Chat LIVE with Ralph (DSO)!

All right, all right, all right. Welcome everyone, it's your boy Raffalito back live once again. Had some technical issues. This Riverside program is giving me fits. It doesn't want to connect to YouTube. Last time I did a live stream, apparently it didn't go to the Dad Storing Over YouTube page. I don't know what's going on with that, and it doesn't want to go to the Help for Men YouTube page. I just checked, we're good to go on the Dad Starting Over as well as the Dad Starting Over Facebook. So, all right, welcome everybody, hope you're doing well. Let me, uh, there's something here, pause upload. All right, how you guys doing today? I hope well. Good, good, glad to hear it. Um, check it out, I got the butt mug going today. You guys haven't seen my butt mug. Look, it's a butt. This company— oh, I wish I could see. Who— one second. Who makes the butt mug? I'm sure somebody's wondering. Does it say who makes the butt mug? I can't read it. Oh man. I don't know. Can't read it. Too tiny a print. Some company makes this butt mug. And they make it also with boobies. There's a boobie mug and a butt mug. My wife got me that. It's a little insight into our humor as a couple. Coffee mugs with butts on them, ladies and gentlemen. Doesn't get any better than that. All right. Okay, so for those that don't know, you know, I'm trying to look into the camera here. I got my big— that's good as it gets. For those that don't know, my name's Ralph Brewer. I've been putting out content for over a decade now under the name of Dad Starting Over. Started off as a blog, text on the screen, eventually morphed into over the last several years video, lots and lots of video. I could put out a blog entry or something like that and even a podcast and, you know, hundreds, a few thousand people will read it. I put out a video, potentially millions of people read it. I've written books. One of those books became kind of a hit. Especially for a self-published book by some schmuck working out of his basement. And that book has grew so much so in popularity that there are 3 editions of the book, sequels I guess if you will. The book was called The Dead Bedroom Fix. Some of you came to me or watching this via that book, so thank you very much for purchasing. I appreciate it. First edition of that book came out in 2017, second edition came out in 2020. Yes, these are sequels. You don't, you know, You don't have to buy all 3, just buy the latest one. And the latest one came out in 2024. The book is called The Dad Bedroom Fix, and you can learn more at dadbedroomfix.com, all one word, dadbedroomfix.com. Check it out. My bestselling book, biggest thing I've ever done by far. And, uh, what I've learned over the years of talking about all kinds of stuff as a dad starting over— I went through a divorce like 12+ years ago. Um, of all the topics I've ever written on, done videos on, whatever, nothing moves the needle quite as much as the old SEX. Bunch of pervs out there. Basically, I could talk about money, I could talk about fitness, I could talk about career stuff, parenting, whatever, you know, single dad stuff, if you will. And when I talk about, hey, let's talk about sex and marriage, let's talk about the lack thereof, let's talk about sex and dating, let's talk about sex and whatever, guys finally wake up, men and women alike, and people click on stuff and away you go. So that's why if you see my bald head, Talking a lot about the old SEX. It's not like that's the only thing I want to talk about, but it's the only thing that shows up on your feed. It's the only thing that shows up in your algorithm because Facebook, YouTube, whatever, seems to think like this is what you want to see because everybody wants to see it. So there you go, that explains that. So maybe that's why some of you are watching this going, that's the sex dude. It's not all I talk about, okay folks? Talk about a lot of other stuff, but it seems that's the only important thing. Um, I have a couple of, uh, YouTube channels. Some of you are watching this on the Dad Starting Over YouTube channel. I also have another channel called Help for Men. For those that don't know, if you're watching this live, there's a little logo on the corner there. Help for Men is the name of our larger organization. Oh, you can't see it behind me, it's out of frame there, but there's a sign behind me that also says Help for Men. And Leah says, hey, it's a sex dude. I'll take it, thanks. But Help for Men is the name of our larger organization. You can learn more at helpformen.com. Dad Starting Over, I've created content under that name, but we have a larger organization, Help for Men, and part of that is a private support community for men only. So if you're a dude that wants to talk about sex, sure, or divorce, starting over, parenting, all that stuff that a lot of guys go through, you don't have a lot of guys to talk to about it. Guys that have been cheated on, going through all this nonsense. Yes, there is a private support community for you guys, and we call it the Brotherhood. And you can learn more at help4men.com/join. Help4men.com/join. Do I have the text here? One moment, please. Give me a second. Man, this program is just being all kinds of slow today. There you go. Whoops. There we go. Help4men.com/join is the name of the website, or that link rather, the URL. So type that in on your browser, on your phone, or on your computer, and you'll go right to learning all about our community, the Brotherhood. Try it out for a month or two. If you don't like it, you can just quit, no biggie. But if you're like most guys, almost 3/4 of our membership try it out for a couple of months and then sign up for a lifetime deal. So they put down some money. Yes, there's a small cost involved in joining us. They put down a larger sum up front so they don't have to worry about any kind of monthly anything. They just pay once and done, and they're in for life. And yeah, we've been around for a while. We're going on our 6th, 7th year now as a group. We've had annual conferences. Our 5th annual conference in the United States is coming up here in a few weeks in Charleston, South Carolina. Already sold out, so sorry you can't join us. It's on the beach. How cool is that? Big beach house. And we're going to get together as a smallish group for the first time. We've had groups as large as 50+ guys get together. This one's going to be a small group just to try something different. Next year, 2026, we're working on a BroFest, is what we call our annual gathering in the United States. I say in the United States because our guys in Australia, they do their own conference and they call it Matefest. So we got Brofest in the United States, Matefest in Australia. Get it? And anywho, in 2026, we're going to meet in Louisville, Kentucky. And we're going to have myself is going to be there, obviously, everybody else on the Help for Men team. We're going to have Dr. Robert Glover, the author of No More Mr. Nice Guy. One of the biggest dudes in our man-help world, if you will. He'll be there hanging out for the weekend. And a gentleman by the name of Adam Nissenson, he's the Betrayal Shrink. Go to betrayalshrink.com and check out his book, A Man's Guide to Partner Betrayal. Talks all about, you know, you've been cheated on. He's a