Chat LIVE With Ralph (DSO)

All right, my radio skills are fading. I don't do enough of these. Welcome everybody, how is everyone today? Thank you all for joining. Give a little bit for folks to file in here. Let me bring up comments. I got comments going. There we go, cool. As folks file in here, if you could do me a big fat favor and let me know where you are joining us from. I always like to see where in the world everybody's from. So let me know, are you from Venezuela? Are you from Indiana? Or where? Anywhere in between? Uh, we've had folks, uh, Australia, South Africa on here, UK. So welcome everybody. Um, give a little bit for folks to file in. Looks like we got some folks coming in. Welcome everyone. My name is Ralph Brewer. Rafalito, as my mother refers to me. Um, you may know me as Dad Starting Over, or DSO for short. I've been doing this, uh, I guess you could say content creation, to use the modern vernacular. It started off as a blog and then evolved into writing books, doing coaching, starting a men's group, then doing videos, of which a lot of people know me now as the bald dude that keeps showing up on their feed for some weird reason. That's me. Howdy do. And, um, the Dad Starting Over thing started, for those that don't know, for those that are new to this, that just happened upon this somehow, um, went through a nasty divorce 12 years ago or so and wrote about it, wrote my experiences on it, ended up dating, new long-term relationship, got remarried. We had a kid. That's my fourth kid. Still married to the gal to this day. Fingers crossed. And, um, what else? And since then I've authored 4 books, started a private men's group, and make a long story short, one of those books took off. That book was called The Dead Bedroom Fix. That's how a lot of people know me, uh, DBF for short. You'll hear people reference a DBF in my comments, that's what they're talking about, The Dead Bedroom Fix. The 3rd edition of that book just came out in July of this year, July 2024. For those watching this on the recording, probably years later, It's like I'm speaking into the future. Ooh. And so anyway, check it out. Dead Bedroom Fix, 3rd edition. Make sure it's the 3rd edition. Amazon, Apple Books, Audible. Audible has more content than the other versions have. Just a little extra bonus there for buying the Audible version. And what else? So as of 4 months ago now, we launched a new website called Help for Men. Help for Men dot com. This is in an effort to be a more inclusive brand. A more broad in scope brand to help dudes out there. We had a lot of guys that are like, dad starting over, I'm not a dad, I'm not divorcing, yada yada, but I like your material. So we created Help for Men. All of our business is done under that. You can buy books at helpformen.com, you can buy courses. We have courses now, helpformen.com. Join our private group called the HFM Brotherhood, Help for Men Brotherhood. Uh, we have in the private group, we have discussion forums, which are very, very active. We have live Zoom meetings. We record all of the live Zoom meetings, so for guys that can't attend live, you can listen to it actually from your phone, from your podcast app on your phone, which is very cool. Only members can listen to those. We have a podcast, which is like monologues for our members. Um, what else do we have? Uh, all my books. I mentioned the 4 books I wrote. You can get them all for free in PDF as well as audiobook format, as well as a book written by Austin, who is a coach in our group. Speaking of coaches, it's myself and 6 other gentlemen, I believe. I always get the number wrong. I don't know why I have a hard time with that. And, um, uh, we have helped hundreds if not thousands of men over the years in one-on-one, uh, consulting, mentoring, if you want to call it that. Guys that have different walks of life, all, all of us have been there and done that. And, uh, we keep very busy doing that thing, been able to help out lots and lots of men doing that. Well, our members get, uh, the coaching at a big, big discount. And what else do we get? Oh, we meet in person. We're having our 5th annual conference coming up here in the States, which blows my mind. 5 years of this. Wow. Our 5th annual conference is coming up in Charleston, South Carolina. Already booked up, already sold out. We're looking at doing a potential second one, and we're thinking Colorado, maybe in the fall 2025. Let me know what you guys think about that. So check it out, help4men.com and the Help for Men Brotherhood. Again, this is for men only, in case that wasn't clear. Ladies, you're free to look at the material, watch me on here, ask me questions, do whatever you like. But as far as joining our private group, HFM Brotherhood, just for dudes. So any questions at all, comments or anything, please do not hesitate. This is not— this— the whole purpose of this thing is not for me just to sit here and blab away incessantly to myself, but rather to interact with you guys and gals. So if you could let me know where you're from, anything like that, um, Would love to hear from you. Thank you. And let's see if we have anything going on here recently. I got a headache right now, so I apologize. Ah, stretching my neck muscles out. Feeling very tense in my back neck. Recently I've done all kinds of videos that have gotten a lot of attention. I did a live here recently with a gal by the name of Monica, and that went really well. We talked about hormonal replacement therapy, All kinds of cool stuff. And we talked about the dead bedroom, we talked about women and accountability. That's a big hot button topic. It's a hot button or hotbed, I guess, same thing. Yeah, there's the— a lot of us men have known us— noticed rather, that the women in our lives have a kind of a difficult time saying, "Yeah, my bad. Sorry about that." Or, "You're right." That's pretty rare. Um, so we talked— Monica and I talked about what the heck's that all about. So check it out, Facebook, YouTube, uh, there's clips on TikTok up from it, um, but on YouTube and Facebook you can see the full live, uh, recording. They record the, you know, from beginning to end and you can listen to that. So check it out, uh, YouTube on Dad Starting Over. I am updating it every single day with both long form, landscape, horizontal, whatever you want to call it, long form video as well as shorts. So if you are not already subscribed to Dad Starting Over on YouTube, please do so. You're missing all kinds of content on there. We're starting to get more and more views, more and more subscribers, so thank you very much. We passed the 100,000 subscriber mark last year. Very cool. And, uh, oh, and check out Help for Men, the tag, uh, whatever you call it, is, uh, uh, Real Help for Men is the username, I guess, whatever you call that on the handle on YouTube, Real Help for Men. But I'm resol— or reserving Real Help for Men channel on YouTube just for interviews. So check it out, Help for Men on YouTube. And my first interview was with Dr. Orion Taraban, who is very, very popular on YouTube. You see him in all kinds of podcast interviews. So we were very lucky to get him. So that's a good way to kick that channel off. Mr. Chris from Facebook asks, Wife left the house, kids living with me, discovered she was having an affair. Ouch. Sorry, buddy. She went from anger and hate stage with me now to texting me a lot and spending a lot of time with me. I've got no clue what to think. Any