Chat live with DSO!

All right, all right, all right. It says we are live. Hello everyone. Let me do a double check before I come on screen here to make sure all is good. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes, indeed, we are live. And let me switch over to myself. Hey, there we are. There's my pretty, not so pretty self. Oof, looking rough today. How is everyone today? Hope you all are doing well. Let's see who joins us. Let me bring up the old, uh, comments here. Comments and reactions window. Boom, there we go. All right, who do we got joining us today? Anyone out there in internet land? We are live on YouTube. We are live on Facebook. We are live on Twitter. Let me— I was a bad boy and I didn't share this live on— how do I do this on YouTube? Mm-hmm. Bo-bo-bo-bo-yah, ba-ba-ya. There we go. Copy that. And then I'll go over here to create a post on YouTube. Join me live. Post. All right, we are good to go. How is everyone today? Who do we got with us today? Anybody out there? Looks like we got a few folks that have joined us. If you could give me a hello. Give me a hi. Let me know where you're from. Where in the world are you right now? Would love to know. Uh, always love to see that we have, uh, people from all over the world that join us. Always, always cool to be able to talk to so many international folks. Uh, let's give a little bit for more folks to file in before I start chatting here. And, uh, all right. Welcome everyone. For those that don't know, pardon me, my name is Ralph Brewer. I know, really cool. Um, I go by the fake name of DSO. You may have seen me and my bald head in little videos here and there throughout all social media. Pretty big on Facebook, pretty big on TikTok, and I'm happy to say, if you've been watching other live streams of mine where I point out the YouTube viewership kind of sucks. Well, I'm happy to report that it's finally popping. YouTube be popping, yo. Doing good. I went from like 3,000 followers to like 16,000 in the last couple weeks. We're doing good. I would love to say it's because organically everyone in the world suddenly loves me, but no, it's because I actually gave a few bucks to YouTube to promote my channel. Uh, YouTube, you know, I saw the needle move, but just a little bit on YouTube, just a little at a time. And then YouTube says, you know, you could promote your channel and specific videos for a few bucks, try it out. And so I did, and kaboom. So YouTube really likes taking more money, and they'll help you promote your YouTube channel that way. Fine, it's their baby, do what they want. I'm sure Google's hurting for more money. In case you don't know, Google owns YouTube and a lot of other stuff. But that's fine. So if that's what it takes, I'll put that in the old budget. Something else we'll have to give, I suppose. If you— marketing-wise, what do I have going marketing-wise for the Dad Starting Over business? We're advertising on Facebook where you can sign up for our email list. We get about— we're closing in on 1,000 leads a month with that thing. Leads meaning people giving me their email address saying, here, please email me regularly. So I take that information and I send out a weekly email with just rambling thoughts, little promotions here and there and stuff. So if you would like to join my email list, you know what, well, now that I bring that up, let me, um, copy some— well, where the hell are all my— oh, there we go. All right, here we go. Newsletter. I'm going to copy and paste in the comments here a link to sign up for my email newsletter, and you'll be added to my list of people that get my info. And I'll be adding some other links here in the comments as our chat goes on today. Dad Starting Over is the name of the business enterprise organization website, dadstartingover.com. I originated or started Dad Starting Over like a decade ago now. Started off as just a simple blog, the musings of another divorced guy starting over with children and everything else and my thoughts on the matter and everything. And eventually I wrote on the topic of sex and marriage. One of many topics that I wrote about. But you know the old adage, sex sells, right? Well, sure shit, people started reading more and more when I talked about sex and marriage. My thoughts on, you know, the old dead bedroom experience I had in marriage number one, and how I think us men are kind of falling asleep at the wheel, and how I had to— at the time when I was writing about dead bedrooms, I had a new girlfriend, and man, things were sure a lot better with the girlfriend. What's up with that? And all my thoughts on the matter. And it got pretty popular, my writings on that, so much so that I wrote a book about it. At the, uh, at the suggestion of some readers. And that book, um, to make a long story short, eventually kind of took off. And that book was called The Dead Bedroom Fix. So it's kind of funny, you know, I have all these kind of what I call like silos of subject matter. You know, we could talk about infidelity, we could talk about finances and starting over, we could talk about raising children, we could talk about all that stuff. We could talk about sex and marriage, and whoa, hey, people wake up when you talk about that. So that's why if you see some of my videos and you're like, he sure talks about dead bedroom stuff and sex and marriage I thought this was like a Dad Starting Over thing. Well, it's one subject in a myriad of subjects. It just happens to be— you're probably seeing those videos because they're the most popular. Again, sex sells, guys. But that's a good thing because that topic brings people into the fold, into the Dad Starting Over world. Because what we have learned over the years of doing this is that— and I say we because Dad Starting Over has grown into an organization. We have coaches, we have a private member group, but I'll talk about more about that later. We could say, you know, like, let's put the guys who want to improve their sex life, their marriage over here, and let's put the infidelity guys here, and let's put the— no, we've tried that. It doesn't work. All the men and their issues all blend together. The dead bedroom guy eventually becomes the oh shit, I've been cheated on guy, eventually becomes the divorce guy, eventually becomes the I'm dating again guy, eventually becomes the fitness guy, and on and on. They all blend together. I don't care what stage you're in. You could be a guy who is married for 20 years, I want to stay married, I love my wife more than anything, I'm just here to try to improve myself and improve my marriage. He blends well, believe it or not, with guy who is divorced and dating and trying to start this all over again. Their missions are the same. And so we all learn from each other. And again, we have a private group called the DSO fraternity. DSO stands for Dad Starting Over. You can learn more at dadstartingover.com or dsofraternity.com and join us if you're a dude. It's for men only. We have private discussion groups, we have live Zoom meetings, we record all the Zoom meetings and they're archived and you can listen to them easily from your phone. We have a podcast for members only. We have a very active private discussion group. We have something like 50-some-odd thousand discussions have been started in that group. Uh, what else? We have coaching that I mentioned before. If you're a member of the group, way cheaper. We have video courses. If you're a member of the group, way cheaper. We have in-person gatherings. We have one coming up here in New Orleans, Louisiana. This will be our fourth annual gathering, gathering