marriage family therapist. And he also specializes in guys that are working on maybe the possibility that you have what's called a sex addiction. Not that common, but every now and then we have a guy who, you know, is inflicted with that, if you will. And Adam can help you out. So he's a good guy to learn from. So he'll be hanging out for the weekend as well. And then we have Lauren, the Dadvocate. You guys have seen her videos that reached millions and millions of folks. Lauren, the Dadvocate, talks all about all things relationship-oriented. She's been a big advocate, as her name implies, for fathers, divorced fathers. Her husband is one. And they've dealt with custody issues and so forth. So she created an account years ago called The Dadvocate. She's been very popular. She's done— she's spoken at conferences and functions all over. So she'll be coming to ours and hanging out with us for the weekend as well. BroFest. Lauren, The Dadvocate, Adam Nissensohn, Dr. Robert Glover, myself, and others are going to be joining us. BroFest. So go to brofest2026.com. Let me put that in the chat, shall I? I can't see what I'm typing because I'm blind and old. All right, is that— looks good, I think. Um, there you go, Brofest 2026. Did I get the— oh, shitballs, I'm so blind, guys. Good Lord. Yeah, it looks good. Even these are like— you gotta up the strength on the glasses, I think. Uh, we got Mike. Any plans for a UK meetup? You know, we have guys in the UK that are a member of our, uh, um, Brotherhood community, and they have met together as an informal meetup, if you will, just hang out kind of thing. But as far as a conference is concerned, no, we haven't. Um, maybe one day we'll have enough numbers to do something to justify going through the expense of doing that in Europe. Somewhere. But putting on these events is unbelievably expensive. Ugh. Yes, we have to charge a fee if you want to come join these events. I would love to do it for free, but it ain't happening. I mean, you gotta— you pay this person, that person to show up. You got to pay the venues, you got to pay the IT fee. And we even had one that was a hotel. Where was that? Austin, Texas. So we, we had a nice hotel in Austin. It's like an Omni or something like that. And, uh, we— that was our one of our biggest BroFests ever. Worked really well. We had big guests that showed up. But these hotels, man, it was like, uh, we would like Wi-Fi for our room that we're going to be in because we're going to stream some of these things and people want to connect to the internet and stuff. They charge us like— I'm not joking— it was something like $1,500 a day or something ridiculous like that for Wi-Fi access. And we're like, we're not doing that. So we figured out some way to have a hotspot and, you know, cellular hotspot, bring our little hotspot router thingy and do all that. And it worked out well. But what was funny is we get there and we're asking like the IT guy for like, you have a connection and for the, you know, extension cord plugs and stuff like that. And he's like, he was looking at our stuff. We had like signage up and things. And he's like, I know you guys. It's like, you do? He's like, yeah, I follow you on the internet. He's like, what do you guys need? Like, extension cord, blah, blah, blah. He goes, do you need internet access? And we're like, yeah, but not for no $1,500 a month or whatever. He's like, I got you, don't worry about that. He set us up for no charge, high, super high-speed internet the whole weekend that we were there. It was awesome. So I guess it pays to put a bunch of these dumb little videos and stuff out there. You never know who's watching. Could be the IT guy at the hotel. So that was cool. So yeah, a lot of costs involved. So for us to put on an event like in the UK or anywhere, it's like, well, we need to have a good number of people show up, people that will pay to show up so we can cover the cost of all these venues and everything else. It's a nightmare. But informal meetups, sure. We have guys all the time that are like, I'm in Columbus, Ohio, anybody want to get together for a beer or something like that? Yada yada, this Friday I'm gonna be in town in Fort Lauderdale, anybody wanna get together? So we could have people in the UK. What's funny is that we have one gentleman from the UK coming all the way to South Carolina here in a few weeks to join us. That's cool. Do we have any others that are international? I think we have one more and I can't remember who it is. But mostly United States folks. We had a guy come, Steve came all the way from Australia when we had our conference in Las Vegas. So that was cool. It was years ago. So we have been to Nashville, Austin, Las Vegas, New Orleans, uh, Charleston coming up here soon, and then number 6, 6th annual conference will be in Louisville, Kentucky. So that will be cool. Would love for you guys to join us. Yes, it's open to the public. You don't have to be a member of our group. We're hoping you come join us, see what it's all about, and maybe you want to join our group for real. And, uh, we have— as a member of our community, the Brotherhood, you get access to private discussion forums. Right now all you guys are like commenting on my, uh, videos and posts online on Facebook and so forth. I don't know if you're aware, everyone can see what the heck it is you, you write. So while you guys bitching about your wife and ex-wife, they can see that probably. If all they got to do is go clicking around, they can probably find your stuff. But we have a completely private discussion forums that no one else in the world can see what you're typing. We also have live Zoom meetings that only you guys can attend, the Brotherhood members can attend. We have a lot of those Zoom meetings every week. We record all of those Zoom meetings, so if you want to listen back to them, you can. If you happen to miss one. Most guys miss them because there's hundreds and hundreds of members and only like at most like 30 guys show up to a meeting usually. And so if you want to listen to the recording, we archive all of those and you can listen to them actually right from your phone. It's pretty cool. And we have like over at this point probably like 1,300 hours of meetings recorded. That's a lot. And other books that I've written, the one book I mentioned, Dead Bedroom Fix, as well as 3 other books And Coach Austin on our team, he wrote a book too called Why Sex Ends After Kids and How to Fix It. All my books, Austin's book, no additional charge. You can download ebook format as well as, uh, listen audiobook version. Pretty cool. We get together at the conferences I mentioned. Um, you can book time with me one-on-one if you want to chat and work with me, kind of mentor you and help you through things in life, as well as other guys on the team. Um, the cost if you're a Brotherhood member is way cheaper than if you're in the general public. And what else we got? Courses, some of them for free, articles, videos, you name it. So join the Brotherhood, helpformen.com/join. Check it out, ladies and germs— just germs, no ladies, sorry. Uh, nothing against you ladies. Leah, welcome, love you, but just for the men. Um, anything else Guys, the purpose of these live streams is not to sit and watch Ralph pontificate and blab on and on about