Chat LIVE with Ralph (DSO)

Alright, alright, alright. Welcome everyone. It's your boy Raffalito, once again live from Kentucky. Do I have the Kentucky sound here? I don't know if that's playing. Can't hear it. Anyway, welcome everybody. Um, did a live yesterday and probably do one tomorrow as well. So I got some time here, kids out of the house with mom for the Thanksgiving holiday. They'll be back with me on Friday, so I have more free time to do these kind of things in addition to our regular member meetings that I, I host. And by member, I mean the, uh, HFM, Help for Men Brotherhood. And you can learn— can't speak today— and you can learn more at help4men.com. If you want to go right to the join page, help4men.com/join. It's a private community for men only. We have over 700 members from around the world. U.S. is our biggest market, followed by Australia. Believe it or not. So we have a lot of dudes from Australia. And pardon me as I scratch my nose here. What else we got going on? We have, I have books. I've been writing under the name of Dad Starting Over and putting out content under Dad Starting Over, which is where you are watching this right now. We launched Help for Men and helpformen.com. You can see the little logo above my noggin there. Earlier this year, 2024, wider, more inclusive brand. All of our business is now done under Help for Men. Dad Starting Over is a, um, just a content creation, a way of bringing people into our world and to help for men. But I invite you to check out help4men.com. We have articles, we have videos, we have courses, we have our private community, HFM Brotherhood. Uh, one benefit of joining the brotherhood is that the stuff that the general public pays X number of dollars for, you get a lot cheaper, as well as a lot of free stuff, including all of my books at no additional charge. PDF as well as audiobook format. Live meetings that I mentioned before, we record all those meetings. We have over 1,000 hours of meetings recorded at this point, and you can listen to them all from your phone. We have a podcast just for our membership, which is basically like monologues. We don't update that all that often. And then we have my audiobooks I mentioned. So a lot of audio content. If you love audio content, the HFM Brotherhood is for you. In addition to that, we have discussion forums that are very active, a private Facebook group Nobody knows you're in it. Nobody can see that you're in the group or what you're typing. In addition to a Discord server, in addition to Zoom meetings I mentioned, just a lot of interactivity amongst our members, a lot of ways to learn from others. We can learn from you. If you're a man, check out the group, the HFM, Help for Men Brotherhood, at helpformen.com. Enough of the sales pitch. Who we got with us today? Anybody? Would love for you to say hey, howdy, hello, where you're joining us from. Where on the planet are you? We've had people from all over join us here, all the way from US, UK, Australia, South Africa. We'd love to see where you guys are joining us from today. Let me refresh my screen here. Hope I'm still going here. My connection's kind of shitty. With the internet. Insert Kentucky joke here. Rob on Facebook, Ohio here. Whereabouts in Ohio, Mr. Rob? You're not too far from me. A couple hours, I could be in Ohio. Yes, and whoever gave me a like, thank you so very much. Wherever you're at, if you give this a like— if you're watching on YouTube, if you give this a like and subscribe to the YouTube channel, Man, that would help out a lot. That tells YouTube like this is worthy of sharing with others and other people will see this. Same thing, Facebook, give me a like, would really appreciate it. Give me a follow on the Dad Starting Over Facebook page. There's also a Facebook page for Help for Men as well. All right, we got guys, we got David from Oregon, we got Youngstown, Ohio in the house. Welcome everybody. So good to see you. Lots to talk about, all kinds of topics I post. If you're not following me on Dad Starting Over, Help for Men. We have all kinds of topics that are, are covered. There was one I wanted to talk about today in particular. I wanted to see what you guys think about it. Um, let's make a little vow. Is that vow— is that the right term? A promise to ourselves as dudes. In case you don't— haven't noticed, us men today are not the most popular human beings on the planet, are we? In fact, it could be argued— I don't like to get political, detest politics— but this latest American political thing, the election that just happened, very, very interesting. In fact, I was interviewed by several mainstream news outlets prior to the election to talk about men, divorced men in particular, and the election. I was interviewed by Forbes, who did a close to 30-minute interview. You can find it on the Forbes YouTube channel. I did a quick talking head thing on News Nation, which I hate to admit I'd never heard of. Apparently it's like CNN, Fox News, all these guys' news. It's got a lot of big names. Geraldo's on there, so, you know, gotta be big, right? And the Cuomo— Chris Cuomo, Geraldo— it's basically all the people that used to be on CNN and Fox and got fired for whatever reason, came to News Nation. Anyway, so I did a little talking head thing on there as well as an interview with New York Magazine. So what's interesting is we talked about kind of the ostracization— ostracization, you know what I mean? Ostracization? Sounds like I'm missing a syllable there. Ostracization of men, uh, in particular divorced men feel like we're kind of cast aside, like your feelings don't really matter, divorced dude, like shut the F up. And then our— we notice our spouses getting a lot of you-go-girls and a lot of attention and a lot of sympathy and empathy from others and we're like, what the hell? So we feel cast aside and doesn't make us feel too good. And that is kind of analogous to society in general. There's kind of a very progressive, let's say it, kind of a leftist kind of— I like to call myself kind of a centrist, but I can see both sides are equally nuts. And on the lefty side, more progressive side, we saw a lot of people that were kind of