in the States. Our guys over in Australia have met twice. They're about to meet for the third time here in October. We've had some guys meet up in Europe. We're all over the place, so it's a pretty cool thing that we have going here, just a bunch of dudes trying to help out each other. I'm going to grab another link here and share it, and this is for if joining that group sounds interesting but you're not quite sold on it yet, you want to check it out, give it a test drive. There you go, check out that link, uh, dadstartanover.com/get-one-month-free. You'll see the URL there, click on that. And you can try out the DSO fraternity absolutely free for one month. You do have to put your credit card info in because if you go past the month, we will charge you for the month and the next month and the next month. If, you know, before your month runs out, you're like, and this ain't really for me, I can't devote time to this, I don't want to do this, then just cancel. And you test drove the thing absolutely free, no big deal, no skin off our backs. Sorry to see you go. We would love to have you, but if it's not for you, it's not for you. We want guys that are going to be active and they're going to love it and they're going to get involved. They're going to help others, they're going to get help. That's what we're looking for. So sales pitch over. DSO fraternity, dadstartingover.com. I got books, I got courses, we got a podcast that's free. We got all kinds of cool stuff. We are starting off the bat. I thank you guys for this. I didn't even have to ask questions. Here we go. Alan starts with the question of all questions. Do you think a couple's sex life can be sustainable over a lifetime from age 25 to 95? But that's a lifetime with the wear and tear of life, or multiple people forming new couple as they go through life. Is it possible? Yeah, people do it. Here's the kicker though, I think it's a relatively small portion of us that can successfully do that. I mean, think about everything that has to be in line here. Um, you both have to be, uh, sexual people. You both have to, uh, endure a honeymoon phase and then watch as the honeymoon phase dissipates over time, which it does for all of us. And then be cognizant of that and say, oh, we better do work to stay connected. We got to have our date nights. We got to have our fun little kinky secrets, you know, life on the side apart from the kids, apart from the family, apart from jobs. And we have to do— you both have to be of a certain mindset. Well, that's tough right there, right? That eliminates a bunch of people. And then to endure that through life, disease, the stress, aging. Thank you, menopause. Thank you, andropause. And just trying to do all you can to fight against that. You can fight against it medically, you can fight against it, you know, via longevity stuff such as exercise and other things and eating right. And even then, your libido will dissipate. Well, then do you stay together? What if you have, uh, what if one partner is, you know, libido's here and the other one's, thanks to age, disease, and everything else is here. Well, you have to endure. You have to be able to endure that, right? Um, that's tough, really tough. Uh, what we have seen is a typical— I am not— what was the word? Uh, I'm not pushing this. I'm not saying this is, this is the thing to do, but just if you study human behavior over the years and over generations of people cross-culturally, you will see that people have come to a solution, which in today's day and age, it is a solution that is, uh, society overall gives it a thumbs up. And that is what we call serial monogamy. We pair bond, we have a honeymoon phase, we have kiddos, we have a family, and then over time we naturally, you know, grow apart, become resentful, and we divorce. And then we go out and do it again with other folks. Men are more apt to go out and do it again with other folks, start a whole new family, new kids, new wife, everything else than women are. Much more likely men are. Could be— there's a whole host of reasons why. If we could go down the rabbit hole of why is it that men remarry so much more than what women do and starting kids and everything. Well, if you want to go down some not so nice stuff that's kind of in our genetic makeup, if you will, we are Engineered to be a polygynous species, I'm sorry to say them. But what do we mean by that? I as a man have an innate need to go out and procreate with more than one woman. Oh, that's evil. No, it's not evil, it's natural. But we put some societal constraints over that in the terms of morals and religion and our customs as a society where we say, not a good idea, don't go around knocking up a bunch of women, that's not good. Get you one woman, commit yourself to her, have some children. And we have this beautiful thing called a monogamous marriage. It's tough, but if you make it work, it's a good thing. Well, even with that, we still have a lot of infidelity. We have this thing, men, you know, divorcing— rather, it's women divorcing men more often than not. Again, whole other rabbit hole we can go down. And then men remarrying and all kinds of stuff. So this whole concept of, can we make monogamy work? Yes, but it's tough. And it's not for everybody. It's not for everybody long term. It's not for everybody long term in terms of trying to keep it sexy. It's tough. You got your work cut out for you. Can you do it? I don't know. Only one way to find out. And maybe part of that to make your job— easier is not the right word— to help maybe kind of mitigate some things and to try and figure things out without jumping in headfirst into the deep end maybe is to look at your family, your background, the background of your potential spouse. As much as I hate to say it, and as much as it makes people mad, and, you know, people clench their fist and yell at the sky when I say this, um, the biggest predictor of, uh, the behavior in an individual is just to take a timeout and say, let's go meet mom and dad, let's go see, um, where they came from, let's go see what their, their childhood was all about, let's see what kind of emotional tools they have in their toolbox, let's get to know them for a period of a few years before I commit 100% of this person via marriage and long-term monogamy. A lot of people go, years? And what does it matter if my mom and dad are psychos? You know, I'm not them. They have a point. I don't come from a perfect family. I have a lot of dysfunction in my family. But, um, if you're a betting man or woman, got your money on, uh, you know, what's the best way for me to determine how this is going to end up? Is this person going to, you know, cause a lot of chaos in my life? Well, look, do they come from chaos? Chances are higher. I'm sorry. So again, I just blab on and on about this. As you can see, this is topics that are near and dear to my heart. Um, uh, Leah, which I assume is a woman— Leah says from Facebook, says, uh, I think I began to resent my partner over the years for certain things he did or said. Those resentments build up until I literally hated him. No sex then. Talk through your resentments. Yeah, um, our buddy Dr. Psych Mom, Dr. Samantha Rodman-Whiten, has a very good term for probably what you're describing, Leah. Um, these empathic ruptures within a relationship. You expected your partner, man or woman, to do X, but instead they did Y. They took a left instead of a right. And, uh, one example that I give quite often— I apologize if you've heard me say this so many times, guys. I am a man that repeats himself quite a bit. More and more videos I do