things, but it is to interact. You got me here, let's talk, shall we? Um, anything, any questions you may have, anything you have seen of mine recently, any issues in your own life you want to bring up, anything at all, that's why I am here. If for some strange reason you value my opinion on things, which some people apparently do, still haven't figured that out. But thank you. Got a lot of you watching me sometimes. Hey, now's the time to chime in. We got Mr. Rapid says, "Hi, mate." Well, hello, mate, right back at you. With the mate, is that UK or Australia? Neither one use the whole mate thing. For those just joining, I have a butt on my mug. Let me not obscure the butt. That's my butt mug. My favorite mug of all my mugs. Rapid says, "What's going on?" Well, just hanging out here, Rapid. You know, it's a Friday afternoon. Thought I'd hang out with my internet pals. Not a whole lot of interaction so far. If you guys would like to ask a question— Hey, Mr. Rapid, you got a question for yours truly? Now that we got you here? Anybody else? Anyone? Anyone? Going once, twice. Let me jump on over and make sure I'm all good over here. Australia, he says. Cool. Welcome. Mm-hmm. Let me refresh this bad boy. Oh, we don't need to hear that. Hear me talking to myself. Actually, we don't need any audio coming out of the computer, do we? Pardon me, folks, clicking away here. All right, we're still good. Just making sure everything's cool. Mr. Rapid says you are a full-time couples counselor and you like my material. Well, thank you, sir. Always nice to hear from the actual professionals, the actual credentialed individuals. Thank you so very much. That's good. Yeah, it always, um, it's validating to hear either via clients of legitimate counselors who say, my counselor suggested your book to me, and he suggested I book time with you to work in concert with what we're doing. Like, so you have a counselor, guy or gal, and you're working through them through therapy and trying to figure out some of your issues, and they're like, you need somebody to go through your post-divorce stuff or your dead bedroom stuff on a day-to-day basis, or not day-to-day I'm not going to talk to you every day, maybe a weekly basis or every month or something like that. And I suggest this guy Ralph Brewer, this Dad Starting Over dude, or this Help for Men dude that I saw online. And they'll reach out to me. I love that. And then I'll have some therapists directly reach out to me saying, I got a guy I'd like you to talk to. Oh, cool. So that means a lot to me. It shows— it gives me some legitimacy, if you will, because I am the first to say I am by no means a licensed therapist, psychologist, or anything of any kind. I am what you call a a blowhard a-hole with a microphone who happened to write a book that a lot of people read and put out a lot of material that some people like. So there you go. That's, that's me. That's my whole spiel. All right. Can I ask questions as a woman? No, Leah. Yes, of course you can. Or should I hang back? I enjoy your content, Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer. Listening while working. Yes, Leah, please ask away. Um, I, I'm getting more and more gals that are, uh, reaching out to me. Via direct message, mostly on Facebook. So most of my lady interactions come from Facebook. So I get stuff all the time. Yeah, no problem. I don't know, in fact, Leah, if you saw— one moment please as I go to the YouTubes, as we call it. I'm gonna get you a link in case you didn't— I can't speak today. I'm a muttering, stuttering prick today. Here we go. Where's the— there we go. Copy and come back here. If you guys haven't seen it, this is my latest Dear DSO video posted this morning. I did a live conversation with a gal, like we actually spoke back and forth and recorded it. You don't see her, you only see me, but you hear her, kind of like a radio call-in show thingy. Her name was Veronica and she had an interesting question up front that kind of piqued my interest. But then as we got to talking and revealing more and more, it just got more and more heavy, I guess you could say, deeper. And what was interesting was, and the reason I posted it, because it's not really conducive to a Dad Starting Over kind of pages and a talk with a gal, but I was pointing out that her issues were almost verbatim what we hear from men all the time when it comes to the marital issues, divorce issues, the sex and marriage issues and everything else. It was just It was— she was just miming exactly what I hear from dudes all the time. And so the point was that it's not a gender thing, it's a dysfunctional relationship thing that we hear a lot of. Mr. Rapid says, uh, the biggest misconception most people have is they don't understand that desire is not a natural function. It isn't normal or natural to desire your partner over time. Well, I mean, let's qualify that further, Mr. Rapid. It's okay to— how to put this— spontaneous desire within a relationship, um, via wife, let's say the direction of wife towards husband. Spontaneous, how do we, how do we define that? Husband's walking across the room and she's following with her eyes and she goes, give me some of that, and she chases him down and throws him on the couch and goes to town. More likely to happen at the early stage of the relationship, pre-marriage and pre-kids and all the other stuff. Thank you, Mother Nature. And that gets us men hooked, doesn't it? We're like, woohoo, this is the greatest thing ever, it's so validating and awesome and it's filling my natural desires for all this sex stuff. And then that naturally just wanes with time. And as far as sexual desire within your average gal— not every gal, your average gal— it is more responsive in nature, which is once we get going and we're into it and touching and cuddling and foreplay, then I, I'm ready to go. But I have to kind of get— I kind of have to prime the pump and get things started before I can get there. So if your definition, Mr. Rapid, is of desire is more spontaneous in nature, yeah, that tends to deplete with time. But I wouldn't go as far as to say it ain't natural for there to be desire in a and in a relationship. It's natural, I guess, as to how you define the term desire and how you think, go about getting there and all that good stuff. Um, what ideas do you have to make marriage good again? Is it a dead institution? Says Mr. Wolf. Um, I just, you know, it's fine. I don't want to say like, just wait, because I just did a video on this this morning, which is scheduled to go out It's going to be next month sometime. I have a lot of videos in the hopper. But in essence, what we need to do— here's the thing. This is not necessarily prescriptive for making marriage good again. It's prescriptive for making the, the sales points for marriage be more realistic. That's what I would suggest. So in other words, I don't know about you, Wolf, and others, but when I was a kid, here was the sales pitch for marriage: it's just what you do, dude. Look, Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad, look all around you. Everybody gets married, gets hitched, has kids. Yeah, it sucks a lot of the time, but what you gonna do, man? It's just what you do. And in the end, you'll be glad you did it. Done. Nothing about Certainly nothing about sex and