anti-masculinity and pro-femininity and pushing a lot of agendas and things that were kind of made men feel like we were less than, that we're all monsters and we're all evil. We need to have our, you know, certain tendencies be tamped down. That's a proper term, and you know what I'm saying. So that may have helped contribute to a lot of people saying, this group over here makes me feel more welcome, so I'm going to that group, in part, right? Anyway, um, so I think it's important that dudes stick together and we help each other out. What I don't like to see— and in our personal group, the Brotherhood, learnmorehelpformen.com, the HFM Brotherhood, private community for men only— one thing that I, if I see it within our group, I will say I'll squash it immediately and say we're not doing that shit. And that is people will post like video clips or links or stories to stories of men doing things that make us go, oh dude, no. For instance, you know, there'll be some story of some poor dude who's has all these signs in the universe pointing to your spouse is cheating on you, dude, or even worse, the kids are probably not yours. You know, some always awful stories that it doesn't take long if you subscribe to my stuff. I'm sure some of these stories from other content creators have come up on your, on your, on your feed, your algorithm there. Um, they're, you know, it sells pain and these horrible stories they sell and they get a lot of eyeballs on them. And so, uh, You're bombarded with this stuff. And men get downright angry at these dudes. And a term they will throw out often is simp. What a simp. In other words, kind of a pushover, Mr. Nice Guy, wuss. That's what we used to call when I was a kid, a wussy guy, or the other word. And it's not nice. And it's not constructive. Doesn't get anything done. We need to be a little bit more empathetic to our fellow brothers out there. Not everybody is on the same timeline in life. We have some poor guys out there who are 30, 40 years of age later, who by virtue of the fact that they don't have hardly any relationship experience, a lot of these guys are like, you know, I met this gal when I was 16, got married shortly thereafter, been with each other ever since. And then they'll rattle off all these stories about the relationship and you're just like, oh, yeah, that's not good, dude. And frankly, he didn't know any better. He had no relationship experience. Compounded with that, a lot of these guys come from not very good backgrounds. Mom and Dad were pretty shitty parents, and their extended family was a lot of shitty people. And to them, shitty relationships is kind of normal. And he's continuing the tradition, the generational tradition there of shittiness. And it bites him in the ass. And what it doesn't help is for him to go on the internet, for example, and share his story and everybody saying, haha, what a simp. Sucks, guys. We need to cut that shit out. It's not nice. What men in that position need is the proverbial arm around their shoulder saying, sorry, dude, we all make mistakes. We live and learn. Going forward, you're not going to do this and this again. In fact, here's a community of other men, like-minded men who have been through what you've been through, worked on themselves and come out better on the other side. Hence our group, the HFM Brotherhood. Learn more at help4men.com. That was smooth. But, um, that's why I created the group. Basically, we have so many men You know, we got guys that are stuck in dead bedroom relationships. We got guys that have been down the path of divorce and come out the other side smelling pretty good. Guys that are still in the process of divorce, considering divorce. Guys that have never been married. Um, you know, all these different walks of life. And what we've learned is that we all have so much in common, so much dysfunction in our past, and we're all just trying to figure shit out, and we're all trying to do better, and we're all trying to learn from our mistakes. The last thing we need is some dipshit from middle of nowhere Nebraska telling us that we're a simp because we did something wrong or we're ignorant of something out there. It's just part of the human condition. We all learn as we go, right? So you're a simp, cut that shit out. What are some of the other language? Another term. This is a very loaded term. Incel, involuntary celibate, for those that don't know. So it's a short term for involuntary celibate. Incel. It's basically the name given to— I think it was a self— the group named themselves this. It's kind of a loosely organized— not even organized at all. It's just a bunch of dudes that got together on the internet and say, I have zero luck with women. I am involuntarily celibate, meaning I would love to get some, but it ain't happening. And then this guy says, yeah, me too. And this guy says, yeah, me too. And then thousands, if not millions of them get together and say, yeah, me too, this sucks. And they are ostracized by society. Society loves to pick on the old incel. Society loves to call them a bunch of creeps, weirdos, whatever. And sometimes, let's be honest, they live up to the reputation. Because that world can go take a bad turn real fast. You take a dude who has a very limited, uh, social experience, maybe social anxiety, maybe even on the spectrum, uh, neurodivergent autism spectrum is relatively common in that world. They just have a difficult time forming relationships with others. They haven't got the help, and therefore, you know, cascading series of events leads them to not have good luck with romantic relationships either. Stands to reason. And instead of society saying, "Haha, you suck," what they need is, again, the proverbial arm around the shoulder. It's okay, dude. It's not the end of the world. This is a fixable thing. Work on your social skills, work on your social anxiety, find like-minded people to hang around with, other women, for example, and then maybe these things will organically happen. In addition, we also have things such as for these guys, some of these guys are in pretty bad shape where forming a relationship, romantic relationship and everything, may be kind of out of their