Chat LIVE with Ralph (DSO)!

Let's see if that's the case, shall we? A little impromptu live here with yours truly. One moment, please. Let me see here. Yeah, looks like we are. Let me bring this back. All right, cool. Howdy everyone, how are you guys today? It's your boy Raffalito coming to you live from Kentucky. Let's see, does this— hmm, do I have my— let me see, what does this do? I don't have my, my sound up here. This isn't going to work. Hold on a second, let me see if this works. Sorry, technical snafu here. It's my official Kentucky soundtrack. How are you guys today? Uh, hopefully somebody joins us here today for this impromptu live. This was not planned. I have been super, super, super busy here for the last couple weeks, which is always a good thing. Um, for those that don't know— hold on a second, I'm making some adjustments to my screen here. Bear with me as I awkwardly fiddle with things. Gosh darn it, why does it always do this? There we go. All right, anyway, um, for those that don't know, you can actually book time to chat with me. So if you have watched like my videos and seen some of my material on Dad Starting Over, Help for Men, which is our larger organization— learn more at help4men.com— um, if you may not be aware that you can actually, uh, chat one-on-one with me and pay me for my time. I know, who would have thunk it, right? I've been doing that for years and years, and I've chatted with probably well over 1,000 dudes at this point. I haven't like totaled it all up, but quite a few dudes. And, um, last couple weeks it's been busier than ever. So if I wasn't doing a live meeting with my membership, our Brotherhood group, which is our community that we have for men, um than I've been doing the coaching. Well, I've had a couple of guys, uh, flaked on me today, didn't show up for their meetings. Happens every now and then, things happen, you know. Not getting on here to badmouth them in any way or shape or form, but, um, this was a time that I had allotted for a guy to do a one-on-one chat and it was a no-show. So you lucky folks get me here today. So yay you, right? Let me bring this up. All right, where's the Live stream chat. There we go. Ash says hi. Hello, Ash, on Facebook. How you doing? If you guys could do me a favor, if you're watching this YouTube, Facebook, wherever, and you want to give me a hey howdy and let me know where you're from. I always like to hear where people are from. So if you could put maybe, Ash, where are you joining us from today? And anybody else that is joining us live here today, would love to hear it. What part of the world are you from? Um, so real quick, for those that don't know, you just happen upon this and you're like, who is bald man with guitars behind him yapping away? Why the hell should I care? Well, real quick, Dad Starting Over is the, the brand, the name, the whatever that I've been doing content creation for over a decade now. Started off as a blog and then eventually turned into a book, which eventually turned into 4 books. One of those books, the first book I wrote Um, took off, sold a lot of copies, got a lot of people to find me online, which allowed me to start, as I mentioned earlier, the coaching services, mentoring services to men, which allowed me to develop a team of guys performing said services for guys. I'm not the only one that you can hire on the team. Um, we have a community for men. We started a larger organization not too long ago called Help for Men, and you can learn more at help4men.com. Let me, um, Do I have this up here? Yes, I do. And then we, um, within Help for Men, we have the organization called the Brotherhood. You can learn more at help4men.com/join. Um, the Brotherhood is a private community just for men. And I say private, meaning no one outside in the world sees what you're saying, doing. And I say saying and doing because we have live forums that are very, very active within the community. We use a Facebook private group. No one knows you're in the group. No one can see you're in the group. It's completely private. It's just a way— it's just a mechanism that we use, platform I should say, for chatting. And we have— you post something and people react to it and you talk back and forth. And we have probably 50, 60-some thousand posts have been made since we started that group. And then we also use Discord for chatting. And then we also use Zoom for live meetings. I myself host 3 meetings a week Each of them are at least an hour in length. And then other guys on the team, they host meetings, and it's anywhere from like 6 to 8 meetings on average every single week. And then we record all those, and you can listen back to those meetings like in a podcast format, if you will. So if you miss a meeting— most people do— no biggie, you can listen back to it. And of those meetings, I think we have over 1,200 hours— that's 1,200 hours of meetings recorded. You're never going to run out of audio content. So if you're an audio content dude, you're going to love the Brotherhood. If you get like— get your road trips, walking on your treadmill, working out in the gym, listen to some meetings. A lot of guys do that. In addition, all my books that I've written, no additional charge for our, our Brotherhood members. We have the audiobook format as well as the download PDF format. You can— it's formatted so you can read it on your phone. And what else do we do? The coaching that I mentioned, the one-on-one mentoring way cheaper for members. We get together in person. We're getting ready to have here in about a month and a half, a little less, our 5th annual conference in the United States. We're going to do it in Charleston, South Carolina. It's already sold out. Sorry, guys. Next year, I'm going to make an announcement here soon, we're going to have one in Louisville, Kentucky. So, um, that'll be pretty cool, and that one's going to be an extra special one. Stay tuned. Um, but anywho, Join our group, help4men.com/join. Check it out. We would love to have you in there if you're a dude and you would like a little extra help, if you would like to join a group of guys, like-minded dudes, if you'd like to learn from other guys and have a safe space, if you will, to use that overused term, to, um, talk about some of the stuff that we talk about in the male help relationship sphere, whatever you want to talk— wherever you want to call it, rather. We would love to have you. Thebrotherhoodhelpformen.com. Ray joining us from Australia. I'm glad you said that. Oh, right, Roy, excuse me. I'm glad you said, uh, mentioned Australia there. Welcome, g'day. Um, we have— can you see it? Oh, here you go, right behind me. Look at that. See