marriage. Certainly nothing about romance tending to dwindle over time. Certainly nothing about film, whatever, you know, seedy little sexual thing. Um, we certainly don't talk about the work necessary to stay connected. We certainly don't talk about— all we basically say is, I mean, I grew up in the Midwest. The, the template seemed to be, here's what you do: you look your best and you act your best and sexiest in order to get said mate. And then once you get married and have kids, you just let yourself go, and that's cool. Everybody's cool with that. You just, you become a disgusting schlub of your former self, and oh well, what you gonna do? And, um, that doesn't bode well in the current, uh, template, modern-day template of long-term monogamy marriages. The current template— and I talked about this with Dr. O'Reilly and Taraban Our first chat was on the Help for Men channel on YouTube, so go to YouTube and do a search for Help for Men Orion Taraban, you'll find it. In essence, we have, we have a major paradigm shift with relationships these days, long-term relationships. It used to be a very unromantic institution which was based upon what? Need. I need her, she needs me, we'll do this together, we'll survive, we'll make kids, hopefully most of them will survive. That's not— that hasn't been a given for much of human history, hence why a lot of people had like 6, 7, 12 kids, because 4 of them died from disease and everything else. Um, no, it's very much need survival thing. Well, that's kind of gone by the wayside. Now we have gals that don't need us anymore for their survival. They're doing just fine on their own, making money on their own, everything else. Um, I know a lot of guys fight me on that. There are certain pockets of this country and in the world where it's very much like man makes all money, woman does nothing. That's becoming less and less common. I know it exists out there, but my wife— yes, I'm married again— my wife, for example, is a medical doctor. She's a surgeon. She doesn't need me to pay for her Louis Vuitton purse and everything else. She can do that herself. But so the modern-day template has shifted from need to what? Desire. Why am I with my wife? Because I want to be. I love her. I want her in that way. Why is she with me? Because she loves me and she wants me in that way. Well, what happens when that dwindles? Ooh, that's tough. Because what the, the glue that held everyone together for generations and generations wasn't that desire, that carnal lust, that love and romance, and she's my best friend and he's my best friend and all the other good stuff. It was need. That was the glue that held us. What are we gonna do? Leave and starve on the street? No. What am I gonna leave and have me raise these 12 kids? No. So we stick together. Is that a good thing? I don't know. It depends on who you ask, but that was the template for many, many years. Cool. So now we're a desire-based template. So, okay, we gotta shift everything. Here's the deal, guys. You want to be with her and you want to be with him. It ain't gonna be wine and roses. Here's what's gonna go on in the relationship. And dude, her desire for you is going to dwindle over time. Some, for some women, it's when you say I do, and then a lot of guys notice like, oh wow, she's changed completely. That's how some are raised with that template. That's the way their mom and dad was. So, hey guys, it's very important you get to meet mom and dad to see what you're going to deal with. And woman, same thing with him, and, and on and on and on. So I guess to cut it short, we should do a lot of pre-work, proactive work upfront. This is what relationships are all about. This is what long-term monogamy and marriage is all about. Here are the difficulties you're going to have, and you need to make sure you're wired for it and make sure that you have the skills in your mental toolbox to handle all these things as they come down your way. Here you go. And, you know, like I suggest in a video I did this morning, kind of repeating myself here, but it's kind of like a boot camp. Put everybody in a boot camp to say this is what it's all about. The negative is though, Mr. Wolf, Rapid, and others, you do that, buddy, we're gonna, we're gonna watch our numbers dwindle as far as marriage and baby-making is concerned, which I think is precisely what we see right now, don't we? We see in a lot of industrialized countries, a lot of affluent nations, and we've seen this over time to prove we can— one axiom we have that has been proven again and again is as a country becomes more affluent, this is the affluence, the wealth going up, the egalitarianism between men and women, affluence, wealth, as that goes up, the baby-making, the marriage goes down. How interesting. It just proves the point of how marriage as an institution was based on need. Hey, I'm a third world country. I don't— I can't— it's hard for me to survive on my own. Yep. There goes marriage and babies going up right along with it. Kind of interesting how that works. So it's going to be, uh, Mr. Wolf, an entire rebranding, reselling, whatever, on the concept, knowing that most people won't get into it. And my follow-up to that is, and that's probably a good thing, most people shouldn't get into it. But there's a lot of economic and social implications to saying so. It's not so simple for some dumbass down here in his basement talking about all this. Really easy for me to say. There are whole, um, institutions and economies based on keeping, oh, people getting married and making babies together. I could go on and on about that all day long. Mr. Rapid says your work is on the money because you work on the desire component. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Rapid. I appreciate it. Keep the compliments coming. I love it. Um, anything else, guys? Any other questions? My, um, video, Wolf, which kind of goes along with your question. My video interview on the Help for Men YouTube channel. Instead of me just keep mentioning it, why don't I put it in the comments, the chat, if I may? YouTube.com/@realhelp for— shitballs, can't read. Boom. Make sure that goes through properly. It's a bit of a hesitation here on my end every time I type something. YouTube.com/@realhelpformen to get you there. @realhelpformen is the handle on the Help for Men YouTube channel. But anyway, I did an interview with Michelle Lengley, author of Women and Infidelity. And Women's Infidelity Part 2, two different books. You can learn more at womensinfidelity.com. And, uh, did an interview with her, and, uh, boy, that's kind of taken off as far as my numbers are concerned. It's taken off. It's not like millions and millions, it's tens of thousands, so it's doing well for me, getting the Help for Men channel some more exposure, and hopefully over here on Dad Starting Over as well. And we'll get some more members into the brotherhood. But, um, she talks all about women cheating and, and her take on all of it, what starts it and why it goes on and how to fix and all this other good stuff. And a lot of it is very anti— from admittedly the male perspective, the average dude perspective— a lot of her stuff is, can be construed as a very anti-traditional marriage. And, uh, that really upsets a lot of people, probably a lot of men and women alike. There