thoughts? What do you want to do, buddy? The fact that your wife left the house and left the kids with you and you discovered her affair shows she's not she's not well, I guess you could say. She's got some problems. And Chris, I'm going to make a big assumption here, and this is not just know-it-all nonsense that just came out of the blue. This is based upon my interactions with so many men in your shoes for years and years. And that is, I'm willing to bet based on her actions that what I've taken from just a couple sentences here is, Chris, is that your wife has some problems and probably had a history of problems that date back to childhood. And you are seeing the repercussions of all those problems years down the line. Now you got a relationship, now you got kids, and she waked up, and now she's off having relationships with others, and you're noticing she's— the craziness is continuing with this back and forth with other guy, abandoning her children. Let's put it out there in blunt terms, she abandoned her kids and now coming back to you. Where are your boundaries, Mr. Chris, to go no? You don't get to bounce in and out of our lives like this. You don't get to do what you did and continue on in a loving relationship with me. Chris, buddy, she lost her job. Put it this way, she lost the privilege of being your spouse, your loving partner. I'm assuming a lot here. Let's pretend you're a good dude. You could be an asshole, I don't know. So you're a good dude, you're a good father, et cetera, et cetera. She took all that in and the end result of that was her saying, I'm gonna go to this guy over here. See a kid, see a husband. There are repercussions for really bad decisions like that, hurting people you love like that. And you don't want to soften the blow of her poor decisions like this. And softening the blow is, come on in, come on back, I'll be a loving partner to you over again. Um, if there is hope, Mr. Chris, for this continuing, what it's going to take is really, really hard work on her part to figure out Why did I do this? What is it about me that's so broken that I would do something like this? This is, oof, this is bad. What did I do? And then she should come to you hat in hand saying, let's go work on this. Would you work? Would you, you know, be patient with me? And I understand your feelings, husband, of being hurt and everything because I hurt you and I did really not so good things and abandoned the children and everything. Obviously I got a screw loose, you know, not to be insulting, and I need help. I need to work on this. That's— and then you have, then you have to be super, super patient as she goes through all that hard work, which is going to take— drum roll— years. Sorry, dude, it's not an easy, like, I'm back. It doesn't work that way. Ask any number of men that have been through this. They're like, oh yeah, we went through this several times. You don't want to be that guy. Okay, so what do I make of that? She's got problems and she needs help, with or without you. From what I've seen over the years, chances of this working out, slim to none. Sorry, working out long term. You can have great weeks, months, maybe even a year plus. You're like, we're so interconnected, this is great. And then the behavior starts all over again. Why? Because it wasn't addressed early on. It wasn't addressed years ago when all this stuff happened. And so you're You're just kind of a victim of all this. You're sitting back watching like, what's this car accident? What's going on? Yeah, the, the, the stage was set years ago for this, and she needs a lot of help. Oh, Miss— is this Miss, I would assume? Mary Bell, that sounds like a feminine name. I don't see a picture associated with the name, but from Facebook, Mary Bell says, what are the most important lessons you learned from your first marriage that helped you succeed in your second? What an excellent, excellent question. I would say the number one— it's going to sound kind of asshole-ish of me, but there's something to this— do a better job of vetting your partner. Not necessarily that they are good or bad, but that they are a good connection for you. Hindsight is always 20/20. We always look back on the past and go, huh, makes sense now, right? But in hindsight, I look back on my relationship number one with wife number one, and, uh, first things first, very little relationship experience. We're way too young to be saying you're my one and only from now until the day I die. We were still maturing, still growing, everything else. Number two, a lot of dysfunction in her relation— in her, in her family, rather, which I sat back and watched and made me go, ooh, and that should have painted the picture for, dude, you're probably in store for a lot of what you're seeing here in your future. Didn't know that. I was very ignorant of that. So make a long story short, I don't like to throw my ex under the bus. It's not necessarily fair hearing one side of the story, whatever. But better job of vetting candidate number one. So I took that into, you know, I guess the dating phase, if you will, of, uh, post-marriage number one and really put women through the wringer. And there was a real, uh, there was a lot of moments there early on In that process— I apologize, I'm being distracted. There's somebody right outside my door yelling. I'm in an office. I don't know why they would— can you guys hear that? Wow. Anyway, and so, um, it's one thing I learned is that in going through that dating process, I was getting to know people, and there was some of those really tough moments of, I like you, we're really hitting it off, the sparks are flying, but I see this thing that makes me say, I can't do this, I'm sorry, adiós. That was really, really tough early on, and lesson learned. I got better at it, and in hindsight, I look back and go, that was good. I avoided some really big, big potential problems there with those potential candidates, relationship candidates. So anyway, so there's that part. Do your diligence up front. And then the The more, I guess, wholesome, nice stuff would be the dating, staying connected to your partner, relationship number one. It was like, we're parents now, done. Us as a couple, done. And it was just understood. That's just what you do. You just set that nonsense aside, the dating, the romance, the staying connected, yada yada. No, we don't need to do that anymore. And I remember even hearing overtly from people, like I think my own mother at some point was like, it's important that you two get out and do things. Leave the kids with us or something like that. And I remember like, yeah, right, um, that's not gonna happen. And just poo-pooed it, right? And it was such solid advice. You have to stay connected in that way. And that is something that wife and I now, Natalie and I, um, really put a lot of effort into. Is it's not a question of are we going to do date night this week, it's where's date night this week, or date nights plural. Who's going to watch the kiddo? Um, where and when are we going? It's just, it's, it's, uh, baked into our relationship. It's an integral part of our connection. It has to be there. We recognize that, or else you very easily drift apart. Um, I, I've mentioned here plenty of times in past videos that there seems to be a very natural mechanism amongst human beings that when we get together in a long-term monogamous relationship and have kiddos, there seems to be a very natural tendency