grasp in a traditional organic fashion. So then we have certain things like sex workers. That's a whole other ball of wax. There's some people that say, no dude, that's bad. Those women are victims and so forth. Yes, some are for sure. And some are completely voluntary, in that world and enjoy their work. That's what they do. Um, I know some women who work in that field, and they would say, no, I'm not a victim. I know what I'm doing. I'm a grown adult. And, um, they provide a service, and they help these men. It's the world's oldest profession for a reason. So I'm not going to shame men for going down that road either. It's a lot of shaming in the world of men, sexuality, relationships, lack thereof, And it's bad enough that it comes from the opposite sex pointing and saying, "Haha, you bunch of losers." They really don't need it from here, from their own team, so to speak. So to you guys, let's make a commitment. Let's cut that shit out. And if you catch other guys doing that, just say, "It's not nice, dude." If it makes you feel better to knock a dude down while he's down, or kick a dude while he's down rather, Maybe that says a lot about you. Maybe it's something you need to work on. We can do better. So what do you say? We got Jamie says, hey, bub. Never been called bub before. Hey there, bub. I'm shooting across I-70 in Pennsylvania. Very cool. All right, anybody else? Where's everybody else from? Hey, while you're listening to this, I've been blabbing on and on. Give me a like, give me a follow. Liking tells Facebook and YouTube that this is a good thing, so do me a favor and click on like. All right, Tanner kicking things off. Tanner from Facebook says, constructive feedback from fellow men. I am intrigued as a 33-year-old divorced dad. I've been single since the split and recently I've been trying to meet people online. I'm in a small town. I'm a recovering addict with 3 years clean. Well, very good. Uh, congrats. So I at first thought it was a great well of potential for dating, and the only relationships, quote unquote, I've had on it was a one-night stand. Well, Mr. Tanner, it's not so simple, is it? You know, there are a lot of people that will sell you on courses and books and all kinds of things to help make Tanner a more attractive individual. But, you know, I've had— here's an extreme example. I've had some guys that are like, you don't understand, dude, my dating market sucks. And I say, yeah, I hear that from everybody. He's like, no, listen, I live 3 hours from the nearest city. My town has a whopping 273 people and they're all on meth. It's like, well, all right, maybe you got a point. A little bit more difficult for him than a person who lives in Brooklyn, person in, you know, metro New York City area. You can swing a dead cat and hit a single good-looking woman with a good head on her shoulders. That may go against what a lot of people in my world think, but there are a lot of very good women out there, a lot of good single women out there. So your pool, maybe we need to adjust that and expand where it is you're looking. The other avenue of thought is to fix Tanner, so to speak. I've given this little speech before many times that you are, in essence, men and women alike, when you are single and on the market, you are a product. You're a widget on the shelf. On the store shelf and people are walking by going, "Hmm," and they're picking you up and they're looking at you and going, "Yeah." Read the label, your bio, whatever it may be online, or if you're doing this in person, it may be just your spiel or your game, your charisma when you meet people, and they may listen to that and go, "Not for me." If you hear that or get that feedback enough times, eventually you have to say, Tanner's got something he needs to work on, so. So what does he need to work on? I don't know. That's where working with men's groups comes in handy. Hey guys, this is what I do. This is who I am. This is who I'm meeting, yada yada. The feedback you may get could be all over the place. It may be, dude, you need to look elsewhere. You're looking in the wrong places. It may be, dude, you need to expand your horizons and go out in completely different groups. Who knows? Work on your appearance. I don't know, all kinds of things, my friend. And you— okay, and you added to this, you say that you have an inability to go to bars and stuff because of your past addiction issues. So your boundary is to stay away from that. So that does limit your ability to socialize. There's the old social lubricant of alcohol. There's a reason we all meet in bars and, you know, singles bars and so forth. It's kind of an old-timey thing, but it's still out there. You go to the club, the bar. Why? People are drinking, their inhibitions are down, and they're more likely to get up the nerve to talk and meet other people and make out with some stranger on the dance floor. You've eliminated that from your pool, so your pool just decreased significantly. Are there other social groups? Are there social groups out there, Tanner, that, um, have men and women who have been what you've been through? They sit around, drink mocktails, you know, that's non-alcoholic cocktails, and they meet once a week somewhere. I don't know, I'm just shooting off the hip here. I have no idea if this even exists. If not, maybe you should start it. There's an idea. Meetup is a website. I don't know if it's still around or if it's still popular, where you can look for different, oh, interests, disciplines, and so forth that you may be into, and then you'll find other groups that are also into it. You meet other dudes, and that's another thing is that And this is something that, um, I'm trying to think where I heard this from. Dr. Matt Zakreski, he is an expert on neurodivergence, autism, ADHD, and so forth. I did interview with him for the Help for Men YouTube channel. Go to youtube.com/@realhelpformen, all one word, or just search for Help for Men Zakreski, Z-A-K, I think. Anyway, and, um, To tell certain men who have, you know, certain social anxieties and so forth, go to the, the singles scene, the mixer, and just go with hundreds of people in a big room somewhere and just go meet