we go, the link just went through on my end. Cool. All right, anything else, ladies and germs? Any questions at all? Please do not be shy. Anything at all that you would like to chat about, I'm here for you. I got time, I ain't going nowhere. I got an afternoon free of any kind of calls and appointments. How cool is that? That's very rare for me on a Friday afternoon. Oh, what do I got going on in my personal life? Not that you asked. This evening we got my son going to a flag football game, a little offseason thing. They started flag football in this area for the first time. He's loving it. That's kind of cool. It's gonna be chilly tonight though. He's like, game starts at like 8:45 at night. Okay, I guess I don't have a life. So sure. So we're gonna go do that tonight. It'll be the second game for him. And no more NCAA basketball. It's always depressing. Guess I could watch NBA. If I had to. It's kind of gone downhill this year, hasn't it? Kind of like Luka on the Lakers. That's kind of exciting. Luka and LeBron. Luka-LeBron. That's kind of fun to say. HelpForMen.com. Check out the Brotherhood. There's the link on the screen there for guys that are watching this on the, on the live recording. I don't believe shows it. I don't know if it does or not. HelpForMen.com/join. Check out the Brotherhood. We need more dudes in there, more good dudes that can help other dudes and dudes that need help. It's what it's all about, gentlemen. Miss Leah went away. She's like, can I ask a question? Yes, you may. And then she disappeared. Or did I miss it? No, no, no question yet from Miss Leah. Come on, Miss Leah, don't leave us hanging. I'm here for you, sister. Contrary to what some women believe, you know, we have— okay, I'm gonna get on my soapbox here as a disgruntled internet dude who puts out content. Man, um, let me preface this by saying, in all fairness, there's a lot of sensitive dudes out there. Sensitive dudes that have been hurt by women, and anything that veers towards accountability in terms of, you know, dude, some of your struggles are some of your fault— they don't want to hear it. Oh no, there's some really— especially if you're freshly out of like a divorce or getting cheated on and stuff, they basically— all they want to hear is woman bad, man good. Anything veering from that, they get pissed. So with that out of the way, that's like a minority of dudes, but I hear from them. But the majority of women, oh my goodness, I don't know what it is culturally or what's going on, but, uh, if it doesn't— if you don't say all women are rainbow and sunshine and perfect 24/7, then you're a woman hater. It's like, ladies, we got to get away from that. Uh, so annoying. And it just lessens the respect from a lot of men around you. It's not every woman, but it's the majority of my female, uh, respondents, I guess you could say commenters, are of the variety of 'You must hate women.' It's like, why? 'Cause you talk about women cheating.' Some women cheat just like some men do. That's not a condemnation of women as a whole, for goodness sakes. If we're not able to point out the deficiencies in all of us regardless of gender, then we got a real problem. All right, I got a comment here from Mr. Mike. 'Not a question, just an observation. Looking after your physical health both in a relationship and recovering from one is highly underrated.' Very good. Yes, it is, Mr. Mike. Um, I think a, um, one component of why that is highly underrated, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it's coming from a dude, um, I hear this more from men than I do from women, for I think good reason if you really think about it and try to empathize with the ladies. Let's say your typical woman slash mom goes through a lot physically, um, aging arguably is tougher on the ladies than it is for us guys on a variety of different ways. Society as a whole tends to be nicer to an aging man than it is to an aging woman. There's a lot of societal messages in terms of, hey woman, you've lost your value, you're no longer a fertile, young, pretty thing, you're an older 50-something-year-old woman. Society says beat it. We know a lot of women that are actresses and so forth— actors, I don't know, is actress the proper term anymore? I don't know, they're actors. And they will tell you, like, roles for them after a certain age just dry up. Hollywood in general says, like, we don't have any need for you anymore, sorry. Unless there's a role for Grandma or something, beat it. It's depressing. And I think that's kind of a microcosm of society in general. It doesn't really, um, put much value, it seems, at least superficially, on the aging woman. So aging corresponds with superficial beauty, health, and everything else. So when we have guys that are like, I'm going to the gym and I'm injecting testosterone and growth hormone and all these other things to make me buff and feel young again. And a lot of women are like, you know, flip the middle finger and say, "Fuck you, dude. You can take that nonsense and get out of here." They don't take well to that. And so when we're like, "Let's go to the gym and lose 30 pounds," a lot of women are like, "Go fuck yourself," because they have the aging thing as well as "I had 3 kids" thing. My body is— it's really tough for women to bounce back after that. It's just tougher in general for the ladies than it is for men in that regard. So they seem to be very resistant to a lot of pro-health, pro-looks talk. But you're right, it is important. And sorry, life ain't fair, but if you want to stay bonded together as a couple, it's important you both look out for each other. Take care of yourself. Hit the gym. Eat right. Put the cake down. Go for a walk. Get on the bike. The Peloton that's now a coat rack, take the coats off of it every day. 20, 30 minutes, get on the stupid thing. These things are important. I know it's not nice, I know it's not fair, and I know you shouldn't have to do it, but you do. And from the men that, uh, that reach out to me and work with me, they have embraced that 1,000%, in part to, yes, from an anxious point of view, become a more attractive human being and hopefully be more pleasant visually and, uh —oh, I guess you could say emotionally overall more pleasant and attractive spouse to their wife. God forbid. But they tend to be married to gals that are just like, "No, I don't have to worry about that shit." That's kind of sad. But the answer is yes, ladies, you do. Sorry, it's a kind of shallow statement, isn't it? But yeah, that stuff is important. And then the thing is that a lot of women go right to the whole men just want you to look perfect thing. And as I've said countless times, no, they don't. Men are very forgiving when it comes to the women that, that they love, the women that are mother to their children. What they want to see is effort. Effort in terms of trying to maintain the sexy, trying to maintain the superficial, and trying to— all those things. You could have a woman who's 30, 40 pounds overweight, but if she puts on a cute little number and a dress and does the makeup and the hair and said, let's go out I want to go out with my sexy man and go out on a date. Yahoo! Every man loves that because she's showing effort towards them and showing that the romantic component of the relationship is still very