that, uh, boomerang there? That came from our brothers in Australia, a little plaque they gave me. And, um, we have guys scattered all over the US— all over the world, rather— in our Brotherhood community. Help4men.com. Um, the United States is our biggest, um, as far as population is concerned with our members. The United States is represented more than anywhere else in the world, followed by— you would think probably Canada or maybe the UK, but no, Australia. Australia is our number 2 biggest market. Um, that's been my biggest market for selling books, second biggest market for selling books, um, second biggest market for our membership to our group. So the Aussies love them some Dad Starting Over, I guess, and some Help for Men. So How cool is that? So welcome, Roy. And then Mr. Christopher from Alaska. Well, we're just hitting all over the world. Very cool. Hey, a little known tidbit of info there, Christopher, not that you care, you didn't ask. My father lived in Alaska when he was a kiddo. Uh, he lived in, um, Fairbanks if I remember right. A little brief history of his life there. My father has passed away years ago, but that's something I remember him always talking very fondly about his time in Alaska. That was probably— he said his favorite time as a child was in Alaska. He loved it, all the outdoorsy things and stuff. He always used to tell me Alaska stories. So that's the first thing when I see Alaska is I think about my dad. So thank you, Mr. Christopher, for that. Um, welcome everybody. What all do we have to talk about? I see the numbers going up. Very good. Let me see, um, pardon me for a moment here, folks, as I fiddle with some stuff here. All right. Oh, here we go. This may improve quality a bit. I can pause the upload of my information. There we go. All right, um, what to talk about today? Well, how these typically go is I don't start a live stream just to blab away and market and advertise and all the other stuff. I start these to talk to you guys. It's my way of reaching out and talking to the fan base. It's kind of cringy. I don't, you know, I always— sure, I have followers or fans, I guess you could say, but not this long enough that some people, believe it or not, actually value some things that I have to say and do for whatever reason. But this is a way to communicate with you guys, talk to you guys. I would love to be able to— one day we'll do like maybe a little We'll figure out a way to do like a call-in show type of thing, but you're opening yourself up to all kinds of potential misery there, aren't you? All kinds of, what do you call it, like joke callers and things. You ever watch videos online? You can see them on YouTube where people have radio call-in shows and people prank them. It's awesome. I don't know if I wanna go down that road, but hey, maybe one of these days. We do have something called, do I have it on it? Yes, I do. Dear, oh, shitballs. Here we go. Dear DSO, go to deardso.com, deardso.com. You can submit a question or a story to me, and then I, um, fill out a little form there, and then I do like a video on it. I've done lots and lots of those. You can see it on the Dad Starting Over YouTube channel and Facebook as well. Um, there is also the option on that form— when you fill out that form at deardso.com, you can check a little box and submit your email address, and that says that you want to chat with me live, so to speak. We record it, so it's not live live, but you know what I mean. So, um, I will be on camera and we'll hear your voice. So that is kind of like an old school radio call-in show type of thing. And then, um, we record it, edit it, and then post it for everybody to, uh, watch and listen to on the Dad Starting Over podcast. I've done so far, I think, just 2 of those. I have another one scheduled with a lady. I don't know if she's joining us here today, Miss Victoria. We're gonna chat about her little situation there. That is coming up, I believe, next week we're gonna chat. I can't remember. Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. When is that going to be? Hmm. No, I guess not. Well, oh, that's April. Oh, Ralph, you— Hmm. Probably do a search here. What am I doing that? Why am I going down this road? Do you even care? Yeah, she and I are going to chat next week, and then we'll record that, and then We'll post that on the webs or on the YouTube and Facebook shortly thereafter. So those chats are, I think so far we've done the two chats I've done have been over an hour with the people, but however long it takes to chat back and forth, if that interests you, check it out at deardso.com/show. There we go. Um, hold on a second. The font's all goofy. Why is the font all goofy? It's large color. I don't know, it's all— can't— looks like I can't. I'm still figuring this little system out. I say that every time I do one of these, still figuring the system out, folks. Yeah, because I don't do enough of these live streams to get good at them, basically. Um, hold on a second. All right, so if you folks have any questions for yours truly, now is the time to post them. You can do so via— hold on a second, let me bring this up— on Facebook down in the comments, on YouTube in the chat, and both of which should show up here in my little feed program here where I monitor all the comments. So if you have any questions for yours truly, would love to hear it. I had a guy recently reach out to me I'm going to do a video on, on the Dear DSO thing, who said, uh, I need to do a video, and I have done lots of content on this basically in a roundabout way, but not directly, that there is very much a struggle with a lot of guys, isn't there? It's kind of the universal understood struggle amongst men in strict monogamous long-term relationships. And yes, I'm qualifying strict monogamous, meaning we both, you and I, lady, understand we're not going to go out and bang other people, right? Now you have to say that these days overtly because there's a lot of folks that are like, no, we kind of have a little special thing going on. We have an open relationship, we have a semi-open relationship, we have a monogamish relation— relationship. I don't know if you've heard that term used, where monogamish, not quite really strict. Um, there's all kinds— I've learned over the years there are all kinds of flavors of relationship. It's not fair just to assume that everybody's doing that. Okay, so, but that's why I put that out there with the qualifier of strict monogamous relationship. Okay, so, um, it's an understood struggle amongst the human male that, um, you are probably, dare I say, not going to get your physical needs met 100% within the strict monogamous relationship. