difficult than not. I don't know how else to say it. Um, God bless you, but that's gotta be tough and tough on a marriage, as you've seen. Um, Christopher read the book, my book Divorce Panic. He said it was very helpful. Well, thank you very much, appreciate that a great deal. Uh, Casey says he will say though— he, she, Casey, I apologize, I can't tell if it's Casey's kind of a gender, gender-neutral name. I will say though that some women have way too high of expectations, end up setting themselves up for failure. Um, it could be argued that is, as far as high expectations setting up for failure, is that a uniquely woman thing? No, but I think we probably see it especially in today's day and age maybe a little bit more over on the ladies' side. And it kind of goes back to the whole, we don't have to settle, we don't, we don't, we don't need. So if I don't have to settle and I don't need the man in my life to function on a day-to-day basis, he better damn well be what it is I want. And, uh, he better have a certain, uh, level of status, looks, personality traits, whatever it may be. And, and he doesn't have those, then no, I don't need them. And that's hurtful to a lot of guys to hear a woman say that. Um, not all women are like that, but, uh, it's— if you look at the online dating and so forth, it seems to be like, wow, that's pretty common. And Wordsmith says he himself was a foster kid and adopted too, and they both did it and couldn't have, uh, bio kids of their own. Well, oof, gotta be tough, my man. Best of luck to you. Hey, Ralph Brewer, it seems all I hear from the dads groups I'm in is constant doom and gloom when it comes to marriage and relationships. I'm coming out of a 10-year-plus relationship, or marriage rather, high-conflict divorce, and hoping to enter the dating market again soon. Let's put that up on the shelf for now. Soon. It is actually possible to start over in your 40s and have a happy relationship, or should I just stick to my hobbies, making money, not waste time with today's women, as so many men today are saying? What advice would you have for a guy like me? Very good question, Mr. Quentin. Um, let's— okay, how best to approach this? The general picture, should you just hang it up? Not necessarily, no. But a little concerned with— you just came out of a tumultuous relationship, 10-year-plus marriage, high-conflict divorce. I would want to know more about what went into that and how it ended and the relationship, how you guys met and all that other good stuff, because all that does make a difference. And, uh, and painting a picture here. And you're talking about, I'm hoping to get in that dating market again soon. Slow down, champ. Okay, I know you want love and affection again and you're hoping to jump back on the horse, but just take it easy. If you want to increase your chances of success in that world, cool it a bit. Okay, just— the women ain't going anywhere. You're not getting so old that all the women, they're just, you know, you're getting all the leftovers and blah blah blah. All these men say you have to understand who it is that you're talking to in this world. If you look at my material that's in the public out there on Facebook, for example, and look at the comments, you come away going, Jesus Christ, why would anybody want to get married? But you have to understand who's seeking out my material, who is number one seeking out my material and then so worked up enough to actually post comments for the whole world to hear. And that is men who have had really bad relationship experience. Shit didn't go well for them. And they are pissed off about it. And they're very angry and they can't shut the fuck up about it. I'm sorry. And but I understand it completely. I was there, been there, done that, right? And I think if you possibly check in with a lot of these men, maybe years down the line, you'll see some of them say, um, kind of got over that phase of my life. It was a very angry trauma-induced phase. But now I realize that it's in essence, they're giving a lot of these women like the keys to their happiness. A woman hurt me. Years ago, they will say. And because of that, all women are scum and you should stay away from them and blah blah blah blah. And I tried to date and women, you know, turned me down and made me feel like shit. All women are awful. You hear it again and again and again and it paints a picture. Yet get out of that world and go to this world over here that has nothing to do with the whole men being pissed about the relationship stuff, and you'll hear from some guy that's like, I'm dating and it's awesome. Yeah, I had two dates with two different women last week and they were both wonderful. I really enjoyed their company. I had coffee with one, and the other one, we went back to her place. It was great. What's the difference? You know, why such a drastic view of the relationship world? And I think, uh, I always tell guys, don't go into it with, I'm gonna find Mrs. Right, I'm gonna get married again. No, just enjoy people's company, take your time. You're going to run into crazy. Crazy is out there, especially if you just came from a crazy relationship. If you're like a lot of guys that I talk to, not all, you probably have a type based upon your childhood and all that shit that you went through. You probably have a type that may not be the healthiest type in the world, and it gets you into trouble, and you repeatedly get attracted to said type again and again. And you need to take a timeout and figure out why that is, or else you're just gonna keep attracting and get attracted to that type over and over and over again. All the more reason, more and more evidence why just take your time, focus on yourself, get healthy, get out of this relationship. Mentally, you endured a trauma with this breakup. Get over that and then put more healthier Quentin out in the market, and then you will in turn attract more healthy to you. And then you'll look back at all these guys on the internet, say, I don't know what they're talking about. I'm having the time of my life. This is great.. And then you may in turn find somebody that you want to try the long-term monogamous relationship with, or not. And if you don't, does that fill you with a great deal of dread? You know, the, the, the thought exercise that I give to a lot of men is, um, pretend for a moment, let's say you're in your 40s, let's say 40, like you're right at 40, 4-0. And I go, all right, you probably got like a good you have 30, 35 years left of good, sexy, fun living ahead of you, right? And what if I were to tell you in the next 30, 35 years you don't find Mrs. Right? You, you have what most people