important. God forbid, um, that's a message that has unfortunately been squashed in a lot of popular culture, if you will, saying, woman, you don't have to do any of that. That stuff's nonsense. You're now in mom mode. Put on your mom hat and keep it on and forget about the wife hat and forget about the lover hat. Yeah, that's silly. It's like, no, it's not. It's important. And I got an army of men who have latched on to that message and have taken on 100%. Ladies, it's time to follow suit. And for those of you that are, good for you. And again, perfection is not needed, just effort. Seriously, I'm not bullshitting you. Just effort. Very important. All right, so thank you, Mr. Mike. Um, but again, and then the— and it's not just the superficial, it's the health thing, right, Mike? It's, you know, if I go do my cardio and I lift my weights, every doctor will say, what are you doing? Your heart health is better, your, your bone health is better, everything is better. Dude, you just shaved 10 years off your life. You've added, you know, or rather, you've added more years on to the end of your life. And as a result, your blood sugar is all better, A1C, all this other good stuff. These are all very positive things. Nothing wrong with that, is there? And if that means injecting something, swallowing some pill or whatever, That's what it means. Oh well. And, uh, one of the pushbacks from a lot of ladies is that that's not a very natural, normal thing— guy injecting testosterone, guy swallowing this pill, this supplement, and all this other stuff. Ladies, we don't want to start going down the road of what's natural and what's not. What's, what's, you know, pursuing artificial means of beauty and reversing the hands of time— you ladies win the prize on that one big time. You beat the pants off of men when it comes to that. Cosmetic surgery, I mean, come on. Breast implants, Botox, facelifts, facial this and that, dermabrasions, and mommy makeover, liposuction. That's the world of women. That's all very artificial. So don't get on men for wanting to shoot a little bit of testosterone or take a little bit of Viagra or growth hormone or whatever it is. Let him do his thing just because you don't want to keep up in that way or whatever. Don't demonize him for that or call him shallow because you don't want to go down that road. Um, all right, so here we go. We got glass this time. We got Mr. Hykon. I don't know how to pronounce that. There's like an umlaut or something, or something over the A. Hykon. Hykon. Whatever. H-A-K-O-N. He says hello. Well, hello H. Any tips on how to help young men struggling with depression issues, and because of this also struggling on the women front? So are you the young man in question, or do you have a— I guess it doesn't matter, does it? Or are you talking about maybe your son? Um, I can't, you know, I don't know if you're a young man or not. I can't see your little icon there. Um, if, if you're struggling with depression then get help. And that would mean from a professional. Hello, Mr. Professional Man or Woman who deals with people that deal with depression, help me out. If it gets to that point, there— any kind of qualified professional will tell you the same thing. There are some lifestyle things you should do up front, and then if your situation doesn't improve as a result of doing those lifestyle things then by all means get some extra help on top of that. It may be in the form of pharmaceutical help, um, you know, antidepressants, SSRIs, and the like. Not a huge fan of said drugs for most people simply because, um, there's a lot of evidence that, uh, for a lot of people they don't make more of a difference than the lifestyle changes. Lifestyle changes have the biggest impact, and then the drugs like this much more. So is it worth this much more when you have a lot of side effects. While for some people, the drug is like a lifesaver. It stops them from being like— it's either take the pill or they're 6 feet under, that kind of dramatic difference. So for those people, take the stupid pill, right? There's no, no shame in it whatsoever. But if you don't need it and your, your mental health practitioner says let's hold off for a bit, let's do other things instead, such as physical exercise— coming back to that, aren't we, Mike? The health thing, um, the human body is not meant to be sedentary. It's not meant to sit around and do nothing all damn day. You're supposed to get up and move and push and pull things and walk distances and, you know, exert yourself. The body says, ah, good, thank you, and the brain says, there you go, that's what I needed. Hundreds of thousands of years of human being programming and DNA have made this the case. Sorry, I'd love for you guys to be able to sit around on Netflix all day, but the body doesn't like that, and you start feeling weird and funky and anxious and depressed. So get up and move. All right, what are you eating? Is it good? It's bad. Should be good stuff, good balanced healthy diet. A lot of sugars and nasty stuff. And are you pre-diabetic? Are you taking something that makes you feel not so good? Is there, uh, gluten intolerant? All kinds of things that can lead to a cascading series of issues in the body that makes you eventually feel depressed. Eat right and exercise. That sounds familiar, doesn't it? Are you socializing with other people? For a lot of men, especially a lot of divorced men, the answer is no, not at all. And that's sad. Other than the gal at the grocery store when you were buying your stuff, the cashier, when you said good morning, she said good morning, that was the end of it. And that ain't good, dude. There's a lot of fraternal organizations such as ours, the Brotherhood, help4men.com/join. Check it out, um, that are there just for, in part, that express purpose of talking to other men and socializing with other men, being friendly. And that's very, very important for mental health, for men and women both, arguably more for men because we don't seem to naturally gravitate to that. Women tend to do a better job of naturally gravitating towards social functions and things that we don't as men. So sometimes we need a little artificial help in the form of going to the so-and-so club after work, um, joining the, you know, Shriners and whatever these things are, the Mason groups and all these other things exist as fraternal organizations for men for a good reason. We've learned over generations that's very, very important. So are you socializing? Are you exercising? Are you eating right? Are you doing things to mitigating anxiety and other things which can eventually lead to full-blown depression in people therapy, meditation, all kinds of things. There's all kinds of things you can do. And, uh, just because you're a dude doesn't mean you are above doing a lot of those kind of things. If anything, it's more important than ever. And when a depressed person says, I'm struggling with something like women and romance, it's like, well, duh, everything suffers as a result. You're not socializing, you're not getting up and doing things. As I've often said, we have science that shows when we look at the personality traits in people, and there are the Big Five personality traits, are, if you want to look at the acronym, OCEAN. O-C-E-A-N. Openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Of