Chat LIVE with Ralph (DSO)!

Hey, all right, there we are. How you guys doing today? Let me bring up my comments here. All right, comments, there we go. Boom. How is everybody doing today? We already got some folks that are messaging early on YouTube. Welcome everybody. We are live streaming here on YouTube and Facebook at the same time on Dad Starting Over. If you guys don't know me, if you just happened upon this by accident, my name is Ralph Brewer. I wish it was something cooler, but I go by the fake pen name or brand, if you will, of Dad Starting Over. And I've been doing that for years, creating content under Dad Starting Over. But if you don't know, we are part of a larger organization that is known as HELP for Men, as the sign behind me says. And you can learn more at help4men.com. Everything revolving our organization and business— yes, it is a business— uh, can be found at help4men.com. We have books, we have a private community for men only called the Brotherhood, the HFM, Help for Men Brotherhood. We have courses, coaching, the Brotherhood itself. We get a lot of cool stuff done there. So if you're a dude and you're having some difficulties in life, we talk to guys that are like, you know, marriage stinks on a variety of levels. Thanks to, you can see the, oops, wrong hand, the book behind me, The Dead Bedroom Fix. Thanks to that book and its success, it's done very well. Thank you to all who have purchased that over the years. A lot of men come to my world as a result of what we call a dead bedroom or sexless marriage. A lot of those guys come into our private group, the Brotherhood. So we have a lot of discussions around how to reignite the bedroom in the marriage. Unfortunately, we also have a lot of men that are going through divorce, been divorced, maybe they're new in the dating world and trying to figure out how to navigate that. So we are kind of all over the place as far as helping out men. Pardon me here as I get rid of some distractions on my computer screen here, cut down on some of the glare on my bald head. Alright, let me cancel this here. Alright, much better. But we help men from around the world. In our private group, we have over 700 men that have joined us, everywhere from US, Australia, everywhere in between. And I've been doing— putting out content under the Dad Starting Over name for years and years. And, you know, we're going up to close to 200,000 followers on Facebook and 140-something thousand on YouTube. And TikTok has 120-some thousand. So potentially some of our videos get out there to the millions. So thank you guys for clicking and liking and sharing and all that good stuff. I do appreciate it a whole lot. And thank you all if you are joining me here today. And we got Mr. Jack on YouTube. Comments are coming in already. He's not divorced, but a recent video regarding menopause that hit hard. Yeah, that's a delicate subject, Mr. Jack, as you know. Why is it so delicate? Number one, 'cause it's a dude talking about it. What do I know about it, right? And when we talk about it, the old menopause, let's admit it, we are coming to it from a very, for lack of a better word, selfish point of view. We miss our wife, the gal we fell in love with, fell in love with, the gal that we had that really strong intimate emotional and physical connection with. And thanks to no fault of her own, a process called menopause, which is very natural, normal, which is— I've always, I've said this in many videos, it's kind of like the nature turning down the dial of this hormone and that hormone, basically taking you out of baby-making mode. And with that comes personality changes, with that come— or behavioral changes is more apt. And with that comes a lessening of physical and emotional connection sometimes between the two people. Not always. Dare I say, probably more often than not, there's some change in that department. Some men, especially more sensitive men, maybe those neurodivergent guys, especially ADHD, autism spectrum, so forth, they tend to be a little bit more sensitive in this way than others, um, don't handle that shift, that chapter change, whatever you want to call it, in life. While it's natural, normal, it's like, great, but, um, I miss that aspect of us. And some men go as far as to say, I need that aspect of us, this has to get fixed. A lot of divorces happen in that time frame, a lot of women putting down, you know, really strict boundaries of, I'm not doing that anymore. That being physical intimacy in the bedroom. Um, that part of our life is over. Deal with it, mister. And then all the way to, deal with it, mister, go get your girlfriend if you want. Or, deal with it, mister, we're done if that's all you care about. It's not a good thing, not a good thing at all. And, um, it sucks. Sucks for a lot of guys. It's, it's really, really tough. And there's no simple solution other than, um, oh, couples therapy can certainly help, I'm sure, If you have a good therapist, tough to find it seems, but if you have a good one, as I often say, they're worth their weight in gold. All the way to the pharmaceutical variety in terms of hormonal replacement therapy. I've done a lot of talks on that. Some women are still under the impression that that's a death sentence. No. Some, a small percentage of women have certain cancer that is very sensitive to estrogen, estrogen-sensitive cancers. Breast, uterine, ovarian, so forth. If your doctor determines that exogenous, uh, supplies of estrogen in your body and other hormones may actually help your cancer grow, then yeah, don't take the hormonal replacement therapy. But again, that's a relatively small portion of you women out there. It's not all of you. The majority of you could probably benefit from something like hormonal replacement therapy in terms of heart disease, osteoporosis, blood pressure, and yes, libido. So anyway, boy, thank you, Jack. As you can see, once somebody brings up something, I tend to just kind of blab on and on about it. Like most men, love to hear myself talk. So welcome everyone. If you have any questions, comments, anything at all, now's the time. Please, let's, let's hear it. Where are you guys from? If you're joining me here today, if you could, number one, let me know where you're from. Number two, hit the old like, you know, the old thumbs up wherever you're watching this, YouTube. Facebook. Um, share if you could share this, if that works wherever you're watching this. Um, like, share, subscribe, or