people. It's like, no, that sounds like hell, right? But what if you're the type of guy who likes to, uh, um, work on Legos? You know, typical quote-unquote nerdy stuff. I like to assemble models in Legos and jigsaw puzzles, or go to book clubs and that kind of thing. And then you go to that thing and it's 99% dudes. And you're like, well, this is no way to meet women. Yes, but it will introduce you to a new network of people that are more like you, which will in turn potentially lead to women kind of like you. And some of those may be single. It's the long game. It ain't the short game. It ain't click, click. You want a Tinder kind of let's Netflix chill thing. It's the more holistic, organic kind of thing. And that works for some people. Just something to think about. Good question, though. Anybody else have anything else going on in their world? One more time, help4men.com. Check it out, guys. Help4men.com. And check out the Dad Starting Over YouTube channel, youtube.com/dadstartingover. For whatever reason, I got in early with that channel. You don't have to put the little symbol like they have now with the handle on Dad Starting Over. You can, you don't need it. Anyway, I'll have— if I don't say that, some people are like, you forgot the It works either way, but check it out. I post daily on that YouTube channel. Either it's, it's either a short or a long, um, video format, but check it out. A lot of good stuff starting to gain some steam, as you can see by the little thingy behind me. I do have the plaque for 100,000 subscribers on there, but we've been kind of stuck around the 130 5,000 mark or something like that for a while now. It goes up and down with the subscribers, so let's see if we can get another big boost. Usually it takes a handful of videos that get like hundreds of thousands of views and then the subscribers ramp up again. So I got lucky there with a handful of videos. Right now we're like 2,000-3,000 per video, so we have a lot of room for growth on that channel. So give me a subscribe on the Dad Starting Over YouTube channel and start sharing some videos, and I would greatly appreciate it. Do we have any other, um, questions, comments, stories to share, anything else, ladies and germs, please do not be shy. Um, you know what's interesting? I just said ladies and germs, which got my brain thinking. I was— my head's always— usually when I'm cleaning the house, my brain comes up with ideas for new topics, and I have to stop what I'm doing, and I put a little note in my phone. And I wanted to talk a little bit about, um, Women that I talk to, I mention that every now and then. Once in a blue moon, a lady will pay for my time to chat with me one-on-one as if she's a dude, uh, at help— yes, at help4men.com, believe it or not. And every one of the women that does this says the same thing: I like watching your stuff, I like what you have to say, I like your perspective as a man, um, may I ask you some stuff about my current situation? And, uh, Here's what I've learned. We are so alike, the men and women, it's not even funny. I always chuckle when they're telling me their story, and I'm like, I don't mean to laugh at you. That's not why I'm laughing. I'm laughing because this is— every dude I've talked to says the exact same damn thing. We're human beings. The human condition, just so similar. So we think we're just so unique. Team woman, team man. No, we're also alike. One thing I hear from a lot of men as well as women is, um, my spouse has been this certain way with these certain personality traits for years and years, sometimes like 20+ years. And for some reason, they kind of wake up to, this is no good, I don't like this, the person who's talking to me, and, uh, what can I do to make them change. And the change is usually pretty severe in terms of personality. Again, in essence, what they want to do is change the personality of their spouse to better, to be more healthy as far as they're concerned. And to the men and women, I say, is it possible? Yes. Well, what do I need to do? Well, that's the thing. You should be a healthy, loving partner no matter what, because that's just what you do. But if you expect being a healthy, loving partner for— to get them to instigate the level of change to the degree that you want, probably not going to happen. They need some kind of outside help. For these folks, it takes them saying, "Help!" and then they go talk to somebody and sit back and wait because this shit's going to take years. An example: I had a woman reach out to me lovely woman, and she was with a guy who she admittedly got with years ago because he was the quintessential Mr. Alpha Male tough guy, military guy, really like quintessential comic book hero dude. And she liked that about him, made her feel safe. She was attracted to his kind of hyper-masculinity, for lack of a better word. But after so many years of being together, she's like, you know, it'd be nice if he were more loving. And romantic and giving and sweet? Well, Mary, has he ever been giving, romantic, loving, and sweet? Well, no. Well, how is he? Well, he's cold, indifferent, distant, has anger issues, all these other stuff, PTSD from past war experience. And it's like, oof, wow. Yeah, it's going to take a while. And if it's going to work at all. Just like with the men, she and other women like her don't want to hear that. They want the quick fix. What book can I read? What podcast can I point him to? What course can he take that we can fix this? Let's go chop chop. Because both men and women that I talk to, they're in this self-redisccovery phase, self-help phase, and they're enacting a lot of change in their life, looking better physically, feeling better physically, emotionally going to therapy and taking classes and courses and reading books. And they want their spouse to change like now. It's like, it ain't happening. Sorry. So I just wanted to share that, how similar we all are. David from YouTube says, I posted in here a few weeks back about my wife who moved out after being confronted with evidence of cheating. Oof. Basically, the story is that she denied— I remember you, David. She denied it for months, and then you found more