all the, of those five big personality traits, which I won't go into, which one, if you're the highest in one of these, which is it? As far as the— I'm fumbling my words today. Which of those personality traits is the biggest predictor of relationships slash sexual success within men? Who gets laid more? Who gets— goes out and gets more dates? The guy who's high in neuroticism, which is a propensity for negative thought, depression, anxiety? No, just the opposite, actually. So there you go. Well then, which of those 5 should he be highest in if he wants success with women? Drum roll. Extraversion. Guys that put themselves out there. Makes sense. You put yourselves out there more. The guy who walks into a crowded bar and says, "Hey everybody!" And everyone turns and goes, "Bob!" Do you remember there's a TV show when I was a kid? I'm showing my age. It was called Cheers. And there was a character named Norm. And he would walk in every day and say, "Evening everybody!" And everyone yelled, "Norm!" That guy, and, uh, the guy who's never met a stranger, slapping people on the back. Hey Bob, hey Joe, hey, he knows everybody. That guy is extroverted. He has a higher chance of having luck with chicks than the guy who just slowly slunks into the back of the bar, keeps his head down, orders a drink, and goes to the back corner and sits in a table all by himself. He's probably not going to have luck with the ladies. And that guy's a higher chance of being depressed, doesn't he? So, um, we need to get over that social anxiety. We need to learn to be more extroverted, and maybe that will help kind of, you're caught in a vicious circle here of the depression, the introversion, the lack of extroversion, and all that other good stuff. Um, that's— Wolf is saying, that's insightful. Um, what are we talking about, Wolf? My top— my thoughts on marriage, going back to your previous, um, let me scroll back up here. That's insightful, says Wolf. The laws for asset division and alimony need to be changed if women parentheses, or men can leave at a whim. What about some kind of for-fault divorce? There are legitimate reasons to leave. I have an idea about a vesting that grows over time as the marriage goes on. Financial benefits like shared ownership of property, spousal support, or access to a partner's assets only vest, i.e., became— become earned or guaranteed over time. Okay, makes sense. This encourages commitment while protecting against early exploitation. There you go. Well, a lot of the stuff, unfortunately, what you just mentioned is subjective in nature. You've earned this, or you have unearned— you've removed this divorce benefit from yourself by virtue of your actions. So if you cheat, you don't get this, is what we're talking about, right, Wolf? And to a lot of men that have been cheated on, that sounds very attractive. That makes sense. But now we're getting into some other stuff. Well, I did this and this. It's a matter of proving it. And, uh, alimony is, you know, here's something that a lot of guys don't like to talk about. Alimony is relatively rare. Did you guys know that? What percentage do you think of the time with divorce is alimony awarded? But in all fairness, when it is awarded, it's like 90% of the time it's from the man paying the woman, right? Well, what percentage of divorces overall end in man paying woman alimony? 10%. That's it. 90% of the time it doesn't happen. There's no alimony exchanged. Um, and with child support, I believe it's like half the time there is some child support. And again, most of the time when it's child support being paid, it's from man to woman. So that's not right. It's not half the time. It's some lower number than that. But anyway, it's not the majority. There's not the majority of time there's child support, and certainly not alimony. So, but it's— but you know, for guys that have to pay a bunch of child support, alimony, they don't want to hear that. They're just like, I don't give a shit, dude, I have to pay it and it's not fair. Understandable. I wouldn't want to pay that either if my wife ended up being the one cheating on me. So what's the, um, solution here? Well, um, there are places already that have certain laws in place, Wolf, and others. Um, I spoke to an attorney, for example, for an interview who said she was an attorney in North Carolina. And North Carolina, for example, has the law in place of— at least at the time of our interview they did, um, Oh, you committed infidelity and there's proof of it? Well, you don't get alimony. So there you go. So these things are possible, Wolf. It's in the United States, for example, is just such a state-to-state, county-to-county, whatever thing that it's ridiculous. One state has something completely different. Some states are completely no-fault, some are fault. So depends on where you're at. Now, as far as, uh earning certain rewards over time. I guess that makes sense, you know. But what if some— let's play pretend— man and woman get married. Yay, let's have a kid! And year 2, she hasn't quite earned enough benefits, but husband gets hit by a bus. Do we have provisions in place for, um, death benefit type of thing? Uh, she gets this and this assets. Is, is that a matter of life insurance or insurance policy or wills? What if there's no will in place? All kinds of Legal questions, right? It's never quite cut and dry, and a lot of it's very subjective. And, uh, you know, what if a guy gets hit by a bus and the family's fighting over money, and they look into her past and they hire a private investigator, and oh shit, she was having an affair at the time of his death, and all kinds of nastiness. Uh, exercise is awesome for depression. It's better than SSRIs. There is some evidence to that, Mr. Rapid. The data says the best A thing someone can do for depression is exercise and dancing, actually. Well, there you go, the combination of music and the socializing, I assume, unless you're just dancing by yourself like a weirdo in your living room. Nothing wrong with that. Um, a study was done by the University of Western Australia, says Rapid, and it compared 118 different kinds of exercises with respect to the mental health regulation benefits. Dancing came out on top as being the best. I believe it. Um, social anxiety after a painful split is a real thing. Any extra tips? Here is a tip for social anxiety in general. Um, but admittedly, Mike, I'm sorry if you're going after— you know, if you're experiencing this, rather. Um, you have a painful split, you're dealing with a trauma, an emotional trauma, whether you want to call it that or not. Whether you want to kind of poo-poo what you're going through and say it ain't that bad, I just got dumped, who cares, you're still dealing with the trauma. And still sucks, and it's still something you got to get over. And what helps with that is time and socializing and all this other stuff. But you have the double-edged sword of, I'm feeling very socially anxious, I don't like to be around people after this breakup. Maybe you've always been that way. Here's the negative, um, negative— I guess you could see it as a negative. It's just, it's realistic, it's real life. Um, a remedy for a lot of things behavior-wise, and Mr., uh, gentleman who's the— Mr. Rapid, the therapist, can