follow. These things are a huge help to me and help spread the word about Help for Men and Dad Starting Over. Again, check out help4men.com and our private community, the HFM Brotherhood. That's where work gets done. So many of you guys out there are the old lone wolf I don't need nobody. I'm on my own. Often this comes about as a result of being dumped, divorced. When your partner in crime, your spouse, says, "Don't need you anymore," when you're like, "Well, I don't need the world either. I don't need any of you people." And we know unequivocally, there's no doubt about this, that is detrimental to your mental health as a human being. And men tend to veer towards that solitude more so than the women. Women tend to be more social. They tend to do a much better job than we do with that, which is in part, in part why post-divorce, for example, everybody's coming to this woman's rescue. She just has all kinds of girls' night out, some fun, and here I am stuck alone in the house. A lot of that is a societal thing, you know, the damsel in distress, and a lot of it is you, dude, not putting yourself out there. You haven't really made a strong network of friends like ex-wife did. So it's important that we have a network of dudes. Here's the extra struggle. Let's say you're a dude that is like post-divorce, going through it. Maybe your wife cheated on you and you're really having a hard time, and you go to your buddy Bob and just like, man, I'm going through it. Wife did this, wife did that, I'm divorced. And Bob's like, he's got the most boring, mundane no drama, you know, marriage. And he can't relate to any of this. And he's just sipping his beer going, that sucks, dude. Man, that sucks. And that's basically it. That's all the back and forth you have with Bob. And a lot of guys going through that, that's what they report. It's like, yeah, that's pretty much my social interaction with everybody is, oh, you poor thing, that sucks. That's it. Nobody really coming to him said went through the same thing. Here's what I did, let me help you get through this, here are my— here's my advice, let me help you out, extend a hand. He doesn't get that much. This is where something like a support group comes in, something like a fraternal community, one that is centered around your specific set of issues as a man going through a troubled life, trying to do better, trying to get over the hump, whatever that may be for you. And that's where like our group comes into play, the Brotherhood, help4men.com. And I'm going to put a link here, this will show up in the chat for you guys on YouTube, in the comments on Facebook— this is where I wish I had my glasses. Oh, Ralph, you think I'd remember that by now? But no, not a smart man. HelpForMen.com/join might get you to the page for joining our group, The Brotherhood, and we're trying to grow that and help out as many men as we can because there's a lot of dudes— I get messages every single day from Facebook, email, direct message on TikTok, what else, Twitter, Instagram. And there are a lot of dudes that are hurting out there. They're in bad shape. And you listen to their stories, which men are really quick to share, like, let me give you paragraphs of all the shit that happened to me. I don't want to say I've heard it before, but I've probably heard it before if you reach out to me and sharing with me. Not saying don't share, but just to let you know, you You're not alone, not by a long shot, dude. There's a lot of men going through exactly what you're going through, and there's a lot of men that have gotten over the hump, and they've been there, done that. They know what it's all about. And we got a lot of guys out there that are just flat out not getting the help that they need. And unfortunately for some, you know, there's the old— what's the phrase— you can lead a horse to water And we have a lot of guys going through a lot of miserable times, and we say, we got a group, our book, reach out to this guy, let me help you. And some of them are like— it's that solitude thing that I mentioned earlier— like, no, I'm good. It's like, you're not good, dude, you need help. Like, meh, I'll get over it. That's no way to go through life, guys. You're not any tougher by doing that. You're not winning any points. You're just prolonging your misery, basically. So don't be afraid to extend a hand and say, "Help, please." There's people out there like our group. If it's not our group, I'm sure there are others out there like it. Get a help— get a helping hand with whatever you got going through. Whatever you got going through, whatever you are going through. And Jack is still getting used to his bifocals. I never went down that road, the old bifocal thing. I just have little reading glasses all over the place, just not here with me right now. But thankfully I got the comments real big up on my screen, like an old man with a giant font, so I can read everything you're saying. We got Mike from the UK. Yay, we're international officially. Wonderful. We got Kenny from Missouri. Isn't that how they say it, Kenny? Missouri? Are you upset about the Chiefs in the Super Bowl? Do I even need to mention that? Should I mention that? Sorry. That was kind of a, uh, Super Bowl, wasn't it? I mean, if you're a, what was it, Eagles fan, I'm sure you're happy. But you know, from a completely neutral dude, it's like you like to see a little bit more parity, a little back and forth there. Not a total butt whooping like it was. But anywho, anything at all, gentlemen, that you would like to speak about? You know, I talk about the book behind me, The Dead Bedroom Fix, and then I got a couple other books we'll talk about here in a minute. But The Dead Bedroom Fix is my most popular piece of work Period, by far. That is solely, you know, I had a guy who reached out to me not too long ago, a content creator who was falling on hard times. He had an initial thing, success, and then it's just diminished. And now he's like, I barely get anything and nobody watches my videos. You have any advice? Like, how is it that you're continually pumping out stuff and I see your numbers are going up? What are you doing? And I say, I'd love to say I got a magic formula other than just continually putting out stuff. But the number one key to quote-unquote success, if you want to call it that, is, uh, the book The Dead Bedroom Fix behind me there. Um, that book led to a lot of other things. If it wasn't for that one