evidence, and she just continues to deny it to this day. And since her moving out, I found even more evidence that proves her guilt, but I don't even see the point of confronting her at this point. Yeah, I don't either. I don't want the divorce to get any uglier than it needs to be, but it's already really hard to just sit on this evidence while she continues to paint herself as the good guy to her circle. I'm just worried that she would just continue to gaslight and deny and it would piss me off even further. That's on you, isn't it? So I'm stuck co-parenting with her for the next 15 years, but there's no closure. There's the key word. Closure, my friend, is bullshit. There's no such animal. In fact, we hear that more often from women than we do men. I just want closure, damn it. I want a happy ending. I want to put a bow on this thing and just say done. It never happens. Let's play pretend, David. Play it out in your head. She comes to you hat in hand, as I often say, and said, you're right, you busted me. Affair. Now what, David? You're still broke up. She still did a shitty thing. You were right. There's no cosmic something that's gonna happen. The clouds aren't gonna separate and the sun will shine down and say, "Oh!" and heal all your pain. It will still suck. You will still hurt. She will still be the person that did a bad thing that hurt her family and her spouse. She will have to live with that from now until the day she dies. And that is not a— that's not an easy burden for her to take on her shoulders. While she may outwardly show the world like, I'm a great person, she is hiding behind a facade, isn't she? And you know that, and she knows that. Just let it go, dude. Let her do her thing. Let the people think what they want to think. You could come up with— you could put on a, you know, rent out a billboard and put all the evidence up there and say, see, I'm good, she's bad. It won't make a damn bit of difference. It really won't. Um, you could, you know, get airtime on the prime time television— still, I'm showing my age. Is there even such a thing as prime time television anymore? Still not gonna happen. People will still be team ex-wife. There's the whole women are wonderful effect I've talked about, the damsel in distress thing. It's just— we just have to grin and say, yeah, it is what it is. You know the truth, David. You know the truth about yourself, what she did and everything. Good enough. Move on. Ain't gonna happen. Closure doesn't happen. Yeah, even with the, like I say, even with the admission on her part, you're still gonna be like, well, still sucks. Still David, still the guy who was cheated on. And I still gotta co-parent with this person who's obviously pretty damaged. It is what it is, dude. I can certainly empathize with where you're at. Been there and done that. And it sucks. And your follow-up question, or your follow-up comment here, sorry, the comments are scrolling by here. You say, yeah, I know, it's just so frustrating when she's continuing to invite me to family events and stuff and acting like there's no reason for me to be upset. Here's a thought, David. Family events, you're going to her family stuff, so that would be like your ex-in-laws. May I suggest you not do that anymore? There's this thing of boundaries. No, no, I'm cool. I don't, I don't want to come to that thing. No, no, I'll see the kids on my time. I don't need to be with you during this thing. There's like a healthy balance here where it's you do stuff to be there for the children versus you're still got a foot in the in the relation— in the ex-relationship, something that you need to further distance yourself from for your mental health. Basically, you need to not pretend that they're dead because you have a child with them, but it's about as close to that as you can get. You need to have your life and you need to move on. And that's gonna be very difficult for you when you're there with Aunt So-and-So's birthday party or whatever it is. Those people are out of your life. They're done. I go as far as to say you don't go to funerals You don't go to birthdays, you don't go to holiday things. It's time for David to start his own stuff with his own kid. To a lot of people, that was sound cold. Every situation is different. You may be very, very close to your ex-in-laws and they're still very good friends or whatever. But even with that, I say you need to start exercising some distance and start working on, you know, I appreciate the invite and that's great. I would love to be there for Aunt So-and-So's— I keep saying Aunt— Christmas, whatever. But I'm going to go to my friend So-and-So's house for a Christmas Eve party. I don't know, just something to think about. I'm sure people have different thoughts on that. Robert says, I left a comment the other day, used it in one of your videos. My first relationship after my divorce ended and she was with a guy that, um, oh, you got some typos here, flew in to see her from another state the next week. I know she had to be talking to him. Well, obviously, uh, before she pulled the trigger on the breakup. I still feel attached to her. Well, that's normal. And yet want her to know I know all about it. You know all about it all. Same kind of thing with David here, the closure. I just want to put it all out on the table. I'm in therapy and I know all the feelings are not even about her anymore. It's things I need to work on. I've lost 30 pounds from lack of appetite. Been there, done that. And although I'm lifting heavy in the gym, I still can't sleep through the night. I'm a logical thinker and I know these feelings are issues with my attachment style and other issues. My therapist keeps telling me to wade through the pain. But how long? Uh, it's been over 2 months. You're still early, dude. Um, we dated for a year, so this was a relatively quick relationship, my friend. I feel weak letting this bother me for so long. You're a prior Marine. I did great through my divorce. Prior Marine, so you're a military veteran, is that what you mean by that? I did great through my divorce, but this breakup— oh, prior You were married before. You were married before, but this breakup is nearly