to drift apart. The sex goes, the connection, the romance, everything just drips. And it's Mother Nature's way of saying, go, go make babies with somebody else. You know, we're supposed to proliferate our species and, you know, do that again and again and again. Well, we don't want to. We want to stay together. Well, it takes work. That's what I've learned in relationship number 2. This, this whole staying connected, staying romantic, sexy, connected, whatever you want to call it, takes work. And thankfully, I have a partner via the vetting stuff that I talked about earlier, who's on board with that. So, yay, right? Hmm, uh, Mr. I apologize, hum, whom, H-U-M, he's responding to Mr. Chris saying, send her back to the streets. This is a common phrase. I don't know where this came from, the streets thing, but I hear that all the time. In my comments, she is for the streets, take her, send her back to the streets. I would presume that means, um, she is not of the, uh, comfortable family life marriage thing. She's for the, you know, whatever, streets, the fun life. The— I don't know necessarily we're insinuating prostitute thing. Maybe we are, I don't know. But that's a common phrase I hear again and again. But thank you guys for questions. Mr. Chris, for your little, uh, Sharing your situation, appreciate it. Can't speak today. And thank you, Miss Maribel, for your excellent question. That's a really good one. Anybody else? HelpForMen.com, check it out. I'm going to put the links up here. Pardon me while I type poorly. Don't have my glasses on. Hope that makes sense. HelpForMen.com, there we go. And my best-selling book, just came out, third edition. Uh, we're getting a lot of downloads of it. I can see on, um, you know, Amazon, uh, Audible and everything else is doing well, the third edition, thank goodness. Uh, what I don't see is a lot of people leaving, uh, reviews. I see a couple people just clicking like stars, and so far like several people have clicked 5 stars on Amazon, so great. But it'd be nice if you left like a verbal or word text review, that helps. So if you guys have read the third edition of The Dead Bedroom Fix and you liked it, please leave a review— Amazon, Audible, Apple Books, wherever the— you found it. That helps out tremendously. That tells Amazon and all those guys like, oh, we need to push this more and more to people, more and more people like it, and then they show it more, and then it kind of spirals and it takes off. And that's how you sell thousands of copies of books, is via reviews and word of mouth and everything else. So if you could Leave me a review. Dead Bedroom Fix, Amazon, Audible, Apple Books, Barnes Noble. Uh, what's another audiobook? Audiobooks.com, or is audiobook.com? One of those. You can find it on there and all my other books. There's a lot of different, you know, Amazon and Audible, which by the way, same company, um, they kind of have monopoly on the book world. But if you do a search for audio or, yeah, audiobooks and other kinds of books, there are all kinds of companies selling it out there. They're not the only ones. And my books should be out there as well. I've subscribed service that pushes them all out there to all the different retailers and sellers out there. Any other questions, comments, ladies and germs? I'm here for you. Stick around for as long as we need, up to— at the most I do these is about an hour, so I'm not gonna stick around all day, all night for these, but I'm here for any questions that you may have or stories to share. I'm trying to think of any subjects that I've recently brought up. I did a video recently on the concept of hypergamy, which is a big buzzword in the, uh, I guess you'd say red pill circle, manosphere, men talking about relationship stuff, a lot of hurt men talking about relationship stuff. Um, they mentioned that word hypergamy. I did a video about that. That'll be coming out here soon, posted on YouTube and Facebook. Um, talked about the scarcity mindset in men. This was a big hot button issue. Um, I did a video on men kind of have this— it may not be like an overt sense of scarcity in relationships, but it's kind of like an almost unconscious thing, and it kind of colors their, their behavior in a lot of different ways. And one way is, um, let's back up. What do I mean by the scarcity thing? So a man feels like he doesn't have many options. Whether it's for casual sexual relationships, whether it's for long-term relationships, anything in between. He feels like, I— there's just not many options out there for me. And men convince themselves of this because it's via my looks, it's via my lack of money, it's what my social status, whatever it may be. I just don't— there's just not much out there for me. Ladies no likey me, right? That's what the guys think. And they take that energy and they go online and they talk to other men, are like, yeah, me too. And they get mutually angry with each other. And then they will sure enough get online, see some video by some woman somewhere. I always use like Kathy from Nebraska, you know, just some random middle of nowhere woman saying like, I don't need men, I'm happy with me and my cats, or whatever. And these men get pissed off. And I'm always like, what the heck's going on, guys? Why are you so mad at some woman who says I'm off the market? Then she's just not potential mate material for you. Big deal. You know, who cares? And, uh, and then on the other end of the spectrum, some woman's like, I slept with 500 men. Men get super pissed at that too. And I'm like, guys, if that's what she wants to do, that's what she wants to do. So what? She's not a potential mate for you, it sounds like. Sounds like you'd prefer somebody who doesn't have so much sexual experience. Sexual experience. Then leave her be. Let her do her thing. She's off the market as far as you're concerned. What's the big deal? And I think it's a big deal for guys who have that innate sense of scarcity. Like, there's literally only so many women to go around, and when they watch the women come off the market, so to speak, you know, take themselves off the table, they get pissed. Like, no, no, where are you going? So when they see a woman acting very promiscuous, like, no, no, why are you acting— oh man, you've disappointed me, woman. You're supposed to be better than that. You're a woman. It's very pedestalization of women, isn't it? Um, or a woman that takes herself off the market, men will, you know, viscerally get angry, and you're going to be depressed, and you're going to end up alone, dying alone with 12 cats and everything else. And I'm like, guys, who gives a shit? Just let these women go. If you have a very real sense of abundance, we tend not to care about that kind of stuff. Men that do well in the sexual and relationship world are just like, whatever, have fun, sister, more power to you, whatever, I don't care. Um, but a lot of men care a little too much so. It gets a little scary. And, um, some men came back to me after I made videos about that saying, well, here's the deal, dude. They're like, I get it, but here's the deal. We are wanting long-term relationship material, and these women are falsely advertising themselves as such type of material. So let's say you got a gal who had a really huge party stage up until she's 30 years of age. And let's say she slept with 500 individuals, and these men are like, uh, right off the bat, I do not want to be with somebody who is