thing that led to a lot of eyeballs, as I often say, on my material, that led to me being able to do fill in the blank all these other things— if it wasn't for that one book, I wouldn't have all those other things. So if you're a business person, find that one thing that really um, pushes a lot of buttons in people. And just drive the hell out of it, keep pushing it out there. Don't forget about this, guys. Let's talk about this, guys. Build groups around it, build whatever. If it wasn't for that thing, I wouldn't be with you guys here today. So thank you all for, uh, for reading that. But so this begs the question, what is it about that that is so damn popular? Why did so many people buy the book? Why is it that I can post like a meme, for example, or a Twitter? I post on Twitter, which I have a very small audience. You can go to DadStartingOver on Twitter. Please give me a follow. Twitter.com or X.com/DadStartingOver, all one word. And you'll see that I tweet on there usually in bursts like 5, 6, 7 at a time per day. And I will take a screen capture of that tweet and then put it elsewhere, like on Facebook and YouTube community and sometimes TikTok. I'll make a little video out of it or whatever. And sure enough, those are doing well. But if one of 'em does like really, really well, like reaches millions of people, it's about drum roll, sex and marriage or lack thereof from the male point of view. The complaining about I'm not getting enough. If I had to encapsulate that theme. That's it. That's the most popular thing I've ever talked about and continue to talk about to this day. Why, why, why? Jack says it's relatable. Okay, so a lot of guys can relate to the whole not getting enough thing. Now let's keep peeling back layers of the onion. Why? I'm sure guys could relate to, um, my car broke down. I'm sure guys could relate to, oh shoot, I forgot to put the garbage out again. You know, a lot of little life things. But why is this one thing in particular kaboom? You know, a lot of guys can relate to parenting issues. I've talked about parenting stuff, barely moves the needle when I talk about parenting. I could talk about health and fitness. Important. There's a lot of health and fitness talk out there, isn't there? Plenty of YouTube channels show that it's a popular topic. But coming from me, eh, I don't know, it's interesting, but not that much. Even the topic of divorce, eh, not that much. Oh yeah, let's talk about the old SEX. Well, hello, people boom, explode, and just come out of the woodwork and want to talk. And like I say, you get a post that gets 2 million people looking at it, it's like, holy crap, I'm on to something here. That's what I've been saying for the last 8 years since I wrote the first edition of that book. Well, I'm on to something here. Why? Um, it's, um, it's tapping into something, isn't it? It's that sexual intimacy between people is so damn important. And this is something a lot of people don't like to hear, but let's talk this through, shall we? Please feel free to put things in the comments. Um, if you whittle it down to the most basic biological, psychological, whatever you want to say, basis for why two people get together, Let's strip away all the romance and all that stuff. All that stuff is great. I'm a lovey-dovey dude. Maybe you don't know that. I'm a schmoozy, cuddly, lovey dude. I love that kind of stuff. But I'm also aware enough to say, why is it that two human beings get together? Well, Mother Nature takes over. You see things you like, whatever it may be. They act a certain way that you like. Why? Why? What's the whole purpose of this? Why is the brain spinning with all these feel-good chemicals? Why is the body reacting in a certain way? Because Mother Nature wants you two to get together and make some babies. That's basically the— if you whittle it down, the whole purpose to all this, all this being relationships. Well, but Ralph, some of us take birth control, some of us don't want to have kids. Mother Nature doesn't care. It still goes through the same mechanism, the same process. Me likey this person, fall in love, you're chemically drawn to each other, and it— for many of us, it becomes kind of a quasi-addiction. You wake up thinking about them, go to sleep thinking about them. You need that connection with them, otherwise you feel terrible. You go through withdrawals, which some of us experience, you know, after a breakup. And then for some of us, that very biological fundamental thing that drew us together, whether we consciously know it or not, that bonds us together, that allows us to grow further. Yes, as a couple, that is like a keystone to the whole thing, isn't it? And then that's— I was gonna say suddenly. It's usually not suddenly. I know a lot of guys like to frame it that way, but usually with a little bit of digging, you realize this has been going on for a while. Slowly but surely, it whittles away to the point where even when the man— we're talking about men here— even when the man is, um, caught up in what we call the family machine. He's so busy with kids and work and the logistics of the home and maintaining the home and keeping the wife happy. And next thing you know, birthdays and anniversaries and holidays, and he's caught up in that machine. And it, in it, that acts like a, the machine acts like a fog over a lot of issues in the relationship. Let's be honest, you just don't have time or energy to deal with certain things. And sometimes that certain thing is the physical intimacy between the two people. But there's a tipping point. Where it goes from, yeah, we'll deal with that later, to holy crap, we got a problem here, something's wrong. And usually it's the dude— in the examples that I hear— the dude that is the one to go, oh, timeout, what's going on with us? What is this, dude? It's been like weeks, months, holy shit, years since we've done it. Usually you don't get to the years part and have a sudden epiphany. Usually it's the— for a lot of men, it's like month, 2 months, maybe like, you know, I don't know, after so many years of marriage, a common thing is the introduction of children. So you have like a, um, very understandable— I'm not saying this is bad, this is perfectly understandable— good thing is to say, you two, don't, don't be having intercourse after the child comes into the picture. Give it at least like 8 to 12 weeks before you guys attempt that, just for healing purposes. And mother needs to rest, and the body's going through a lot of changes. It's just not happening during So, Dad, get off of Mom, right? And the guy's like, sure, you got it. Well, sometimes that physical disconnect there leads to a further disconnect, which leads to 6 months, year, year and a half, and the guy's like, this is not good. So that hurts. So basically, anybody who does anything— going back to why the book and the topic is so popular— anytime you have anything that is acutely painful, as we say, something that hurts, that's something that sells, so to speak. And people love to peel back the scab, so to speak, again and again and again. They love to talk about that pain. People go pain shopping on the internet. They love to commiserate with others to talk about how much something sucks, how much it hurts. Go to any discussion forum, the most active discussion forums are about, doesn't this suck? The economy sucks. Job sucks, stress sucks, depression sucks, sexless marriage sucks, whatever it may be. People love to commiserate about that. And, um, I happen to write a book that happens to be one of the biggest pain points for men. You know, it's right up there with death, loss of jobs, and things like that. The loss of sex in the marriage is that huge for a lot of men, especially those men, like I mentioned, The, the neurodivergent types— ADHD, autism spectrum, OCD. What else? Obsessive— I already said OCD. Obsessive-compulsive. Dyslexia falls under that as well. Tourette's. I don't know if you guys are aware, those are all neurodivergent conditions, and they all seem to share a lot of traits in common. Like, for example, people on the autism spectrum, the majority have also ADHD. So anyway, um, those guys tend to be very, very sensitive to this kind of stuff, and they tend to be— not always A lot of them kind of hypersexual. They need that connection, that dopamine hit. They need that. So to them, it's extra, extra painful when their drug goes away. Here's the, the thing though, for a lot of those people, those men, there's an extra layer of complexity on top of this. And that layer of complexity is, um, shame. A big thing, especially in some of your more All religious-based conservative societies is there's a lot of shame involved in sexuality, in male sexuality in particular. There's a big message in a lot of circles of we need to control these dudes, they get out of hand, um, they may commit, you know, crimes via their sexuality. I'm trying to avoid a certain word that for some reason social media doesn't like and they will penalize you for saying it. Starts with an R. Obviously it's a horrible, terrible thing and anybody does that should be punished forever and ever. But that's a very, very small, small portion of men that commit such acts. Yet we all seem to be paying the price for those few dudes, don't we? And so we're all told, like, don't go down that road. We're like, okay, okay, let me temper my sexuality so I don't become this violent, awful creature. Even though that may not be in some of us, we act as if. On top of that, um, it's once we are married, paired up with somebody, and we have children— that's the huge next, next step— we are told again and again, either directly or indirectly, we have a lot more important things to worry about than whether or not— whether we're getting it on or not in the bedroom. Um, that's like the least of your concerns. We got to keep this kid alive, keep this wife alive, keep this roof over our head. Sir, if you are— this is the message that we get from a lot of people, just look in my comments. On my social media pages. Sir, if you are so concerned with that, you got a problem. You could be a sex addict. You could be some kind of deviant crazy person who needs to get your priorities in line. Um, shame, shame, shame, shame on you for even having those thoughts. And so men are like, well, shit, guess I better temper my urges, or at least hide them from everybody. I don't want anybody to think I'm some kind of monster. So they hide them, or they put push them down. What I've seen is when you, you know, try to think of like a— oh, like a bubble, like a— yeah, air or something, a fluid-filled sack of something, and you got a bulge over here and you push down, and sure enough it pops up over here. So if you try to suppress something as strong, biological, ever-present as a sexual desire here and push it down here, it's going to pop up elsewhere. And what we've seen is it pops up in terms of men getting addicted to things like pornography Or even going to things like sex workers, which is huge, you know, like OnlyFans and those types of pages. That's sex work. It's been around forever, since the beginning of time. It's just that it's getting more prevalent thanks to technology. Um, so we suppress, doesn't do anything, it just pops up elsewhere. Men go nuts. That, that pressure has to get released in some way. And yes, affairs. I know men hate to hear this, but every piece of data that we have seems to indicate that men, yes, since we've done such studies, um, tend to commit infidelity more so than women. Doesn't mean men are bad, men are evil, whatever, but I think some of that tendency in long-term monogamy towards, uh, a lessening of sexual connection with their spouse probably, um, contributes to that, wouldn't you say? So anyway, um, we could suppress We could shame, we could hide it. All this stuff leads to not very good behavior. And from what I've seen, on top of all this, the dead bedroom thing, the sexless marriage thing, is what we call the canary in the coal mine for deeper issues. It's usually not just the sex. This is something a lot of men don't like to hear. But guys, if you're already pissed off and throwing your computer mouse down or whatever, hear me out. Let's talk this out, all right? Um, it may not necessarily— I'm not necessarily saying, you dude, you dude, you're bad, bad, bad, you need to do something better in order to earn the reward of sexual connection with your wife. Not necessarily. It could be some of you have dropped the ball in some very basic, um, rules of animal attraction between two people. I can't tell you how many women have told me that their man doesn't practice good hygiene and she's really grossed out. She tells the guy like, do this very basic hygiene thing, dude, what the hell? And he's just like, meh. I'm like, really? You know, I hear that, you know, 5, 10, 100 times. Eventually I get the picture. There's a lot of dudes out there that are kind of dropping the ball in the old hygiene department. I don't know what that's about. That's gross. Please stop. I'm talking to guys out there, but So we have that, or basic things like not staying in shape, or basic things like not sticking up for yourself, not any boundaries, whatever, dear, yes, dear, whatever you say, dear. Not attractive, these kind of things. Being a very anxious dude is one of the most unattractive, unappealing things there is. I recently did an interview which will be going up here shortly as soon as we get it edited with Adam Lane Smith. He's what I call the godfather of attachment. If you read about attachment theory online, Adam's the dude. Just Google Adam Lane Smith and sit back and prepare just for all kinds of cool content all about attachment theory. We always talk about avoidant people and anxious people and so forth, but he says that, um, that needy, anxious, hyper-pursuing, Mr. Nice Guy, boundaryless persona that some men have in relationships, by his estimation— trying to remember, I don't want to lie here— but he said something to the effect of is the most unattractive archetype for a mate, a male mate. If you want to say, how can I be the most unattractive possible? That's it. You need to put forth those. And some men do that. We just kind of fall into that pattern thanks to our childhood issues, which is what I'm getting at. Dead bedroom, you know, a little thingy up on the shelf that we're looking at going, oof, that's ugly, I don't want to look at that. Yeah, but you need to look at that. You need to pull that thing off the shelf and study it. Said, what's going on here? This is the side effect or result of a cascading series of events that probably started back when you were a little boy. Believe it or not, you sat back and watched how Mom and Dad interact with each other, which in turn— and by the way, that happened for what, years, maybe even decades? And And you got a front row seat, how two act, how two people act together, how two people love each other or don't. And then you take that into your relationships in the future and it determines who you pick for a girlfriend, who you pick for a wife, what you put up with and don't put up with, what you do when things go tough, go bad, da da da. And a dead bedroom or sexless marriage is one of many, but it's probably the most painful for a lot of you guys. Thing that indicates something is foundationally broken here. Sometimes, yes, y'all just picked the wrong damn woman. That happens. Women pick the wrong damn man all the time. We're not immune to this. But keep peeling back the layers of the onion. Why did we pick the wrong gal? We're broken. We got problems. So this— I keep using the wrong hand— this book behind me, Dead Bedroom Fix, It addresses the biggest pain point for men in relationships, but I'm hoping what it is is a gateway towards a better understanding of a more holistic approach to how to become a better dude overall up here. And the rest of you too. Um, that's what I hope you get at with this. This gets you in the door of something like our group, The Brotherhood, help4men.com/join. Just go to help4men.com, click on the links to The Brotherhood. And you'd be part of a community of men that are trying to figure all this shit out. And what most of us figure out is, yeah, this started when I was an itty-bitty boy, and here I am now. But if you have that realization and you do the work to fix things, whether it's by me, Adam Lane Smith, or whoever it may be— Dr. Robert Glover, No More Mr. Nice Guy, or all of the above, which a lot of guys do, they take in all this stuff Guess what? You know, there's like a hierarchy of dudes, right? The pyramid. I often talk about the pyramid. The tippy top are those few men that do— the few men that get all the riches, so to speak. And that doesn't necessarily mean money. It could mean riches in terms of just happiness in life. Yes, women. Yes, monetary achievement. Whatever it may be. So whatever discipline you can think of, there's always the pyramid, and there's always a few that seem to get most of it. And then as we go down, the base of the pyramid represents the majority of people who get Jack shit. Don't get anything. If you are a dude who says, "Timeout, I gotta work on some stuff. Let me put some genuine effort towards getting better at whatever," your relationships, whatever it may be, guess what? Whatever discipline you're talking about, you're the top of the pyramid. Congratulations. Because nobody does that shit. Nobody. Everyone just says, "Nah, they're caught in the machine, the family machine, the life machine. Nah, I don't need to worry about that." So congratulations, guys watching this, because you're probably like most dudes that are proactive about trying to get better. A lot of people online telling you that you guys don't exist. I talk to you every single day. So pat yourself on the back. You're not some pitiful little whatever that you think you may think you are. You got a lot going for you, dude. So there's your rah-rah speech for the day. Um, Mike, we're talking about the dead bedroom thing. Mike's from Facebook says, in my opinion, It's because as men, we want to feel desired and respected by our partner, and we're pretty basic. So sexual intimacy is a sign that our partner does actually want to be with us. Sure. This is especially true for your more anxious, and yes, dare I say, more needy guys. They need that validation from their partner. They're reaching out saying, "Give me some sense of value here via your actions towards me." That may mean give me a kiss when I walk in the door. Say, hey honey, I missed you. How was your day today? Oh, God forbid, right? But that means a lot to us. That shows I still got it going on. We're still good as a partnership. She's still all right. Everything's cool. One little peck on the cheek, it's all it takes. One little pat on the butt in the kitchen from your wife saying, you look good today, handsome. Whatever it may be. But the ultimate, ultimate, ultimate version of that is Sex. That really shows things are good between us. I still got it going on, she's still got it going on. Yahoo! Great. There's nothing that releases that dopamine in the head more so than that. And to us, we're saying, I'm not asking for much here, folks. But to her, potentially— not always. Oops, sorry, hit the microphone. Not always, maybe not even in the majority of cases, but in these types of dead bedroom cases to her, that is kind of a big thing. She doesn't feel it. It's not there anymore. She's overwhelmed. She's tired. She's older. She's menopausal. She's fill in blank, whatever reason it may be. All the way to the more nefarious reasons of, I just don't like him anymore. There's somebody else. Whatever it may be. And everything in between. Guys love to jump all the way to that end of the spectrum. There's kind got to be somebody else. No, not necessarily. Most of the time, no. I know you're thinking, yeah, they do, because it happened to me, it happened to my brother, it happened to my friend. Yeah, that's not a coincidence. You kind of surround yourself, yourself with people and a social structure and a culture that proliferates those type of people and that type of behavior. There are people out there in the world that never ever experience that. Side of the world. I'm not one of them. I've experienced that and I've talked about it, you know, firsthand. I've experienced it. Yes, I know people who have. That's not a coincidence. Still the minority of us. I know it's hard to believe. Um, uh, Jack says he's a church-going dude and the quote family machine is very fitting for that context. Um, and then attitudes about, uh, adult entertainment. That's the word I use instead of using the P word because apparently Social media doesn't like the P word. I don't know, man, we're living in a very— maybe this will change here, not to get into politics or whatever, but maybe the zeitgeist is changing to be more permissive when it comes to certain kinds of talk, which is ironic given, you know, past and everything else. But it seems now for years the, the social media, um, powers that be have been very, very, uh, strict on what can be said and not said. How to say it. And boy, they just, they come down on you if you say certain words, and they penalize you or flat out take away your account. So you gotta— that's why you have all these people being so careful about what they say. Now it's ridiculous, isn't it? Um, Kenny says men are shamed for their sexual desire, and then when they turn to adult entertainment to supplement, they are further shamed. Yeah, I talked all about that. I completely disagree with adult entertainment. It's been years since I've even laid eyes on it. There's a lot of double standards, and I think confusion amongst men is how to handle the situation. Um, yes, and I was recently on a podcast, um, what's it called? Talking Kink, it's called. I think, I think that's what it's called. And, um, the, the— there's a man and woman hosting it, and the man said, Ralph Brewer, you got to be honest. And he was really kind of preempting his little speech by saying like, I know I'm going to get in trouble for this, I know people are going to attack me for this, but and he pointed out this double standard that you too— that you— I think of it as kind of like a pendulum swing, you know. For years and years, generations, we do shame— we did shame women for their sexuality. Anything veering towards promiscuity in women was no, just doesn't happen. Overt sexuality in general, no. Woman dressed a certain way, no. Just female sex bad. Now we swung the pendulum over to a more permissive Although there are still pockets in this world, I see them on my, on the Facebook and social media account, some comments from men that they're anything but permissive of that kind of thing. There's still pockets of people that are very anti-female sexuality, but overall, society overall is probably more lenient and supportive of overt female sexuality to the point of, you know, everything always goes overboard, doesn't it? A woman cheated? What did her husband do? Good for her. You go, girl. And you're like, whoa, hold on. A woman has slept with 500 men? So what? Who cares? Doesn't mean anything. It's like, okay, anybody who sleeps with 500 people has probably something missing. They're trying to fill a void here. That's unusual. That takes like real effort to do something so arguably, oh, big, important, vulnerable. Such as sexual intercourse with somebody, and to do that with 500 different individuals shows like something's probably off there. I mean, let's be honest, right? But no, no, no, if a woman does that, that's cool, she's just exploring her sexuality, so what? Don't shame her for that. It's like, okay, I get it. How about if a man does that? A player, evade him at all costs. He's an fboy, as they call him, or whatever it may be. There's double standards. And then we even see when a woman does things like, uh, using toys adult entertainment. So she's exploring her sexuality. Good for her. Uh, certain kinds of novels, so forth, which are pretty graphic. Yeah, good for her. You know, whatever it takes. Sister's still got it going on. Husband's caught on the laptop looking at stuff. You deviant. You terrible human being. You should be directing energy towards— it is, it's a double standard. I'm sorry, it doesn't sound like a whiny dude, but I see it all the time. Um, And then Kenny says he's heard of the hygiene thing from women as well. Hmm. Mike's talking about his anxious attachment style. It can be addressed in Chains. Absolutely. David from YouTube got several comments here, which I will read. Uh, I've talked in a few of these in the past about my wife who cheated with her ex-boyfriend. I'm sorry. And she moved out without ever admitting to the infidelity. I remember you, David. Her reason for moving out was quote paranoia. All right. I came to discover that very quickly she moved out and that she was coming over, he was coming over to her place regularly. I finally confronted her on this with proof and had to admit that she was seeing him, but she won't admit it. However, there was an overlap and maintains that she never cheated. There was an overlap. I don't know what that means. It's so infuriating. David, I remember you going on about this before. It's so infuriating. He was the only guy I suspected for months before our split, and she expects me to believe that she randomly contacted him out of all the people a week after ending our 13-year marriage. It'd be one thing if I could just never contact her again, but we have a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old. I have to be in constant contact. Really hard to do a good job when she's disrespecting me. Aha. How is she disrespecting you, David? Because she won't admit to— she won't go, all right, you got me. Yeah, I've been with this, seeing this guy while we're married. I've been bonking this dude for so many years. Okay, let's play pretend, David. She sits you down and goes, David, have a seat. Here's the deal. I'm gonna lay it all out. I wrote all this on a piece of paper for you. The timeline of my affair. Yes, affair. You got me. And she lays it all out. On this day we did this. On this day we did that. When I told you I was doing this, I lied. I was actually doing this. Da da da da da. There you go, David. And you're like, cool, thanks, I guess. That's a load off. My point is, David, Now what? Nothing changes. Nothing. Nothing in your life changes. Nothing in her life changes. Your relationship with your children is still the same. You're still living here. She's still living there. You're still broken up. Let it go, dude. It has no bearing on you whatsoever. There's no cosmic force at play that will right the universe when your wife finally admits to her wrongdoing. Well, why doesn't she admit to her wrong? Who gives a shit? You gotta let this stuff go, my man. Um, there— it's not just your wife. There are going to be people in your life that are going to hurt you. There are going to be people in your life that do things that just make you go, what? Why the— why would they do that? This makes no sense. Let it go. People do dumb shit all the time. Your wife, you know, going back to my previous chat about people and our baggage from our childhood and so forth, I bet you anything your wife's got some childhood issues. I see it all the time. I've talked about us dudes, we're not immune to this. We got our own issues and we tend to match up with these women that do too. Sometimes they become habitual liars, sometimes they become habitual cheaters, whatever it may be. Regardless, it doesn't help a damn thing for you to go, I just need her to admit, I just need her to sit down and write out the timeline. Frankly, you're broken up, right? She's living elsewhere. I don't know if you're technically divorced yet. Pardon me, if the process has gone through, but you are split up. Homegirl can do whatever she wants to do. She can bang whoever. She can lie about whatever. She can— seriously, she can do anything. She's her own autonomous creature. Let her go. And you can do the same. In fact, you can choose to say, good for you, sweetheart, you do whatever you want to do, and mean it. Why? Because she's not your problem anymore. Yeah, she's the mother to your children, 2-year-old and a 5-year-old. I'm sorry, you gotta let her go, dude. I know you see her every now and then, but you just put on the smile, the old toothless— what they call the toothless white guy smile. You see her at the exchange, and maybe she starts going off on some little lie or something that you're just like rolling your eyes in your head, and you just go Okay, well, we'll see you Sunday at 5. Hey, have a good one. That's it, dude. It's the old gray rock, as they call it. When this— it's usually used for like narcissistic people and so forth. I'm not saying that's what she is, but it's— but it's when somebody's being overly emotional or obviously trying to poke and prod at you and hurt you in some way, your reaction should be that of like a rock just sitting there. Okay, well anyway, the example I often use is people that are in some kind of mediation or legal proceeding of some kind with their soon-to-be ex, and they're talking about who gets what asset and debt and the kids. And what often men in these situations will report is that the ex, soon-to-be ex-wife, goes into kind of a histrionic fit of boo-hoo, the world is against me, I can't believe you're all doing this to me, you're taking the kids away from me, even though maybe she cheated and she did all these things. And the man just sits there and says nothing. And his attorney next to him goes, okay, moving on to page 5. That's how you got to deal with these things. The more you let them in your head, the more you let them take up space in your brain, living rent-free in your head, as we often say, the crazier you're going to become. Don't let their crazy influence you. It will literally drive you nuts. I can't believe, you know, none of this follows reality. The reality is this, yet she's acting this way or saying this instead. None of this makes any sense. Let it go, dude. Alright? And again, you say you've calmly asked for a confession from her. Yeah, just let it go. Hmm. And Rita says, "Great advice." Thank you, Rita. Yay, Miss Rita. Haven't seen you in a while on here. Welcome. Yeah, letting go in life was one of the hardest things, but it's also very freeing, she says. Uh, you can't— you say can, I think you meant to say can't. You cannot change people. All right, David, you just can't. And, uh, there's this— I keep harping, harkening, whatever, you know, harping on— I keep going back to this concept of neurodivergent men simply because I had the epiphany on a year or two ago of Wow, this is a lot of the dudes in our group. They either are exhibiting or identify themselves as neurodivergent. And no, that's not bullshit, it's a scientific term. Like I say, umbrella term for people that have like ADHD, autism spectrum, and so forth. Um, this is interesting to people on the autism spectrum, the concept of justice, super, super important for them. It's almost like— and I'm no expert on this, so please, if somebody is, correct me— It's almost as if it's kind of a very black and white thinking. This is right and wrong. There's no gray area in between. And when people start looking at things in a more nuanced gray area kind of way, they're like, no, no, this person did something wrong. They should admit to the wrong. This person should be punished for doing this. This person should not get, um, 100% custody of the kids because they cheated and did all these things, yada yada. And when you're like, well, but the law says this, and no, and they can't drop it. Like, there has to be justice in this world, damn it. It's kind of seeing some of that in you here a little bit. Um, and you're talking about she maintains a fake cheery demeanor. It's really hard to match that bullshit when she betrayed me so deeply. Woof. She's got her hooks into you, my man. You're letting her and her actions and everything just really affect you. You know, from A to Z. Every fiber of your being is just this woman. Look at her all happy. Look at her not confessing. I'm trying to— she moved on. It's time for you to do the same. All right, I know she hurt you. I know she did some things that you're just like, I don't get it, and continues to do things you don't get. Let her go, dude. Let her go. Check out our group, The Brotherhood, help4men.com/join. You can book time with me one-on-one if you want to talk about this further. It may help to talk to somebody on a regular basis, a monthly basis, to sit down, chat with somebody, whether it's a therapist, myself, something like that. But that's what I would recommend. Anything else, ladies and germs? Where are we at on time? Been about— well, coming up on the hour, 47 minutes into this. Wow, these go by fast, don't they? But thank you all for bringing your questions, stories, whatever to the table, comments. I do appreciate it a great deal. Wherever you're watching this, YouTube, Facebook, if you give me a follow or subscribe or however it works. Like this live in particular, that always helps. Give me the old love or like or whatever. Share it. All those things help. Facebook now has a thing where you can give stars. Now has— they've had it for years. Stars is kind of a tip, you know, put money in the tip jar. Facebook also has a subscribe function. It's kind of like a regular $4.99 tip in the tip jar. As a thank you, I'll give you a book in ebook format at no no charge to you. And then also give you an occasional discount on some products. Right now, uh, guys who put $4.99 a month into the tip jar of Facebook also get 25% off our members group for men, for example. And, um, I think YouTube even has like a tip function on there on the chat as well. I've not really explored that. I think I've enabled it some time ago, but all these little things help. This is a formal organization that we're running, Help for Men and the Brotherhood. It costs money. It's surprisingly big nut to cover on a monthly basis with the people, IT, software, contractors, all that good stuff. And we're trying to keep this thing going, trying to grow the community, trying to help out as many men as possible. Best way if you're a dude to help is to actually join the group. Maybe you have something to contribute to the group to help others. Maybe you need help yourself. Both, usually it's both, we would love to have you. $27 a month is what it costs to join the Brotherhood. If you are a veteran from anywhere in the world and you have ID to prove it, we have a system for checking IDs to make sure you're, you're a veteran, you get a membership for like $14 a month. Pretty cheap. What's less than 50 cents a day to join. All kinds of cool stuff that I won't go into that are included with membership, and we continue to add to it, adding more and more benefits for our guys. Um, anything else, ladies and germs? HelpForMen.com. Um, follow Dad Starting Over or Help For Men, any of the social media. Am I missing anything? Anybody? Anyone? Oh, the other books behind me. Um, I've written 4 books in total. There's 3 of them behind me. Real Talk is a book for young men. The subtitle is, uh, No Bullshit Life Advice for Young Men. Um, a lot of people like that because that's the icebreaker for talking about some not so comfortable things that you don't like to talk to your little man about. Um, we talk about puberty, girls, you know, building attraction, boundaries, listening to your gut, all that important stuff that all of us were like, why didn't somebody tell me this when I was a kid? There you go. There's a book called Real Talk. Next to it is Divorce Panic. Guys going through divorce, having a difficult time dealing with all of it, trying to wrap your head around what the hell happened. There you go. Included in that book are real stories from men who have reached out to me over the years, as well as just my advice. Some of it kind of mirrors a lot of what you see in both— all the three of these books have a lot of core principles that are repeated throughout each of the three books, but they kind of have a different audience, each of them. But there is kind of a a foundational set of principles, if you will, from Ralph Brewer, Dad Starting Over: Help for Men, that are mirrored in everything that I write. And then there's a fourth book called Red Flags, which is such a small short read that it's not available in paperback format, only in ebook format. Red Flags. All these books can be found at helpformen.com. Click on each of the book pages and they'll give you a link to all the different retailers you can buy it from: Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes Noble, Audible, or you can download a PDF directly from our website. If you prefer a little PDF format. And yes, you can read it on your phone, it's formatted for your phone. Um, I think that's about it, ladies and germs. Mike says, always a pleasure. Yes, thank you, thank you, Mr. Mike. All right, ladies and germs, if there's nothing else— going once, twice, anything? No? I appreciate all of you. Oh wait, oh, it's always right when I'm about If any of you have watched these before, it's always right when I'm about to go hit the old hang up button. And then Kenny says, I divorced my wife 17 years and I got custody of my two daughters. She said a lot of horrible things to friends and family. I remained completely silent, gave none of the negativity any attention, and lost almost no sleep over it. My life couldn't be better. We're going to end on a good note. Thank you, Kenny. Perfect. Excellent way of putting it, my friend. Um, why add to the chaos? Why add to the negativity? Why add to the hate and the turmoil? I know you want to fight back and go, oh yeah, well, this, you know what, did this. And let it go, dude. What's it going to solve? You'll just look less in everyone's eye. Just smile. It's like, yes, but they need to all know the truth. And you know the truth, right? Good enough. Now, unless some of what they're saying is somehow interfering with your career, your ability to make money or whatever, then yeah, you need to come after them. But otherwise, it's just That's silly. You're a— act like you're above all that nonsense. Seriously, thank you, Kenny, for that. And thank you all so very much for joining me today. Once again, I appreciate all of you, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I think I will be seeing you tomorrow— or tomorrow— next week. I'm not sure exactly when, but see if I can make time. Got a busy week coming up. All right, ladies and germs, thank you all so much. Catch you on the next one. A toodaloo!