unbearable. Oh, interesting. Let me ask you this, Robert. You know what, your story would probably be good for a, uh, if you go to deardso.com, if you would like to chat with me on video and we record it, but we will not see you, we will only hear you, kind of like a radio call-in show, we could do that. That'd be great. No charge to you. I, your content would be, you know, I, uh, give my time and I use your content for the video, that'd be great. Change names, the whole nine, whatever. Um, but just an idea, dearDSO.com. It goes for any of you. Um, but anywho, um, how long after your previous divorce, uh, did you get with this gal? Ex-girlfriend, let's call her. That's important. It's kind of paints a picture here. And you were in the Marine Corps for 21 years. Awesome. Go to— if you haven't done so already, this is where I type and hope this makes sense because I can't see what I'm typing because I am old. Veterans. I think that'll work. HelpForMen.com/Veterans. Okay, Mr. Robert, you say you got with this new gal too soon, you say. After your marriage. Here is something that I say that is such a universal thing amongst so many men, and you are exemplifying it, my friend. And by the way, been there, done that. You'll hear me say that a lot. And it's not because I'm blowing smoke up your ass or bullshitting you, or I'm some all-knowing thing. It's just that, dude, we've all been through this shit. You go through the divorce, it sucks, it's painful. You lick your wounds. You put yourself back on the market way too fast. Been there, done that. And, uh, when you look back on it years from now, you know what you're going to say? Why did I get so quickly into the dating thing 3 weeks after the divorce? Pretty quick, dude. Um, you put yourself out there and basically you're using these women and dating as kind of a human aspirin. To make yourself feel better. The attention, the good new relationship feeling, the pretty woman, you know, being nice to you, the sex. Let's be honest, it makes you feel great. Nothing compares to that. And we kind of innately know that. We throw ourselves back on the market right away, don't we? And, um, then we get with one and we're like, holy shit, the universe has blessed me with— or the God, or whatever has blessed me with this Perfect individual. How did I get so lucky? We click on this level and that level, and she's beautiful and she's smart and she's this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Everything is wonderful. Yahoo! And then the breakup. And every man says the same goddamn thing. Excuse my language. This breakup with this gal, this new girlfriend, hurts worse than the divorce that I just endured. Why? It's a complex thing, a lot of layers to it, but how I kind of oversimplify it is to say you haven't fully recovered from the previous relationship, so you have all that kind of bullshit pain sloshing around in your head, in your heart, if you want to say that, and you're bringing that into the world, into a new relationship. That's not a good recipe for the beginnings of a relationship. Setting that aside, this new girlfriend represents hope, represents normalcy again, a return to normal, a return to love, a return to— I have a sense of value, I'm a good person, I'm worthy of the love of another human. And then the universe says, psych, she's crazy too. And you're like, god damn it. 'What's wrong with me? Why do I keep running into all these people, these women? Why do I keep being in this relationship? Is something wrong with me? Is it me? Do I really suck that bad? And I swear this person was my soulmate and it didn't work. I will never recover from this.' Dude, we've all been down that road. By this time next year, you're going to look back on this. You're not going to laugh because it's not a funny thing, but you're gonna, you're gonna understand it more. And you're saying like, 'I'm a logical person, you know, I get all this shit.' I get it too, um, but it's tough. Give yourself some grace. I know it hurts. I know it sucks. You're going to have potentially weeks and months of more pain of this, more this pain. You can endure it. You'll be fine. You've been through worse, Mr. Marine of 21 years. All right, lean on other dudes. Yes, I will tell you again, as I've said many times in this group, if you're not already a member of our group, Join today. As a veteran, you'll get it dirt cheap. $14 a month, I believe, will be your fee if you pay monthly. $14 a month. What's that come to? Less than 50 cents a day to join a support group of 700 individuals, many of which are veterans, military guys, US and otherwise, who've been there, done that, and have done this rebound relationship is what we call it, done the divorce thing, and it hurts and it sucks. Been cheated on, all that stuff. Waving my hand, been there, done that. And you can always, if you want to take, you know, join the group, join in the discussion, join in the meetings, of which I'm going to have another one tomorrow, uh, and then next week as well, and the week after that, week after that. I have 3 of them myself every week, and then our other guys have meetings as well. Jason, he hosts a meeting just for veterans. Um, in addition to that, you can book one-on-one time with me to chat with myself, guys on the team. We have the books. All my books are available to you at no extra charge. All the meetings are recorded. If you miss one, you can listen to it. We have a lot of stuff, dude. I made the group for you because your situation was mine so many years ago, 12 years ago. I went through everything you're going through, and I was like, this sucks, I need help. And there wasn't a lot of people to turn to to say, you know, I go to my buddy Todd, who I love him, he's a great dude, but he doesn't have any experience in all this shit. So I created my own group, attracted more and more guys to me as I put out more and more content, put in front of millions of eyeballs, and voilà, we have the helpformen.com, the HFM Brotherhood. So check it out. And Robert says, I'll check it out. Well, very good. And the Dear DSO thing as well. Excellent. Look forward to chatting with you. Hmm. And Mr. Tanner, thank you for your