tell you the same thing. There's something called exposure, or exposure therapy, if you will. You have a fear of spiders? Slowly but surely introduce spiders, you know, put the spider in the same room with you, put the spider next to you on the table, put, you know, keep the spider in his cage but put him right next to you, put him in the other room over there where you can see him, you know, slowly but surely you expose over time, and over time you presumably eventually get over your fear of spiders. Social anxiety is the same thing. How do you get over just the anxiety of being around people? You forcibly expose a little at a time yourself to people, period. That's the only way to get around it. There's no magic formula to getting around something like that, um, and you can do so by just forcibly interacting with people on a daily basis throughout the day. Examples that are very realistic: You're like, I'm going to the grocery store. I gotta deal with freaking people today. Here we go. Get out of your car. You're going down the parking lot. Some dude is getting out of a car near you. You're like, I actually like his car. That's cool looking. Excuse me. Yes? I like your car. He's like, oh, thanks, man. No problem. One down. Let's say you give yourself like a goal of 5 of those set interactions. And then you're walking in the door and you hold You hold the door open for some lady as you go into the grocery stores. The door opens— doors open themselves, don't they? Not a good thing. I don't know, maybe you pull out one of the carts and give it to the lady in front of you, and they go, there you go. And she goes, oh, thank you. You go, hey, no problem, have a good one. Interaction number 2. You do those little things, plant the little seeds throughout the day, and eventually that becomes easier and easier. And then you take the next step and the next step, and then the eventual holy shit next step is, as a single guy Hey, pretty lady that I just saw from across the room, what's your name? That's huge because you could get rejected, like, get away from me, weirdo, I'm married. Okay, cool. Oof, that's the toughest as a socially anxious dude, isn't it? Nobody wants to deal with that, especially you're socially anxious, anxious dude. But you gotta expose yourself to those things and it sucks, and you gotta expose it again and again and again. Back to the previous point about personality styles that lend themselves well to the dating and mating game, the extroverted guy. He does that, "Hey, good looking, what's your name?" He does it like 20 times in one evening and gets shot down 19 times, and it's the 20th time that it works finally. And the lady's like, "Tehee, you're cute." And he's like, "Woohoo!" And then socially anxious dude tries it once, gets shot down, and he turns around and goes home. That explains a lot of the disparity in their, um, uh, success in the dating market. Because they try once, they get shot down, they quit because they're so anxious, they're so nervous, they're just— they can't bear to deal with that. Um, well, Mr. Anybody have any opinions on long-distance girlfriends taking advantage and also sleeping around while preaching about the Bible and playing innocent? Grant, I don't know. People are dickheads all over. People do dickhead things. That's a dickhead thing. You don't— don't hang around with dickheads. That's what I say to that. Oh, you're my long-distance girlfriend? Yeah, I'm gonna go screw this guy over here. Okay, don't. But I guess we're not boyfriend-girlfriend anymore. Oh well, go have fun and do whatever you want to do. And then she can preach about the Bible and play innocent and do whatever she wants. Who cares? She's not your girlfriend anymore. That's kind of attitude you have to have about these things. You know, it's not such a holy shit moment. You just look at them like, yeah, dickheads, dickheads going dickhead, you know, what you gonna do? Um, Shane says the empathy used to be female in nature historically, and the males were more narcissistic, and it's flipped nowadays due to social media, in my opinion. Well, narcissism, I think, you know, that's a technical term. And yes, still to this day when we measure people on a scientific basis and say, who is it amongst us that is more narcissistic in nature, or who is more apt to suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, men still take the cake in that. And women still take the cake on being ranked higher in empathy towards others. Sorry, I know that may paint men in a bad way, but that's just the science. That's what the science shows us. Now, if you're saying women tend to be more focused on themselves thanks to social media. They tend to be more selfish in that way. A case could be made, but whether or not they're narcissists is a whole other ball of wax. Um, and are men more empathetic now than they've ever been? I don't, I don't know. Possibly more, more soft in that way, more feminine in that way. Maybe that's what you're looking at. And maybe another way of looking at it, some people say women are more masculine in their energy and men are more feminine in their energy. And I— maybe there's a case being made for that. I don't know. Um, pet spiders, do they make Purina Spider Chow? I don't think so, Wolf. That's— wow. Uh, any other questions or comments, ladies and germs? Because I need to go get something to eat. Uh, if not, hey, see the little, uh, website on the bottom there? Go to that, do me a favor. If you're a dude, try out the Brotherhood for a month or two. I think it's going to be a godsend to a lot of you, and you'll be part of a really good club of dudes. If I do say so myself. And you can interact with me every week on live meetings, ask me questions, talk to me one-on-one, all kinds of good stuff. So check it out, the Brotherhood, help4men.com. Go to Brotherhood in the menu or jump right to help4men.com/join and learn all about it. Got some videos on there you can watch all about it and see the benefits of joining, see the testimonials from guys and all that good stuff. So I guess that's about it for me today, ladies and germs. Do me a favor, jump on over to the Dad Starting Over YouTube page, give it a follow, what they call subscribe, a like, all that good stuff. Same thing with the Help for Men YouTube channel, same thing for the Dad Starting Over Facebook page and TikTok and Instagram and all that other good stuff. That will help me out quite a bit. All right, making sure I'm not missing any messages here. All right guys, well, that'd be it for me. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Tis Friday. Hope you guys have some good plans for the weekend. I don't have much. Gotta do some clothes shopping for my biggest boy. He's outgrowing everything. He's 13 now, getting big, wears a men's size large, so I got to get him some all-new stuff. We have a family trip coming up and I realize he doesn't really have anything nice to wear for the family trip. We're gonna go out to eat and stuff like that, so I gotta go store or the mall and buy him some stuff. Yay, raw! Leah says, I'll work on asking a question next time. Oh, Leah, just left us hanging, you tease. All right, guys, talk to you later. Thank you all so very much for joining me today and enduring my blabbings. Take care, have a good one. Uh, toodaloo!