sexually promiscuous in the past for insert reasons, right? Religious, moral, physical health reason, whatever it may be. And then he meets this gal and she either overtly or kind of subversively advertises, I'm not that way. I'm pretty sedate and boring when it comes to that kind of stuff. I have very little relationship experience. Don't have to worry about that. And the guy's like, phew, good, cool. And he devotes a lot of time, attention, love, emotion, and yes, maybe even the monetary stuff, money, to a woman who he thinks is, you know, a certain way. But then she tell— then he later finds out, potentially years down the line, oh shit. She was this other way. And that usually comes out in the form of some kind of blow-up later in life. She, uh, pardon me, she, uh, cheats, uh, like what Chris talked about here earlier. She abandons the family and the husband and runs off with some guy and ends up back and forth, back— crazy stuff, substance abuse or whatever. And, uh, here's the thing. I hear from these guys all the time, Ralph Brewer Brewer, it came out of nowhere, I'm telling you, this woman was an angel. I'm like, okay, so let's stop, pause for a moment. Tell me about her mom and dad. Usually this results in like 10 minutes of laughter on the guy's part, and he's like, yeah, you got me. It's like, it was that simple. There was always, always, always, always, I'm telling you 100% of the time, something in this woman's background, something in her story along the way of getting to know her, the timeline of their relationship, this man usually has a lot of moments that make him go, "Ooh, what was that?" But he dutifully goes right around them or jumps over them and ignores and keeps on going because he's in love. That's basically what these guys are saying is, when I fall in love, I overlook a lot of stuff, and it would be nice to know that I don't have to worry about overlooking stuff. It would be nice to know if just right off the bat she was an angel, then I wouldn't have to worry about red flags and everything else. Well, guys, that's not real life. The real life is that you're going to fall in love with people and you're going to convince yourself, like, I think this may be the one, and they may very well disappoint you. That's life. Uh, been there, done that, and it sucks. And so question is then, well, how are some ways to kind of minimize the chances of that, mitigate, you know, these chances of meeting Miss Wrong? Um, there, there are some people that say take a look at the family. There's some people that say if you're a, um, oh, a religious person, go to church and meet them, or whatever your— some kind of social aspect to it. I prefer people that are into this and not into that, well then go to wherever those people are, so to speak. So, you know, I've had some people that are like, uh, I'm kind of an introverted nerdy kind of guy, I'm not into the party scene or whatever, then don't go to clubs to pick up women. That's not your style, that's not you. Go to Lego building clubs, which are going to be 99.9% men, let's be honest. But then in turn, that may lead you to make social connections with people and eventually find somebody that's more up your alley. Um, backing up though, does a woman who's been very promiscuous in her past always guarantee that there are going to be relationship issues in the future? No, not always. Um, does a hyper-promiscuous, hypersexual past point to potential problems? Yeah, probably. I mean, let's be honest. And by the way, that goes for men or women. I know a lot of men hearing that go, no, hold on, dude. No, no, we're not immune to this. I know plenty of men who have very hyper-promiscuous pasts. They're trying to get validation and trying to fill a void, no pun intended, with all these women. And then later in life they go, what am I doing? This is, this is nuts. I've slept with 600 women. What am I trying to prove to myself? I need to stop this nonsense. All I'm doing is meeting crazy and I need to settle down. And then they get with a woman and invariably the relationship kind of bores them. They're just like, where's the excitement? Where's the fun? Where's the sleeping with 3 different women in 1 week? Where's it? Now I'm, it's been 3 weeks, I haven't had anything. And my wife has just kind of turned into a mom and given up on us. And this sucks. Those men tend not to do very well in marriage. And in case we made women maybe wired kind of the same way and maybe in a different way, maybe in a different kind of not so good way, don't know. But you know, I think to take the hyper progressive mindset of it has absolutely zero impact on, your ability to maintain a healthy monogamous relationship in the future, I think is a little short-sighted. I think it's a little progressive for the sake of being progressive, and it's not. And we all need to be honest with each other. Yeah, it may have an effect. I may have gotten to the point where I expect a really sexy, fun relationship. Some people are really upfront about it. Like, I want a monogamous relationship, but not strictly sexually monogamous. I've heard some guys going down that route. I want to be with a woman who's going to be okay with me eventually kind of having girlfriends on the side. It's like, okay, dude, if you could find a woman who's up for that, I guess more power to you. That's kind of the exception to the rule, I would think. But some of those relationships exist for sure. All kinds of different ways to skin a cat in this relationship game. Hmm. I've missed a lot of— I blab a lot, I'm sorry. All right, Miss Melinda says, when do you think a divorced dad should tell his two preteen daughters that he is looking to date? I don't think you should tell his daughters he's looking to date. I guess let's back this up. I always tell people, men and women alike, give it a year post-divorce before you start going dating any Period. Man, that just gets people worked up. Like, well, I need to go have sex. I need to— okay, cool, dude. But if you're going to be like a lot of people that do this, and from what I've seen, and after the fact, you're gonna be like, yeah, I should have waited. I wasn't quite mentally all there, you know, going through the divorce and everything. It's very mentally— it sucks. It's traumatizing to people. It makes you a little nuts, goofy. And it could be argued that's exactly the last— that's exactly the time you don't want to bring other people into your life. And you don't want to do the very vulnerable and emotional act of sexual intercourse in relationship building with people when you're nuts. Crazy thought, I know. So right away, let's give it a year. So let's say you've waited the year, you got kiddos. Do you go to the kiddos and say, guys, dad's gonna go out there and start dating? I, I don't know, why would you? You have your own personal life, they have theirs. I guess, um, after Here's another year mark. Um, you're getting to know a gal, you've been on several dates, it's serious, you've been together for a couple months. Is that when you introduce them to the kiddos? I say no. I say give that a year, the new relationship, the new serious relationship, a year before you could say, kiddos, I would like to introduce you to somebody. This person's important to me, I love them, her name is Mary or John or whatever. And slowly introduce them to the kids, a little at a time. Let's go do lunch together, kiddos, and you can meet Mary. Drop Mary back off wherever they're at and go, kiddos, tell me what you think. Your opinion's important to me. I love you. You're my kiddos. What do you think of Mary? That kind of stuff. Um, don't do the whole, I've known her for a month, let's have her spend the night, and all the other garbage. So many people, uh, jump, just jump right into that world way too fast. They're just trying to fill a void there. So many people are in long-term relationship mode and that's all they know, that they're just— they just can't wait to get back into it. I've been there, done that. It doesn't work well, guys. Just all you have is two people that are desperate to get back into that mode again. Hmm. Jack Jones says, married 21 years, 3 kids, one in college, 47 years old, having sex 3, 4 to 5 times a year for the last 7 to 8 years. Oof. Ouch. I'm over it. Have had a discussion several, several times. I'm over it now. 4 or 5 exclamation points. Jack is upset. I can understand, Jack. That's not good. Not healthy. 