kind words to Mr. Roberts. See, that's the kind of man love— that didn't sound right. You know what I mean. That's the kind of non-judgmental support that we need. That sounds better than man love. We need more of that. Like, dude, been there, done that. You're a strong man. Thank you for your service. He'll get through this. And he's right, you will, Robert. It sucks what you're going through right now. And it is, it's one of the most painful things, isn't it? Heartbreak. And you've been, you've probably seen a lot if you, if you served active duty in the military, you saw some not so good stuff. And a lot of men in your position will say this is right up there with bad shit that I've been through. Coach Jason, he's a 22-year US Army enlisted guy, veteran, recently retired, and he went through a hellacious divorce where his wife, ex-wife, was an alcoholic in a really bad way. And now he's single father to 3 kids, and he's seen it all. And he says that the divorce thing was the toughest thing he's ever been through. And he served active duty and lost men in war. Says a lot, doesn't it? Says a lot to the potent emotional nature of divorce and breakups in general. And some of us take it harder than others. I harp on this a little bit because it's so common in our world. The neurodivergent men, men that have conditions such as ADHD, autism spectrum, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and so forth, have a lot in common, hence why they're under the umbrella of neurodivergent. And one of the things they have in common is fall in love very, very fast, very hard, and take breakups extremely hard. Harder than the average neurotypical is the phrase, dude out there. Neurotypical dude says, yeah, it's all right. No, it hurts, it sucks, but I'll be okay. Neurodivergent person says, I feel like I want to die. Um, maybe some of those things, the neurodivergent thing is also up your alley. I don't know, but maybe something to explore. Anything else, ladies and germs? Thank you guys for some really good, uh, really good stuff there. As you can see, it doesn't take much and I get blabbing away like most bald blowhard dudes on the internet. I love to hear myself talk. All right, if you guys could give me a like, give me a follow, I would appreciate it. Hit the little heart thumb thingy wherever you're watching this— YouTube, Facebook— would greatly appreciate it. And Robert says the sleep is the worst part. I drift off and instantly wake up with anxiety. Yeah, and that may be something. Well, I'm confused too, Robert. You're showing up on my— because I have a system that takes all the comments from Facebook and YouTube and puts them into one window. And if this is correct, I have two Roberts with the same last name, one on Facebook, one on YouTube. I'm on both. Okay, cool. I thought, what would be the coincidence there? Wow. Um, sleep is the worst, you say? Yeah, I remember, um, my issue, uh, the sleep was so bad when my— I discovered the infidelity and divorce in my first marriage that I didn't sleep at all for 2 days straight, 2 nights. And, uh, it's funny, the human brain starts to go a little nuts when you don't sleep. And, um, heart's racing, you know, mile a minute. And it was just, it was just terrible. Losing weight like crazy. Somebody needs to, uh, bottle whatever that is that happens and, you know, try to, try to get the weight loss element of all that into a pill and they'll make a bazillion dollars. But, um, yeah, weight just melted off of me. Couldn't sleep, couldn't do anything. And I went to the doctor about it and I was like, I need help because I'm not sleeping. And I'm not stupid, I realize this is not good. And they gave me some meds to help with that. Which did kind of help take the edge off a little bit. But, uh, in the end I went off of them, said I don't like how these make me feel. But don't be above going to say, "Doctor, help." That's what they're there for. You're not a weakling for saying, "I went through a trauma. I'm having a difficult time sleeping. This isn't good for me. Is there anything you can do to help out with this?" Um, some non-pharmaceutical intervention things include watch your caffeine intake. If you're a coffee dude, stop coffee. Like, try it like after 9:00 AM, no more coffee. For the rest of the day. Um, exert yourself, exercise before bed, hot bath, Epsom salts. Listen to me, I sound like some old man. Uh, magnesium supplementation, melatonin. As you can see, I've been down this road. A lot of different things you can do to help you get over the hump and get over the anxiety to allow your brain to rest, because you do need that rest. Otherwise, like I say, you're going to go a little nuts, and it'll have a cascading series of effects health-wise on you. It's not good. And David, uh, says he has the night sweats. Yeah, that's a common thing for a lot of anxiety-related stuff. You're going through a trauma response. We try to belittle it and tell men, yeah, just get over it, whatever, blah blah blah. And but your body's going through some stuff and you're in kind of a fight-or-flight mode, if you will. And you're just in this constant state of, I need to escape this danger. And you sweat and your heart palpitates and you Just need to learn to soothe yourself. Meditation. There's a lot of exercises out there. I have a course on the website. It's branded under the old dad starting over name, but it works. It's all about anxiety. Check it out on the Help from Insight. Go to the education tab and look at the anxiety course. Yours truly is on there. May help you out. All about your anxiety, better understanding it, and some things you can do to overcome it. Therapy is a no-brainer. Hmm. And David said, uh, he went through a big, a long, uh, poor sleep phase. Yeah, and it has pretty big detrimental effects on your health. Anybody who— any doctor will tell you the same thing. Blood pressure goes up, uh, losing muscle, all kinds of not so good stuff. And yeah, this is perfectly normal. And if you ever think— if you ever believe, Robert, David, whoever, that this is going into scary territory, that's where you Help, doctor. They've seen it before, trust me. Um, not to belittle what