of this, I start to annoy myself. That's why I bring that up. But, um, something that It's so common that it's, I think Dr. Psych Mom mentions this, I may have ripped this off of her, but I've seen it myself and I've heard guys tell these stories, and that is the birth of their child. They're in the hospital room, baby's born, mother's exhausted, mother's stressed out, mother's anxious, but mother's just over the top in love with this new child. It's a beautiful moment for husband and wife to bond together over this new little thing that they created, and what does husband do? Hey, I'm gonna run home and take a shower and go get a bite to eat and run a few errands. Do anything while I'm out. And the wife's like, this is not how I thought this was going to go. I thought he was going to be here by my side, laying in bed with me with this child. I thought we would be here for hours together and go home together, and he's not going to go anywhere. I need him more now more than ever. But instead, he doesn't see that. He doesn't— he can't read the writing on the wall, and he's going to go home and take a shower and a nap and get a bite to eat. What the— what? And she'll bring that up, that moment, as being a major point of resentment for the next, oh, I don't know, 30 years if they last that long. That's one of a series of resentment, resentful-filled moments in their life. An empathic rupture, as Dr. Psych Mom calls it. And, um, those add up and those cause a lot of resentments. And in that moment, uh, women tend to be more agreeable than men and go with the flow and just be like, yeah, whatever. Um, you know, a lot of men hearing that say, what? Yeah, overall, I know maybe your toxic ex-wife wasn't that way, but women overall tend to be more agreeable than men. And in that case, her agreeableness may just make her go, oh, Okay. And he leaves and she cries. As opposed to going, whoa, mister, no, you're not going to go home and get a shower and what? No, I want you here with me and the baby. Okay. Sorry. But, but you avoid a lot of resentments that way if you, you know, stick up for yourself. So that's what Leah's saying here. Talk through your resentments. Before they get out of hand and you just end up loathing the other person. Clint says— Clint from Facebook says, after the second time, I'm not going down the marriage road again. Better off just staying single, especially since I want to retire before I die. Well, all right, I don't think anybody's going to protest that. Clint, are you getting much pushback from your social circle on that? Are they saying, no, Clint, you need to marry again, dude? Um, what I've seen is that a lot of men, you know, make these big proclamations like you are, like, damn it, I'm not doing this again. And I think a lot of men are kind of, in a way, a little pissed that society overall kind of pushes— not pushes back— society overall, do we just kind of shrug our shoulders and say, good for you, Clint, I don't know, what do you want from us, dude? It's like that, um, there's this whole movement online of men doing just that, call themselves MGTOW. M-G-T-O-W. It stands for men going their own way. They've taken in everything there is to learn about this relationship game. They probably had a bad relationship and it ended horribly, or they had no luck in the relationship game. They're just like, 'F this nonsense, this is nuts,' and they check out. And I think what pisses them off extra is that society, like I said, says, 'So step aside, dude, we don't give a fuck.' And that hurts some feelings. We're kind of hoping that society overall would say, 'Come back, Clint.' kind of need you, buddy. We're not seeing that much, are we? Um, the source of a lot of depression that I often say for men is the feeling of not being needed, that we're not an integral part of this life family machine. And as soon as we feel cast aside, um, there's a concept— I just did a video right before coming on live here, it's going to go out soon. Um, I've written on it, I did an interview with Carla Cravaro about it, where she has this series of material called The Forgotten Father. And, uh, I've pointed out that over the years I have learned there is nothing that pisses off women more— well, that's not fair— there's nothing that pisses off women in my comments online more than to point out that, you know, a lot of men, if not all men, feel a sense of being cast aside when we have children. In other words, your job's done, sperm boy. Beat it. And that hurts our feelings. And we're like, I kind of want to be more involved and feel like I'm a more integral part of this whole thing. And some of us flat out really try to shoehorn our way into the life and take over and do things. And we're told like, no dude, that's— you're doing it wrong. Or no, no, no, just back off. Just let me, let me handle it. Okay, just go beat it. And we, we beat it. We say, all right. And we grow further and further away from, from our partner and the family. And it sucks. And that's called the forgotten father is what Carla calls that. And, um, that also drives a lot of men away. Why would I want to do that again, to be forgotten all over again? So, deep subject there, Clint. Thank you for bringing it up. The whole, uh, not going down that road again. You say after the second time, does that mean a second marriage that ended poorly? Sorry to hear that. Not unusual. As you know, the stats show us that, uh, second, third, fourth subsequent marriages have a higher rate of divorce. Kind of sucks. I'm in a second marriage myself. Knock on wood, it keeps on keeping on. Hmm. Clint says that his family and friends are all supportive of his new single on my getting married ways, but they also say, yeah, you'll change your mind eventually. Kind of a speaking out of— what's the term— speaking out of both sides of their mouth kind of thing. Good for you, but you'll join team marriage here, trust me. Um, yeah, maybe not. Um, a lot of people are not, men and women alike. Like I say, it's statistically, it's more of the men that are apt to remarry versus women. As strange as that may seem to some men, that is a, a factual statement. Eric says hello from Saskatchewan. Eric from YouTube. Welcome, Eric from YouTube. Thank you for watching, buddy. I appreciate it. If you can get more of your YouTube buddies to watch these live things, I would appreciate it. And, uh, doing well on YouTube here lately, as I mentioned, getting a lot more folks subscribing and, uh, watching videos on there. So thank you all if you are watching this on YouTube. I think I may have like a— I could jump over to YouTube and see. Instead of saying I think, we have, what's it called, like Super Chat and all this other stuff where you can support myself via the chat by giving tips and so forth. I think I have enabled that. So if anybody is on YouTube and would like to say thank you, Ralphie boy, for all you do, you can give a few cents and I would greatly appreciate it. Uh, yeah, there I am on YouTube. Not looking good. I don't know if I've mentioned before, I don't enjoy watching myself in these videos. This is very uncomfortable for me. Talking about going past your comfort zone, you're thinking, you did? Because we see your dumb face all the time. Yeah, I know. Every time I see one of these uploads go up, I go, I'm not a visual person. I don't like doing these things, but I do it because It's the best way to reach people. I put out a podcast episode, for example, it gets a few thousand downloads. I put out an article, it gets a few hundred reads. That's it. I put out a little video, it potentially reaches millions of people. I've had some go in the millions— 5 million, 2 million. Hundreds of thousands is not unusual. So I'm no dummy, my writing's on the wall. If you want to get the word out, dude, about your business and your organization and help a lot of guys Better do videos. But, uh, I'm looking at myself over here on YouTube. So thank you all for watching and enduring my uncomfortability. Does anybody else have anything to add? Any questions, comments, anything at all? Anything you've, uh, that I've been talking about here over the last 30 minutes, uh, 25 minutes? Anything you've seen here recently? Any issues, questions, anything whatsoever? I see Leah on Facebook. It shows up as a blank on my end. I don't know what's going on there. Coffee. Talk amongst yourselves. All right, anybody at all, you know. We don't have to do these lives. I really don't want to talk to myself. I do that way too much anyway. Oh wow, Leia sent me 99 stars! Thank you, Leia, I appreciate that. I love watching your videos, she says. Well, thank you, Leia, I appreciate that a great deal. It's very nice of you. There it is, it just showed up on my screen. 