endure, which is like a serial monogamy thing. You jump from long-term relationship to long-term relationship, and let's say you have 7 of those. Over the next 35 years, 5 years each. Like, they happen to all be exactly 5 years, 5 years, 5 years. That's unrealistic, but just for math purposes, right? Does that make you go, oh God, no, yuck? Or are you like, it is what it is, such is life, right? Because I'm telling you, the serial monogamy thing is probably more realistic than finding one that's going to last for the next 35. That's not a condemnation of marriage. That's not a condemnation of you as a man. It's just realistic. And any therapist, whatever, probably tell you the same thing. And you have to be cool with that. If you're not cool with that, that's a good thought experiment because you've got to go, why am I not cool with that? Why do I need Mrs. Right? Why do I need that one and only that one? Am I setting myself up for failure here? Am I putting out the vibe out in the world of I need, I need, I need? And am I attracting the wrong kind of people that are, you know, giving me false impression that they are the one? And the fact that I'm searching for the one, is that necessarily very healthy? A lot of stuff to think about with this. Yes, there's hope if you do it the right way, is what I'm trying to say. Long-winded way of getting there. Hmm. Casey says, yes, I get that a lot, especially when my husband is in the picture with me. I'm a woman though, LOL. Well, all right, Miss Casey, welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Doug, follow-up to the menopause thing. Says, wife and I have always had and still have a great partnership and similar views to marriage and sex. Well, good. But she recently said that she still enjoys it. She just doesn't have the drive to want it much anymore. Understandable. You brought up hormone replacement therapy. My wife is more into nature therapy, naturopathy, nature, whatever. And she avoids, quote, drugs and regular Western medicine and doctors. Do you know if there's a natural approach to HRT that might be an option? I'm not a fan, my man. I'm sorry. I don't want to belittle anybody who goes down that road, but that woo-woo kind of hippie horseshit— sorry, but now there's not much. You know, people say, I don't like the medicine, Big Pharma way. I like herbs. And guess what those things are that you're taking? They're drugs. Aspirin, whether it's called aspirin and it comes in a little pill up on the shelf at the drugstore, or whether it's called white willow bark in your herbal hippie store, guess what? Same fucking thing. They do the same thing. They're both the same chemical formula. Just one is more natural, and the naturopathic people love that stuff. When it comes to the hormonal thing in particular, what I have seen again and again on both sides of the gender aisle, men and women both, a typical timeline is I'm 40-something years of age, the body's starting to break down. I really don't want to have to inject myself with hormones. Oh, let me back up. The body's breaking down. I had some tests done. Yeah, look at that. Testosterone's down. This is down. That's down. I probably qualify for hormonal therapy, but sticking a needle in my ass on a regular basis, creams, pills, ugh. Plus, all that stuff, like you say, the real drugs and everything, it's kind of a turnoff. Maybe there's something more natural I can do. This seems to be a typical timeline for this. Then they do the natural thing and it doesn't move the needle at all. There may be like a placebo effect of, I feel amazing for a little bit, and then they do the blood work and the blood work's like, no, there's no change here. All you did was just waste hundreds of dollars. And they get, you know, a little tired of that and they feel dejected and impatient. And then you know what they end up doing? Getting the hormonal thing. And then a good month, 6 weeks later, they're like, oh, now I see what all the fuss is about. Yeah, this is totally different. Then they do the blood work. The blood work says, yep, there you are. You were here, now you're here. Looking good, feeling good. Yep, feel great. Maybe a little side effect here and there. Well, there's We can lower the dosage to mitigate that. We can take some other pill to help mitigate, whatever it may be. But once you get on the horse, you look at all the other stuff and you're just like, it's kind of silly. So that's the first thing I think of when I hear about, I don't like Western medicine and I like more natural. It's kind of silly. You'll eventually get there. Science has advanced us to this place for a reason. It's kind of like women, sorry, I sounded very sexist there for a moment, but let's be honest, it's mostly women who tell me, I don't like to take drugs. I like to use essential oils instead. Yeah, sorry, I'm more of a science-y guy. I'm not an essential oil, light something on fire and dance around and smoke kind of guy, whatever. Wow, that was probably very insulting to a lot of people, but what can you do? All right, folks, um, hour and a half plus, that's pretty good, pretty good for one of these. I thank you all so very much for joining me today. I greatly appreciate all of you. Uh, if you could check out dadstartingover.com, check out our Private men's group, if you're a dude, the DSO Fraternity. I posted a link in here a couple times. Go back in the, in the comments here, wherever you're watching this, in the chat if you're on YouTube or wherever. And, um, I posted a link to a free month of the DSO Fraternity. Good way to test drive it, see what you think. And if you don't like it, cancel. We don't charge anything. If you do like it and keep on, and then the monthly charges will come in. And then if you can do what a lot of people do, is like, I don't want to do the monthly thing, can I just pay like for a year up front? Or Can I just pay you one fee and just cover me for life and not have to worry about paying anymore ever again? Yeah, we have both annual, lifetime, or the monthly, and you get a lot for your money. At least I think so. I think it's worth it, but I'm a little biased. It's my group. I started it. So maybe I'm not the right person to ask. See some comments from other guys here. Check out, see what they have to say. We have some testimonials posted on the DSO Fraternity website, dsofraternity.com or dadstartingover.com. Check it out. And the books, Dad Bedroom Fix, all that stuff. All right, that's a lot of blabbing. My throat's starting to hurt. Thank you all so very much. Appreciate it. You guys have a wonderful rest of your Thursday. All right, how do I get out of this? Oh, there it is. All right, see you guys.