you're going through, but there are some people like, you know, for example, what if I just told you like you have cancer stage 4 and you're probably going to die in like 6 months? Can you imagine just hearing that? Like one day you're cool, next day you're going to the doctor about that stomach pain? And this— I had somebody that I knew through somebody else who experienced that, and they recently died. But they had a period of holy shit. Can you imagine? Not a lot of sleep, not a lot. They got a lot of stuff to take care of in those short amount of time. And that's kind of stuff that a lot of doctors hear, like, I'm going through this trauma, I need help getting over the hump, I'm not able to live a healthy life right now, what can you do, doctor, to help me out? So, um, and Jamie says low dose of sleep gummies. So that may be like a marijuana thing, like THC thing. That may help some. Some people, it makes their anxiety even worse. Human body's kind of interesting. This guy takes this, he feels this way. This guy takes the exact same thing, exact same dosage, and he feels completely different. It's just worth experimenting with, that's for sure. Anything else, ladies and germs? We're coming up on the hour here. Been a good one. I appreciate you all. Thank you all so very much for opening up and sharing. Mr. David, Robert, everybody else. HelpForMen.com. Guys, David, Robert, check out the group. Worst case scenario, you check out the group, your month, give it 2 months, and you're like, not really for me, I just, it's not clicking, I'm not digging it. Cancel, done, you're gone. You don't have to commit to, you know, you got to pay month to month for the next year or whatever. No, uh, try it out for a couple of months. But I'll tell you what most guys do, they try it out for a month or 2 and then they go, oh yeah, this makes sense, this is what I need. And they, over 3/4 of our membership are lifetime members. They pay a one-time payment and they're done with payments as far as the group is concerned. And, um, it makes sense for a lot of guys, so check it out. Um, great, Robert, we would love to have you. I'd love to see you on the next meeting. Jack says, Dadvocate raid. Yeah, Jack came from the Dadvocate. I did a live stream with Lauren, the Dadvocate, not too long ago, and you came over from that. Thank you, Jack, appreciate it. Yep, you missed, Jack, you missed a good one. We're about to wrap her up here. I got stuff I gotta do. I gotta run to Lowe's, get some light bulbs. I gotta hit the gym. I gotta clean some house some more. Got lots to do before the holiday. Everybody coming over on Friday for the big dinner. You know what I do for dinner? I learned this. Here's a tip for you guys to leave you with. Newly divorced guys, kids, suddenly your, your, your responsibilities just doubled because now you're the lone adult taking care of all this shit. Um, simplify things as much as possible. There's no shame in, for example, what I do and what I've done for the past 3 years, I think, after trying on my own and beating myself up over trying to prepare dinner and do all these other things on my own. I finally came to the conclusion of What? I'm sure there are like meals that I can just buy. And sure as shit there is, like Cracker Barrel and Honey Baked Ham and all these other places. You can go online and go click, click, click, and next thing you know, at your door, literally boxes of food. All you got to do is heat it up and it's ready to go. That's the kind of shit you got to learn about. And, uh, um, that's what I've been doing. So I got here coming tomorrow, I got a big delivery of food coming for my meal on Friday. So like, all I do is wake up Friday morning, heat it up, good to go. And it's better than anything I've ever made, that's for sure. So those little things— don't, you know, don't be afraid of, um, hiring help as far as house cleaning is concerned if you can afford it. I know money is tight for a lot of people these days. Inflation, thank you, is just making everything so damn expensive. Um, the Grocery delivery services. I subscribe to Instacart, which I believe charges me $99 a year. And for that, people deliver my groceries. All I do is use the app and say, send me this, and a person shows up at my door and says, thank you very much. And the app includes like a little tip for them, 10% or whatever it is. And that has saved me so much time, so much energy. I hate going to grocery shop and going up and down the aisles going, oh shit, I forgot this. And it's so much easier just to click on the app. What's interesting is you tend to buy more with the app I think the, the stats show you end up spending like 17% more than if you go and shop in person. So it works for them, the store, and it works for you, saving time, money, all that good stuff. So check that out. And Costco has the pre-cooked meal. Yeah, dude, just take advantage of that kind of stuff. Um, kids don't care. And if somebody badmouths you for not making home-cooked, you know, pecan pie or whatever, eff them. Who cares? Eventually you get to that kind of conclusion. A lot of things, yeah, who cares? Who cares what people think? I know the truth. Who cares if people think I'm a bad guy? I'm not. Whatever. And simplify, simplify. Yeah, Jack, I agree. All right, ladies and germs, I'm gonna, uh, another minute here to see if anybody else has anything you want to chat about at all. I can hang around for a bit longer. Anything at all, please don't be shy, guys. HelpForMen.com and check out the HFM Brotherhood. At helpformen.com/join. Check it out for a month or two, see if you like it. If you're like most, you'll end up joining us as a lifetime member. That's like 3/4 of our membership right there. We are very blessed to have a really great group of guys as members, as well as the guys on our HFM team working as coaches, meeting hosts, and so forth. We work really hard and for many hours to put together a really good community for you guys out there. So check it out. All right, ladies and germs, I'm gonna call her quits. Thank you all once again so very much for joining me today, and I will catch you tomorrow. Catch you on the next one. A toodaloo.