99 cents, thank you so much. All right, awesome. I'll take that. I don't know what exactly I can do with that. I think that equals 99 cents. So, and it goes into a little fund, and then eventually after it builds so much, I can download and pay some bills. So thank you, Lea, appreciate that. Um, anybody else? Anything? If anybody have anything to share, let me see what we're doing numbers-wise here. Not a huge group today, you know. I understand this was kind of a last-minute thing. And Leia says, his first time ever doing that with the stars. Goes to show how much I like you. Oh, I like you too, Leia. Thank you so much, appreciate it. Where are you, uh, um, watching us from? I guess would be, where are you joining us from today, Leia? It's always a good, uh, conversation starter. Where's everybody from? Eric said he's from Saskatchewan, Canada. Very cool. Um, T-Dub, good old T-Dub, he's a regular on these. He says, um, DSO, top 3 patterns that you see in unhealthy relationships. Well, you put me on the spot to try and have top 3. Um, how about I just instead give you like a, um, an overall theme, I guess, that I see in unhealthy relationships? Um, an overall theme that I see again and again from men that talk to me is Here, listen to all this terribleness that I'm enduring in my relationship. I suck, and here's how I suck. She really sucks, and here's how she really sucks. And then you back it up and you say, uh, all right, let's just pause all that. Because, you know, for a lot of these guys, if I let them go, they just go for like an hour and they spend their money just basically unleashing on, on me, this stranger that they met on the internet. And, um, When we say timeout, you know, we— there's no sense in going on and on. You sold me on the fact that this is dysfunctional and she's got problems. Where's this shit come from, dude? Let's figure that out. Maybe that will help us kind of resolve things or help resolve things. And, and, uh, tell me about your childhood. Tell me about her childhood. And it's just— it starts in childhood and it continues on through young adulthood and through their life. It's just chaos. It's just a dumpster fire shit show over and over again of just life shitting on them, them creating their own chaos. It's just this whirlwind of terribleness. And you just listen to these stories and you're just like, what do you— and they're just trying to shoehorn within that a relationship. You know, when you try to shoehorn a relationship in this tornado of dog shit, and then you're sitting there going, man, wonder why it smells so bad here? Because you're in a tornado of dog shit. You're trying to create something out— you— the building blocks are literal This isn't gonna work, you know. And it— and some of this is at zero fault of either person, you know. My parents beat the shit out of me. I was sexually molested, you know. I had— as a teenager, I had a drug problem, ended up selling my body on the street. I cleaned up, but then I have all these problems. And I cheated on two people. And my— I've been cheated on every partner I've ever had. But then I found my one true love, and we got together. And oh, by the way, she comes from a very awful, dysfunctional relationship. Shit past too. And oh my gosh, I can't believe 10 years later we're in a shitstorm of chaos. That's what I see again and again. That's the general theme and the foundation for a lot of dysfunction that I see out there, is that just foundationally there's a lot of dysfunction. And so now you go down the road of, well, are you saying that everyone that comes from a shit past should just not try the whole relationship game? No, but somebody— it's usually a generational thing. Mom, dad usually came from a shit past, grandma, grandpa, and so on and so forth. And when you look at all these generations of shitty pasts. No one in that string of shitty pasts raises their hand and says, timeout, do we have to do the shitty thing? Can we just pause and work on ourselves and try and figure this shit out? Maybe go talk to somebody, therapy, maybe put the alcohol down. Alcohol is a big freaking issue. Um, maybe you should pause the relationship thing for a while and try to figure stuff out. Maybe I should work on myself mentally and physically. Maybe I should start, you know, putting together a proper prescription for a healthy daily life. No one does that. Everyone's just like, gotta get married, have kids. It's like, uh, and they just propagate and continue this dysfunctional train. So that's the general theme that I see, is people are just riding this dysfunctional train mindlessly and just pulling other people into their dysfunctional world. And those people tend to also bring their own dysfunction. So now we have compounded dysfunction, and it's just A giant freaking shit show. Um, a lot of blabbing, but thank you, T-Dub, for that. Going back and scrolling here. I apologize for my scrollings. Uh, Clint says, uh, yeah, second marriage for him. The first one he was cheated on. Sorry. Uh, second one drifted apart for all the usual reasons— little, no love, sex, respect in the relationship. I have two children from that marriage and one stepchild and one biological child. The stepchild has nothing to do with me, sadly. Not unheard of. Biological child and I are fine and care each other several times a week and every other weekend. Well, very good, but I'm sorry to hear that. So what you learn from that— it sounds like your grand solution, which is a, an easy one and an understandable one— is let me just bow out of the relationship game completely. Two for two, this ended horribly. Look at all this drama, chaos with the kids, stepkids, and everything. Let me just just now, case could be made that— understandable, dude, that's easy. You can avoid a lot of drama by just not making yourself vulnerable and open to relationships. Um, or you could, you know, take the more difficult but arguably more fruitful route of let's figure out where this came from. What— why was I attracted to and attracting these types of people? What brought me to this place in life? What caused all this chaos? And when you learn from that, you may at the end of learning from all that go, yeah, I'm still going to bow out of the relationship game for a while. That's more forever. That's just not my thing. Cool. That's— I'm not going to be one to, you know, strong-arm you and say, you hold a gun to your head and you better get a wife, damn it. If you don't want