4 or 5 times a year is, hmm, points to something kind of wrong and broken in the relationship, isn't there? Have you tried my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix? It may not necessarily fix your situation, or it may not be the aha moment for you., but it may be a series of small aha moments that will lead you down a path with or without your wife towards a healthier sex life. So give it a try. Dead Bedroom Fix, deadbedroomfix.com, uh, third edition. If you go to other retailers and look for it, make sure it's the third edition, came out in 2024, July. It's the one that has hardly any reviews, which by the way, good segue. Um, if you downloaded that book or bought that book from any of the retailers, please leave a review. I would appreciate it. Been hundreds of you so far and we only have like 3 reviews on Amazon, so not good. Um, but they're all 5-star, so that's positive. Anna and a lot of names. My goodness, Anna, that's a lot of names there. Uh, can you believe I've only slept with my husband? LOL. Well, all right, more power to you. Hey, Miss Anna, here's a big question to you. Do you ever regret that? Be honest. I was going to say you're in the anonymous confines of the internet. You're not. Your name's here for the whole world to see, so this isn't necessarily anonymous. But if you care to share, have there ever been moments where you say, I kind of wish I had had more experiences with other human beings. That's very, very common. I'm not going to shame you for that. Men and women both say that to me. Like, a lot of guys especially do the whole, now that I'm married, been with this woman for 20 years, the sex is next to nothing, like our friend here Jack says. And they look back and go, I was a handsome 20-some-year-old guy. What was I doing just sticking to this one? I should have been out just banging everything that breathes, you know. Um, so just curious if you ever had those kind of thoughts. Mm-hmm. Uh, Mary Bell says, thank you for your answer, and one more question: how do you balance maintaining individuality with the partnership in a marriage? Well, that's kind of simple but not so simple, which is alone time, you time. Um, a lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people, um, make the erroneous assumption that we are now a long-term couple, which means basically everything we do is together. I even have some people that, uh, they work from home and so does the spouse, which means they are literally with each other like 24/7. Even, you know, there's usually this baked-in kind of distance in a relationship, which is I go to work, she goes to work or stays home, or vice versa. And so we have this natural distance of 8+ hours a day of not seeing each other. Which is good. That's a positive thing. And, um, and then you have interests outside of your relationship. Honey, I'm going to go exercise at the gym. I'm going to join my sports club. I'm going to go to my hobby club. And back in— this is not just a man thing. It sounds like a very masculine thing for a reason. A lot of men do that. But it should be the other way around too. You come home from your bowling or whatever it is, and she says, I'm out, kids are all yours. So-and-so needs to have his diaper changed. Garbage needs to be taken out. Dishes need to be done. Be back in an hour. She has her thing. You both have your thing. From what I understand from a lot of people, that's very, very foreign and weird to a lot of people, and it shouldn't be. That should be a regular part of, uh, your relationship makeup. It's having your own time. It's healthy. And a part of, um, the, the strange part of human wiring Pardon me as I bump into the microphone. A strange part of human wiring in that way is that distance between two people— there's a bunch of different ways to kind of frame it, but one is that it creates a positive emotional tension between the two of you, kind of a little bit of a separation anxiety between the two of you. What's she up to? What's he up to? What are they doing now? Your more anxious, anxious types take that into the not good territory. They take it into a very— they ruminate on it and becomes not good. But most people have a little like, I kind of miss my loved one. Yeah, I wonder what they're doing now. That is a very crucial ingredient towards keeping the spark alive in a relationship. So if you're with each other 24/7, you just— that's just gone. You just don't have it. It's important that you have it. And yes, that they go away with friends for a weekend, whatever. Maybe distance is big. Do you believe there is a time frame to fall in love? Says Sean from Facebook. For me, it's difficult. Typically takes like 12 to 18 months. Everybody's— what does fall in love mean? You know, there's some people that one night with a person, they're like, I knew it from day one. You know, those very romanticized— you ever hear like, uh, for some reason this is really big on like those, uh Oh, I was going to say baby boomer, but before them, like World War II era, like my grandparents were. You listen to them like, how'd you meet Grandma? Tell me. And you'll just hear like, saw her at the corner drugstore when I was 13 years old, and as soon as I saw her, I knew she's the one. Fell in love with her right then and there. You're like, wow, okay. You know, they're like, hey, pass me the licorice at the candy store. And in love, that's all it took. Well, for you, Sean, it's, I need a year, year and a half to get to know you before I can officially say I'm in love. So they each have their own little definition of what that means. I don't know if there's an average or not. And, uh, oh, and Miss Anna, this is in response to, do you miss being able to be with a lot of different men? She says, no, he's great. And you've been married for 29 years. Wow. Very good, Miss Anna, with a lot of names there. Congratulations. That's awesome. I think that's what, in essence, what a lot of people, if they were honest, would say, that that's exactly what they want. A long-term partner that they can rely on, go through life with, and things remain sexy and connected between them. That's basically it. And follow-up to that, a lot of men say, and I just want a partner that puts effort into us. Again, who am I talking to? A lot of anxious-y guys that put a lot of effort into the relationship. They're reading books and podcasts and YouTube videos and coming to my material. They're really putting in effort to stay close to the wife and keep as connected as They just want to see a little bit of that in return. That's what a lot of guys say. Hmm. Oh, people are connecting. Mr. Jack and Mr. Sean have similar stories and they're connecting. Yeah, guys, talk to each other. That was— that's how my— this whole thing started was when I went through my thing 12 years ago, which really threw me for a loop. And you feel very alone during all of that. And I had a therapist who I went to, a gal who— the best thing she did through all the shit, I don't know how many— 2 months we talked to each other, not even that, be honest with you. The best thing she did was, I have a guy who is also a client who would love to talk to you because your stories are so similar. And that set me down a road the rabbit hole, whatever, you know, metaphor you want to use, of, oh wow, this is not as uncommon as I thought. Oh wow, I'm not alone. Oh wow, this is a thing. And, uh, all these guys, all these dads starting over, that sent me down this road. And that was a big, big help, just commiserating with other guys, sharing war stories, realizing how similar we all are, that I'm not some weirdo that's going through this. That was huge. Guys working with guys is really, really big. Big for mental health and big for expediting the process of getting better, getting over the hump. There's a definite hump of, "Woe is me, I don't see an end to this suffering, this doesn't sound good," and then over the hump of, "Oh, this is actually the best thing to ever happen to me." And what I've seen to expedite that process is working with other guys. Good segue into— I'm going to put it in the, in the comments here. The chat for you, uh, YouTubers. HelpForMen.com/join, uh, or you can just go to Help For Men and search for the HFM Brotherhood. Scroll down on the home page and you'll see a link to it. That is our private group for men only. There is a small cost involved. If you pay on an annual basis, it's like pennies a day just to cover the cost of— we got Zoom meetings, we got the recordings, we got to host all this crap, uh, my time, all this stuff. I'm in a studio here. This literally costs money to reach out to and help thousands and thousands of dudes. I always have people get on me about, why do you charge for that? I can't magically make all this stuff just happen. We have meetings, we have the get-togethers, we have the coaching, we have the books of mine, all that available to our members. Check it out, helpformen.com. The HFM Brotherhood is what we call it, Help for Men Brotherhood, at helpformen.com. Private group for men only. We have around 700 gentlemen from around the world in the group. USA is our number one market. Australia is our number two market. Big distance in between there, isn't it? But for whatever reason, really took off in Australia. So we're very lucky to be able to reach guys from around the world. Um, oh boy, that's a, that's a name. We've got some interesting names here today. If, if it's ski at the end, is that a Polish name? We got Oski and Imsky at the end. I don't want to say the names out loud for the recording here. Oski and Imsky says, any advice for anxious avoidant with an anxious avoidant significant other, although to a lesser extent? What kind of advice? Um, the only advice I can give you is both of you are fully understanding, fully understanding your condition, I guess, that's not the right term, you know what I mean, and how you got there and steps to get better, to do better, to become more secure is the goal for all of us. I want to be more secure in my relationship. And we're both insecure in our own ways, the anxious preoccupies and then the avoidant types and then we have the in-betweens. When you call yourself an anxious avoidant, are you, there's another term for this I believe, I am not a psychologist, guys, Another term for this, disorganized. They're like a combination of both. Often it's, they had parents who played that dance, avoidant, anxious, avoidant, anxious, and you as a child sat back and watched this tennis match, right? And you embodied traits from both. You just sit back and watch them. And in your subsequent relationships later in life, you see like, oh wow, I'm doing the same dance within myself. One day I'm very anxious and preoccupied and insecure about the relationship in that way, and then the other way I'm like— and then the next day I'm like, get away from me, just leave me alone, I want to be left alone, I'm tired of this family thing, I just want to run away and go to the woods and stop talking about things and stuff. Very avoidant in that way. And then back to anxious again, back to avoidant. So you need to recognize, um, this is, this is who I am. And it ain't good, and I better go talk to somebody about this. And you too, Mr. and Miss Spouse, let's go work on this together. And realize— I can't— it sounds very negative of me when I say it, but I can't stress it enough— patience, patience, patience is huge. Where it becomes difficult in the— I've talked about this many times, um, the scenario I see often is, uh, pardon me, I hit the microphone here— it's the anxious avoidant thing. You know, let's say it's like a level here, and the anxious and avoidant are like this. And what I've seen is that the anxious-y one is the one putting in the work. And so they're like, you know, I'm, I'm going to therapy, getting a little bit better, more secure. Let's say secure is up here. So I'm getting a little bit better, and I'm more secure, and I'm, I'm reading books, and I'm getting in better physical shape, and I'm working more with friends and on and on and on, and they're just more secure in that way. And what happens is their attachment to their very avoidant partner is widening and widening, and it's as a result of their work. They're becoming more secure, and as they become more secure, they're more drifting away from the other partner, and they leave them behind, so to speak, because the avoidant one's just like, I don't want to do all this shit. I don't want to have to work on it. I just want to live. I just want to exist. Leave me the F alone. Jeez. They're like, "Okay," and they go and work on their thing, and then later they lose that attachment to the avoidant, and eventually they look at themselves and say, "I don't know if I want to be in this relationship with this person anymore." And invariably, you know, they go to the therapist. Therapist's like, "Do you want a divorce?" They're like, "No, I don't. I prefer to keep the relationship together. It's just that I've lost this emotional attachment to them." And the prescription is always the same. You're going to have to be patient then. This person over here, Miss or Mr. Avoidant, it's going to take a while for them to finally go, all right, I'll go get some help. And then that's when the work begins. Then that's when the real patience comes in. And we're talking years and years of in and out of therapy, going with each other, on their own, starting dating over, basically starting the whole courtship process all over again. And that's tough, guys. Really, really tough. So I'm not trying to dissuade you from, I guess, reconciling or trying to work on coming together, but just be realistic about this. This ain't gonna be fixed overnight. Sorry, not one book ain't gonna do it. Watching one live with Ralphie Boy here ain't gonna do it. YouTube, whatever. Nah, it's gonna take like, oh, dozens and dozens of times working with somebody. You're gonna have days where they have really back to their old self, followed by weeks of, yay, they're back to getting work again, followed by weeks of, ah, it's the old them again. Followed by a month of woohoo. You see where I'm going? It's like a roller coaster before they smooth out, if they ever do smooth out. That's a tough thing, man. All right, Polish, very good. Uh, anything else, ladies and germs? We're about 45 minutes into this already, blabbing away. HelpForMen.com. If you're watching this on YouTube, could you do me a big fat juicy honking favor, please? Go over to my channel and subscribe. Give me a— hit the little bell thingy if you want to. It will alert you every time I upload a video, and that's like daily, so that may get a little annoying, be honest with you. But, um, at least give me a subscribe if you could please. And if you could please, when you see videos of mine, whether it's Facebook, YouTube, whatever, leave me a comment. And X, for that matter, Twitter, leave a little comment on there. Give me a like and leave a little comment. The social media algorithms love this stuff. It shows that it's popular and people actually like it. So, oh boy, we got a big one here from Kazi. A friend's wife coworker gifted a bedsheet once to a male colleague. Already what? Months later, the coworker told her he likes her. She said to him that she has a family and is loyal to her husband, but likes talking to him. Oh, leaving the door open a little bit. What's with the gifting of the bed sheet? She continues to talk to him as she does not have any other intentions, but she's leaving the door open, isn't she? Here's where boundaries come in. He then avoids, um, uh, some misspellings here. He then avoids making her curious, so she approached him, what is wrong? Oh, so that he backed off. What is wrong? He then starts to talk to her, bought her a Kermit and Miss Piggy present, and she hugs him and thanks him. Where are we going? This is oddly specific. Once she was on holiday, he sends a message on Instagram that he misses her badly, and she informed the husband about the message. Good for her. My friend has suggested to his wife to stop talking to the guy as he clearly has feelings. Correct. His wife has agreed to it, although she is doubtful of his intentions. My friend is worried and is overthinking the situation. If I'm following— boy, this is a difficult one, dude. I'm trying to follow this. Um, married for 12 years, 2 kids. His wife has been sharing the day-to-day happenings to her husband, and he is doubting the whole situation. If I were hubby And this is not an insecure take, so let's not go there. This is a realistic take. Obviously the dude has thoughts and he's trying to get in there, right? Obviously, duh. So wife, do you think it's a good idea to covert with people? Is that the right term? To communicate like this with people you know have intentions of scooping you away from husband and being your beau, whatever. Do you really think that's a positive thing? And then wife would come back with, well, I'm sharing everything with you. I don't have any intentions to do anything. Why have any communication with the guy, period? He's just a friend. Well, here's the deal, wife. Since it seems that you have a very real problem with boundaries between you and friend who has obvious inclinations or intentions of taking it further than friend, The fact that you have that relationship and you don't seem to have the boundaries to say, please don't message me anymore, or block— since you don't have that boundary, I'm sorry, wife, I'm gonna have to enact it for you. Here it comes, the old ultimatum: if you continue talking to this gentleman, we are no longer a couple. Well, that's very drastic. Jesus, Mr. Insecure, controlling asshole. I understand. Here's where, here's where a lot of women go, oh, let's switch the genders here, shall we? Wife, I haven't told you, but, uh, there's been a young gal from work who's been chatting with me on Instagram. She, she, when I went away on vacation, she messaged me how much she missed me so badly, and she gave me a gift. Here's the gift she gave me and everything else. I'm going to continue talking to her. There's nothing you need to worry about. The wife would be like, what's her name? Where'd you meet her? Blah blah blah blah blah. He'd be like, she doesn't exist. I just made that up. I'm just proving a point. You see where this can go and how bad it looks. Stop talking to the guy. Okay? And if you're saying, I don't, I shouldn't have to, you're choosing your friendship over your hubby and family. Sometimes that's exactly what it takes, guys, for them to wake up and go, oh, I guess this is kind of bad. Let's be honest, that, that friend's wife is leaving the door open just a little bit. Why? It's human nature, man. It makes you feel good to have this attention from others, from the opposite sex especially. Just makes you feel good. I mean, if I were to walk into this office every day and, uh, right in the office there's a, uh, what do you call it, the security guy, the doorman. He sits at a desk by the door every day. It's a dude, an older dude. And he's like, morning, morning. What if he were some hot chick who sees me every morning and says, hey handsome, good morning, you're looking good, or whatever? I'd be like, well, hot damn, damn right I do. I would feel better about myself. I would feel awesome. I'd be like a little pep in my step because of that, right? Even though I'm faithful, even though I love my wife more than anything, and all these other, all these other things, just that little bit of attention would make me feel pretty damn good. I'm a human being, sue me, right? Now, this is kind of a version of this with this person reaching out and messaging. It says, look, it's, it's that gal at the front desk, over and over and over and over. And it feels great, and you don't want it to stop. So when hubby says, why do you talk to that? No, my attention validation feel-good chemicals supplier is going to go away. No, it's fine, just friend, everything's good. Well then block him. No, no, don't want to block him. Because it makes her feel good. That's basically it. Sometimes people in our lives need a little wake-up call, the proverbial slap. Please don't hit your spouse, you know what I mean by that. Proverbial meaning it's just the mental slap upside the head, like, wake up, dummy, look what you're doing. Sometimes people need that. And from what I've seen, not to be a sexist thing, I'm sorry, but it seems like often it's the women in our lives need a little bit of boundary boosting, whether it's from their friends or from their loved one or whatever. Somebody's saying, you need to cut that out, sweetie, that's not good. Not because they have nefarious intentions about cheating or everything else, it's just that sometimes women have very real problems with boundaries. They let a lot of things in, a lot of emotion in. They, they're very empathetic in that way. They're very high in openness, a personality trait. Just let it in, let it in. And, uh, Somebody's trying to be nice to them, sure, I'll be nice to you. Somebody wants to talk, sure, I'll talk to you. Even when they cross lines into where they're not comfortable, a lot of women have a problem with agreeableness and openness and so forth that they don't want to come across as a bitch. They don't want to come across as an asshole. They don't want to tell this person to buzz off. So they let the boundary crossing continue, even when it's something that makes them feel uncomfortable. You know, your wife may at a point, this guy may do something like send a picture of himself naked or something. Your wife may be like, Ooh, yuck, I don't want that. But she may feel weird about saying, ooh, yuck, I don't want that. She just may ignore it. And he misinterprets it as, woohoo, I better send more of these pictures. It's not your wife, your friend's wife, whatever, you know what I mean? Um, so anyway, you see where I'm going with that. Um, and Candace agrees with me and says, nope, nope, and nope. Uh, wife needs to cut all contact that does not concern work. That's basically it. It's a— but when we do that, Candace, when, when we put up that boundary like that and say, don't contact me ever again unless it's for work or whatever it may be, or I'm blocking you now, you are in essence admitting to yourself and to the world that there is a potential for this to go over the line. And from what I've seen, a lot of people don't like to admit that potentiality, that potential in themselves, because that paints them as a fallible creature who is— who can succumb to temptation and can do bad things. Nobody likes to admit that, especially certain types of people. A lot of very— well, it's like, uh, you're either very conservative types— I don't have to put up boundaries, I'm a moral conservative person— My word is my bond, that's the way I am. It's like, good luck, dude. A lot of very, very high-ranking religious people have succumbed to a lot of temptation. And then you have your all the way opposite extreme, like your very progressive types are like, we should be able to talk to and cavort with whoever we want to talk to. It's— we have every right to do that, and to say otherwise is controlling and awful and misogynistic and whatever and terrible. It's like Okay, playing with fire, but good luck to you. Hmm, good question though, as wordy as that was. Kazi Kazi, thank you so much. Uh, anything else? Ladies and germs, it's been about an hour, been a good one. HelpForMen.com, check it out. Dad Starting Over, give me a follow. Facebook, YouTube, give me a subscribe. Twitter, give me a follow. I need more Twitter followers. Um, still obviously putting out content on Dad Starting Over. As an account for pushing out content and ultimately to promote Help for Men and the coaching and the private men's group and the books and the courses and all that good stuff. Papa's got to pay the bills. Guitar God 365 says he can't believe that people are shocked that Dave Grohl has a love child. You know, I get it. I read Dave Grohl's book. I don't know if you have. I listened to it on Audible. And, uh, really good stuff. Very good book. Shoot, I can't remember the name of it. Let's do a search for Dave Grohl autobiography. You'll find it. Very good stories all about his life growing up and being a young punk rock guy all the way up to Nirvana and Foo Fighters. In case you guys don't know who that is, it's the former drummer of Nirvana, Nirvana, who later started his own group called Foo Fighters. And he's a musician extraordinaire, and he has a reputation for being just a good all-around dude. Like, very humble, very nice, down-to-earth, middle America type of dude. And it just came out the other day, Dave admitted to the whole world that he has, number one, a mistress, and number two, he impregnated her. Oops. And Dave's like mid-late 50s, I think. Don't know anything about the mistress, don't know anything about his marriage to his wife, but he also in the same announcement said he's going to try and earn back the love and respect of his wife and kids. He has a couple of teenage daughters and this wife of so many years, so— oof, ouch. So I can see how people are like, "Oh, not him," because, you know, those nice but famous people are kind of like— there's hope that even when you get to that level of fame and money and options in life, that some people are still, quote, "good people," and they still follow their— ah, shit, never mind. It also points to some not so good things about infidelity, and men in particular. There's— I've done videos on this that don't go well. A lot of men disagree, and a lot of women get pissed off. Strangely, you think it'd be a lot of women going, yeah, right, but no, a lot of women are like, oh, fuck you, dude. But if there's, if there's one predictor of male infidelity— this is not a Ralph Brewer thing, this is not a whatever, this is a statistical thing— there's a few things, but the one big thing is how many options does the guy have. If he's a multi-millionaire rock star on a private jet flying all over the world doing concerts, wouldn't you say he probably has a lot of options to step outside of his monogamous marriage? So you're right, Guitar God, it shouldn't come as a shock to anybody. It's like, well, yeah, if somebody's gonna, it's gonna be a dude like that. Um, Call Me Stan from YouTube says he did subscribe, he hit the bell, and he liked that smash button. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. Good content, he says. I appreciate what you do. Well, I appreciate you for appreciating me. Thank you, Mr. Stan. Appreciate you, buddy. Thank you so much. Um, so anywho, all right, with that, I'm going to say toodaloo, ladies and germs. Thank you all so much again for joining me. Always a pleasure chatting with you fine folks. One more time, that's already over. Give me a follow, subscribe, however it works, wherever you're watching this. HelpForMen.com. If you're a dude, check out the website HelpForMen.com. And, uh, I'm sorry, I had another message come in there. HelpForMen.com. And if you're a dude, check out our private group for men only. It ain't gonna cost you an arm and a leg, and you get a lot of benefits for joining. I keep pushing it because that is the place where we do all the work. There's so many times where I'm seeing comments and interactions and messages from people, from guys, direct messages, emails, whatever. And I just say to them all, dude, you are the perfect candidate for a men's group, to get in with hundreds of other dudes that have been in your exact shoes, to learn from them, to talk to them. You can teach them a thing or two, they can teach you. Man, this is just perfect. And so many guys are like, eh, not for me, I'm more of a loner type of dude, or whatever. It's like, you're missing the, the key ingredient to really getting over the hump. And doing better and getting better and forming deeper relationships with other men and learning more about this relationship game with women and marriage and divorce and all this other— all that fun stuff. That's where a lot of the work is done. And in fact, a teaser, I am putting together— I'm in the very, very early stages of putting together a workshop, so in-person workshop, so guys can get together. I have the facilities here to do this, to host large meeting rooms and so forth. We can cater it and the whole nine yards, have like an 8-hour, like 9-to-5 thing. Come and do an in-person small group gathering and learning from each other type of thing. So I'm starting to put together the, the plans for that, so be on the lookout for that at help4men.com. And once again, guys, I thank you all so very much for joining me, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your— what is today, Thursday? All right, I'll see you guys. Thank you so much.