to, you don't want to. Okay, cool. Um, or you may come out of that saying, I'm going to pursue this relationship thing again, but this time without the blinders on. And you may, if you're like a lot of people that say, this is way different now. This is a way more fruitful and healthier outlook on life with a whole new potential partner pool out there. So best of luck to you. Joe from Facebook says, I love when I'm able to listen to your live shows, and I wanted to thank you for all that you do in your podcast and other information. You have been invaluable. Thank you so much, Joe. I appreciate that. There have been many people that I've given your name to watch and listen to. Oh, thank you. Oh, gonna make me cry, Joe. Thank you, appreciate that. Uh, good old Adnor. I remember Adnor. Um, he says, can folks move towards secure attachment from avoidant? Of course. And how much does family of origin matter? Everything, of course, and it matters a lot. Done. Okay, I'll expand on that a little bit. Um, what we see that is difficult, um, there is right now in the relationship talk sphere online, of which I'm a part of a theme of avoidant person is the devil, anxious person is the angel who just wants to try like hell to fix the relationship. And if it wasn't for that goddamn avoidant person, everything would be fine. And that's not necessarily fair. There are a lot of anxious people that have a lot of freaking problems and they got to work on a lot. And whether even if they were with a very secure person, it still wouldn't work out relationship-wise because they're so anxious, they're so clingy, so needy. So they have to work on their issues. But that being said, by my estimation, it would seem that yes, if, if you sat down in a— pardon me— an anxious and avoidant couple and you said, um, all right folks, here's what we're going to need to do. We've identified this dynamic here. You anxious, you got to work on your problems. More often than not, the anxious person sits up straight and says, yes, what do I got to do? And they got a pen and paper in hand and they're writing shit down, if not recording it. And then The second they go home, or probably when they go to the parking lot, they're YouTubing solutions and downloading books on Audible and everything else, while the avoidant person tends to be more like, "Oh, shit, here we go again. Always with the trying to fix the problems," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, they're probably less apt to try and come to center, but it is possible. Gotta reach them. You have to get past that wall of, you know, They value their independence over everything, the typical avoidant. I don't wanna be vulnerable and open up and everything else because I potentially am gonna lose my independence and I'm gonna have to bring you, anxious person, into my world and oh God, the chaos and stress and anxiety of that and yuck. So it takes probably professional help to say, no, no, no, you got some work to do, Mr. or Ms. Avoidant, and to come more to center and here's what that work involves., and, um, it takes a lot, both sides. It takes a lot, but I, you know, not to demonize the avoidant person, but from what I've seen, oh boy, it takes a lot. And, uh, also ironically, from what I've seen, as avoidant person does work, uh, let's, you know, here's anxious person and they're doing the work. Here's center, like the secure. That anxious person does all this work at hyper speed, goes to therapy, reading every book imaginable, joining groups like mine, the DSO fraternity, dsofraternity.com, and And they go from anxious to secure, shroom, like in record speed. It may take months, years, whatever, but it's pretty fast considering all they have to work on because they're just boom, boom, boom, go, go, go. And as they come to center and they look over at Mr. or Ms. Avoidant and they're like, man, you're going slow here. I've watched you, you took 5 steps forward and then 3 back and then 3 back again and you're where you were before, you're worse than where you were before. Now I'm watching you come forward again and now you're taking more steps back. Then I'm watching you come forward again and more steps back. Eventually, from what I've seen, those formerly anxious types say, I got more value, you know, now than what I've ever had, and my sense of worth is through the roof. And I, you know, not to say they're narcissistic anyway, but they finally recognize, like, I'm a pretty big deal. I'm a good spouse. I'm a good person. And I would— here I am chasing after this person and, you know, waiting, going, when are you gonna be healthy, dude or gal? Well, come on. And they lose hope and they lose patience and they just say, I'm out of here. That's what I've seen quite a bit, if not more often than not. Anxious gets impatient. Anxious says, screw you, avoidant. I'm worth more than this. Adios. And the avoidant's like, nah, fuck it, back to being avoidant again. But what really fucks us up, us anxious insecure people, is that those avoidant types really don't seem very avoidant, do they, during the early stages of the relationship? They're— if you click at that level, they can be hypersexual, they can be touching and loving, maybe not to the degree that you like 100%, but enough to get you hooked and enough for you to say, could be better, but good enough. And then 3, 4 years down the line, you're like, not good enough, nowhere near good enough. What's wrong with this person? They just checked out completely. They're just not a romantic person in any way, shape, or form. This sucks. It's tough being with an avoidant person. It's tough, and I speak from experience. Pardon me while I go through the comments here. Some of it's kind of redundant from what I've already been saying for the last so many minutes. He— T-Dub is asking if I have seen or read the new Gottman book, Fight Right. No, I haven't. Fits right in with the entire DSO library. I will have to check that out. Yet another relationship book. I've read enough of those, but I will suggest it. Maybe Audible seems to be the way I'm taking in books lately. Don't really have much time to sit and read these days, unfortunately, but I can certainly add that to the list. What, you know, I don't know if you want to give us a rundown or we can Google that on our own. You don't have to do that for us, but what, Fight Right? Oh, so how people should argue effectively, I guess, in a healthy way. Interesting. Um, Andrea wants to know what happens when both are anxious. Oh boy, I don't know how common that is, to be quite honest with you. I think both of them try to out-anxious each other. That would be a— that makes me anxious just thinking about it. Um, uh, Leah says that I'm— I was overattached in my first relationship and now she's avoidant. She says, so I don't get hurt again, afraid to try again. Pretty common thing, isn't it? And bouncing between the personas of your anxious and avoidant, I would say was something you learned early on. I'm no psychologist, but from what I've heard, a pretty common thing where it's, let's say, just for— it's typically this way. Dad avoidant person, very, you know, I don't like to talk about emotions. Mom trying to appeal to emotions constantly. Please, let's go to counseling. 'Let's read this book together. Let's do these things together.' She's the anxious one pursuing. I know for a lot of men they're like, 'What? That exists?' Yes, it does, believe it or not. Um, and you as a child just sitting back and watching the show, like watching a tennis match. And then you, uh, take all that in, and that becomes part of your persona as an adult. And you're able to bounce back and forth between the two personas. I'm more of— I'm very anxious now, like Mom was. Oh, look at that, I was dumped and hurt. Let me go over here and take these skills that Dad taught me. Now I'm misavoidant. Uh, pretty common thing. And that is something that I also can relate to. My father was more avoidant than Mom. He was probably more disorganized of where he bounced between the two. I saw as a kid, but my mother was— oh wow, I was going to say pretty much 100% anxious. That's not true either. Both of them bounced between the two, which, you know, we're humans. We're not like— it's not like we were, you know, given hand of cards and say, that's all you got, this is what you got to deal with. We, you know, we borrow and take from all these different personality traits and everything else depends on the situation. But yet my, my mom and dad probably were not the healthiest relationship in the world for the most part. They had their moments. It was, it was— I saw a lot of positive, but I saw a lot of negative as well. And that's a big, big reason why I'm here today with all you folks. Uh, Bradley from Facebook says, keep up the good work, I look forward to your future videos and live streams. Well, thank you, Bradley. It is scary how many of us are going through and have navigated through these issues. And you say these issues, from what I've learned, Bradley, that's all over the place, my man. You know, um, by virtue of my brand name, The Dad Starting Over, you would think it's a guy who's been dumped, divorced, and he's starting over in life. That's one aspect of it. And then we have guys that are still married and it's not working, it's toxic, it's gross, and they're trying like hell to make it work. And, um, more often than not they end up with the divorce and everything else and quote starting over. But starting over means different things to different people. I'm in this relationship, I've been a shithead husband for a while, I'm going to start over and do things right from now on. Wife, new chapter, that's starting over. I've been dumped and divorced and now I'm starting over, that's the most obvious one. It's a bunch of different ways that men use, um, the term starting over. Daniel from Facebook says, hello, I am a gay man and I just bought your book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, trying to figure out some things for myself. To be plain, I am the husband who plays the role of the woman, not the provider, who also wants to have sex. I'm a guy, but the provider, quote, does not want to or is interested at all. There are— how interesting— there are some dynamics of your book that I can relate from the gay perspective so far. Do you think that you will write a book from the perspective of women No, because I'm not one, to be fair. Or the gay guy who plays the role of the wife in the relationship. How interesting, talking about the role play and everything else. You know, it's interesting, Daniel, that is not considered at this day and age to be the most politically correct thing in the world to say, where two men are together in a gay relationship and one, one is the feminine role and one is the masculine role. One is the top, one is the bottom, and whatever the terminology may be. I'm a heterosexual man, so I can't really speak to that perspective. I certainly welcome— I love it. I'm very open to— I had, uh, not too long ago, a person said, uh, do you think you have any, um, uh, gay members of the DSO fraternity or men's group? And I said, you know what, I don't know. I have no idea. But I'll tell you what, if we did, I welcome— dude, you bring a valued perspective. Love it. You know, tell us more about your world. We can learn from you and you can learn from us. I have no problem with that. Um, What's interesting, Daniel, is you may not know there is a hierarchy of— if we were to measure, um, sexual activity within committed relationships, here's how that hierarchy goes. How interesting this is. Bottom of the totem pole, lowest amount of activity over a long-term period is lesbian relationship, a gay relationship between a woman and a woman. Lowest of the low. Next, hetero, man-woman. Highest form, typically when these people are surveyed and polled, they get the most action done in the bedroom is the gay relationship, man and man. Shouldn't come as a surprise. Men tend to have a higher libido. You put two men together, the two horn dogs, um, in the world of, um, uh, gay relationships, it's promiscuity is not an unheard of thing. There's the world of, if you live in some of the major cities like New York City, San Francisco, and so forth, with. There was an industry for years before the big AIDS crisis called, uh, bathhouses, which were basically just big industries, uh, what do you call it, steam rooms, kind of like a spa, sauna if you will, where men just got together and had sex. It was just a known— there was, there was throughout New York, there's like dozens of these places where men just got together and had sex, casual sex with each other. No such thing really exists, at least not to that degree for a heterosexual or the lesbian relationships. Kind of interesting. So to hear that from you, Daniel, I'm like, oh, interesting that, uh, the dead bedroom thing has affected you. I'm sorry to hear that. Um, do you have any thoughts as to why that is? Um, you know, not to make you feel worse or to kick a man while he's down, but for me to say, that's unusual, Daniel, because usually gay men have really good sex lives. And you're like, no, we don't. I'm sorry to hear that. Hope it improves for you. But no, not going to write a book from the woman's perspective. Not a woman. Or nor from the gay male perspective. Hetero dude. So sorry. But I'm sure such books may exist. There is a book out there all about, I guess you could say, sexual health and function in women. And that book is by an author known as, uh, known as, uh, her name is Emily Nagoski. I believe that's how you pronounce it. And the book is called Come As You Are. Love the double entendre, right? And, um, the book is like this thick. My book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, is like this. Her book is like this. And, uh, I often joke that the book can be summarized as such: female sexuality is extremely complicated and don't you dare feel any kind of shame or feel that you need to fix your sexuality, woman who is reading this, reader, because whatever flavor of sexuality you have, that's you. Have fun, enjoy it. And a lot of men read that book and come away like, that was a lot of back and forth, up and down, left and right, just to get to the point of like, whatever floats your boat, it's cool. You're, you're fine the way you are. And men typically don't function that way. We're more of, no, I need an instruction manual, quick and to the point, like my book The Dead Bedroom Fix. Instruction manual says insert tab A into slot B, try that out. If it doesn't work, then try this over here. That's how we function. We're like, it's not— I'm not happy with the way things are, must fix. How do I fix? Hence the book called The Dead Bedroom Fix. Emily Nagoski's book, which is aimed at women, is more of, wow, women are complicated. When you read that, you'll be like, yeah, women are complicated. Um, sometimes the genital, genital response doesn't go according to the head response. In other words, woman could say, I am really turned on by fill in the blank, and then you show her something completely different. There are some experiments that have been done out there that are not so nice when you read them, that open up a whole can of worms of thoughts and discussion. But anyway, Her body may respond to a completely different stimuli, and the body is saying, I like this, and her brain is saying, I don't. It's funny how the two are not in concert with each other necessarily. But for men, I look at this and I like it. We know right away we like it, right? But, um, that's not so much the case for women. It's much more difficult. And there's a lot for women that gets in the way of sexuality and libido. And Emily very— and she does a very good job of using the analogy of in your car you have the accelerator, the gas, and then you have the brakes. And she says for women there's a lot of brakes, a lot of things that can get in the way of hitting that gas. So I don't like this, I don't like that. And men tend to have far fewer brakes. We're just like, looks good, and we hit that gas pedal and we floor it. Um, and Leia says, I have to be in the right mindset and very comfortable with a man to even come close. Comfortable, safety— this is something, uh, Leia, you can, uh, attest to this, I'm sure. Um, that is something that a lot of men cannot empathize with, is the, uh, comfort and safety. Um, I mean, let's, let's, let's look at this very pragmatically. Not to throw men under the bus, not to paint men as monsters, but usually if I'm a woman and I'm with a man, I'm getting to know him, I like him, we're starting to get physical. Usually in that case, the man is usually bigger and stronger than the woman, so he could at any moment turn and decide to become violent. And in a lot of situations, there's nothing the woman can really do about that. She becomes the victim. So that sounds kind of like, well, how often is that gonna happen, dude? It happens. People get hurt all the time by monster human beings out there. So to have that in the back of your mind as a woman, that is something that we as men cannot appreciate. We don't have that mechanism usually in our relationships. We're just like, she's pretty, I want her. While a woman may have like, he's handsome, he's charming, he's all these other things. Do I want to take the next step and really be vulnerable and, you know, literally and metaphorically open myself up to this person who could potentially not only emotionally hurt me, which is something that a lot of men are scared of— I'm going to get dumped, I'm going to be whatever by this woman, heartbroken— but I could be really physically hurt, if not killed, by this person. They could flip on a dime and there's nothing I can do. And I'm going to bring them back to my apartment and, you know, be open and vulnerable. So that's really tough for some women to get there. Mentally and physically to feel safe and secure with a person enough to get to that point. Yet, um, we, you know, if any of us have dated and stuff, we know you can get to that point relatively quickly. And there's, there's some guys that can attest to those lucky bastards out there that, um, no, you can get to that point quickly. I've done it, you know, hundreds of times with hundreds of women. There's those men out there that will tell you there's Certain buttons you push and certain things to do and act a certain way, and you can get them to the finish line relatively quickly. Finish line being willing to have intercourse with you. It's a big thing. And T-Dub says, yeah, trust and safety meter is really important. I missed and assumed trust for too long. Good point, Leah. Yeah, thank you, Leah, for sharing that. And Daniel says, thank you, appreciate time, your time to answer. Well, thank you, Daniel. Appreciate you coming in and giving a new perspective on this. I hope I've made it clear. Um, there is, um, there's a fine line I have to walk here, and that is I recognize that, uh, for whatever reason— and I'm sure somebody could study this and figure out what's going on— but, um, when it comes to the relationship sphere talk, of which, let's be honest, a lot of it in, in my world is kind of hyper-masculine, man the fuck up kind of stuff, right? Why? Because, well, a lot of us need to man the fuck up. Let's be honest, we have a, we have a lot of boys out there who need to grow up, and we have a lot of guys who've been told that any kind of hint of masculinity and toughness is like Neanderthal shitty behavior. And it leaves a lot of women saying, where'd all the dudes go? And, uh, myself and others are kind of— that's not my primary push, but it's part of my message is, oh, you don't gotta man the fuck up, you know. Part of it's the simple stuff like exercise and exert yourself, and it's good for your health and build your body and all this other stuff. And taking charge and having boundaries and knowing when to say no and all this other good stuff. Where was I going with that? Wow, I already lost my train of thought. And, um, oh, so anyway, that attracts a certain subset of people. And one, one big chunk of my population of viewers, readers, whatever, are what we would say are— the term I often use is traditional conservative men. And traditional conservative men typically come from, in the States, a certain part like the Southeast, for example, Midwest. A big chunk of my population, I've noticed, comes from that world, and very religious-based usually. And, uh, some really great men, very hard workers, very family-focused. They take their vows very seriously. That's something I've learned. They put up with a lot of shit. That's something else I've learned over the years. In order to keep the sanctity of marriage going, keep the marriage machine running, they'll put up with a lot of shit. And they are often, not always, maybe not the most tolerant group in the world of people like yourself, Daniel. So if you have a gay man saying, hey, can I join the club? There's probably a lot of those men that would say, No, I'm not comfortable with this. So I have to, um, you know, be, uh, respectful of their culture, and at the same time, my more progressive mindset in that way. It's hard to— it's hard to mesh the two. And, um, we haven't really had that much opportunity. We've had a couple of men that admitted in the group to being bisexual, but no, nobody has said that they're predominantly gay, trans, or anything like that in our group, and certainly not in the comments in my videos and so forth. I can see if you look through the comments in my videos, you'll see probably mostly conservative men, which begs the question: I am attracting people who have relationship problems. That's who watches my material, and a big chunk of them are conservative men. Does that point out that conservative men tend to have relationship problems? I think that's too simplistic of a conclusion. I think it's that they tend to probably fight more than the rest and put up with more stuff, as I said, because of the pressure of their social group and religion and so forth, and their moral makeup and so forth causes them to, you know, walk in on their wife banging some dude and they go, well, let me go to the pastor at church and talk about this. And the pastor says, you got to work on your marriage, buddy. You slipped up. You lost your way somehow. "and that's why your wife is doing that. Seriously, I hear these stories from men." And the man says, "Well, all right, better get back to work." So I think, case to be made, the conservative types are more apt to do that and more apt to reach out and look for solutions, and they find my material. So I welcome them, certainly. I'm not one to judge. I'm not one of those conservative guys, "You're all monsters." No. Or liberal guys, "You're all a bunch of pussies." No. Sorry, language. Anywho, uh, that's my take on that. Um, and then T-Dub says, do you feel that there should be more relationship education in primary schooling? Oh man, now you're going to open up a can of worms there. What would that entail? Because as soon as I put together a curricula of, uh, here's how to properly navigate a relationship, I guarantee you, let's say you put 20 parents in a room and said, here's a curricula we are thinking of coming be, you know, out with when it comes to healthy relationships between men and women. And you're probably gonna have 20 parents stand up and go, "Bullshit. Nope, not doing that. Here's how it should be." And they'll all disagree with each other. It's just such a complicated thing. And then they'll say that's the kind of talk that should be left to the church or should be left to home. But neither church or home is really properly addressing that as far as I could tell. I don't know. It's a tough one. Ideally, yes. Immediately my detail-oriented brain goes to, how would you do that? How would you properly do that? How would you successfully pull that off? I don't know, dude. Don't know how you could do that. Um, my, um, my kids go to a Catholic private school, one in, uh, middle school and the other one is about to graduate high school soon. And they had talk from, uh, they had a religion class, and in that religion class they talk about family and the importance of and man, woman, man's job, and all this other stuff. Interestingly, you conservative guys will love this, uh, in my private Catholic school, in the religion course, it is very pro-feminism. And the double interesting thing of that is my boys come from that, and I did not— hand to God— I did not, you know, uh, prejudice prejudice them in any way. But my boys come out of that class rolling their eyes going, oh God. And it's a male teacher, by the way. Look what— listen to what Mr. So-and-so today said about feminism. I'm like, well, what do you think about that? And boys do not take kindly to it. There is a theme in, in the school, and going down another rabbit hole, um, that my boys have noticed. And based on the stories they tell me, I would agree the theme seems to be, uh, Boys bad, girls good. And they're told, you know, sit down, shut up, keep the boys in line. Don't look girls, don't touch girls, don't do nothing girls. The theme seems to be— and this is something I heard in my schooling as well— it's like, you know, boys can get out of hand pretty quick and we got to do all we can to keep them in line or else this whole, you know, place is going to erupt in chaos. That seems to carry over into this generation as well. And the boys hear that and then they hear messaging in terms of feminism and so forth. Um, uh, Leah says, how interesting. This is Leah, that we hear so much the same from men. Uh, my biggest mistake was putting my man on a pedestal. He was my everything, and then it fell apart. He passed away 5 years ago. I was a widow at 35. Now I miss him a lot. Oh, sorry to hear that, Leah. That's sad, such a young age. Wow. But men all think the same thing. Well, um, In what way was it a mistake of yours to put him on a pedestal? What does that mean? What did that result in? Why was that a mistake? Did he treat you poorly because of it? Did you lose yourself? Is that why it was a mistake? Or was a mistake simply because you lost him and you felt like it was for naught, for nothing? I mean, that was, um, that was a chapter in your life that I'm sure had a lot of positive. You know, it's kind of like these guys who tell me like, uh, I was with my wife for 20 years, it was 20 awesome years, and then she I'm— don't jump on me for saying this, it's just something I hear a lot. And then she went through menopause and she had a very difficult time and her personality shifted a great deal and she cheated on me and she ran off and blew all our money and got a tattoo and boob job and started going nuts. And she left me and she dumped me and I'm heartbroken and I miss my partner, my best friend and my wife. And it feels like all that 20 years was for nothing, the guy will say. I say, no, dude, it wasn't for nothing. You had a great 20-year chapter in your life, and then it ended horribly, awfully, with, you know, great drama and terribleness, and you were hurt awfully. But that doesn't negate the 20 good years you had together. You can look back on that and smile and just say, that was good. You know, year 21 was a shit show, but the 20 years was a, was a good thing. You know, don't let them and their bad deeds and their dysfunction and their mental illness take that away from you. And that's what I'd say to you, Leah. Sounds like you may have had a good thing going there. I'm not going to put words in your mouth. Maybe it wasn't such a good thing before his passing. Um, um, she says, yes, I lost myself. We had 2 kids. He died of a heart attack, young age, and, uh, glad to have my kids now 13 and 19. I am— my father passed from a heart attack at a young age. He was 53 though, so I would assume that's a little bit older than your hubby was. So yeah, sorry to hear that. Um, T-Dub signing off, and I'm going to sign off here shortly too if nobody else has anything else to share. Always good to hang out with you folks. I appreciate every last one of you. DadStartingOver.com, if you could give me a follow— Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. YouTube starting to take off thanks to paying money for ads. Great, Google, thanks for making me do that. I would love to have similar success on Twitter. We'd love to spread the word, get outside of this shell of Facebook here. Facebook and TikTok, those are my two big ones. Um, so follow me on all those if you could. Please give me a subscribe, give me a like, share. Uh, sharing is huge across all those different platforms. Um, the little algorithm, as they say, really likes it when people share because the whole point of social media is to be social. Excuse me, and talk to each other and share. And, um, the more you do that, the more they say, well, this is good stuff, and they continue putting it out in front of everybody. So if you could continue to share, I appreciate it. dadstartingover.com, the DSO fraternity. Leah says, the first time you've chatted with an influencer. Am I an influencer? My wife calls me an influencer too. I say, who am I influencing? I guess I'm influencing. Cool. Yeah, okay. Or a content creator, whatever. Cool, I'll take it. Well, thank you for engaging, Leah. I appreciate you a great deal and look forward to seeing you around more. I would love to say I'm going to do these every Thursday at this time, but my schedule is all over the place. I got 4 kids. I, I travel between 2 different places. It's a long story. I'm very busy. It's tough to get my schedule going right. Just when I think I got something going, some kid gets sick and it just throws everything for a loop. I don't know if you could tell, I just got over being sick. Um, everybody's sick. So, but, uh, I guess just keep your eyes peeled. And I didn't announce this one until this morning, so sorry about that, folks. That probably why we have a relatively low turnout. But, um, thank you all so very much. I appreciate you. Again, thank you, YouTubers, Facebookers. Where else is this? TikTok? No, not TikTok. Uh, Twitterers? Xers now they call them. That doesn't work, does it? I don't know what Elon was thinking with that one. But appreciate all of you. Thank you again. DadStartingOver.com and Be seeing you fine folks around. You have a good rest of your week and a good weekend. A toodaloo.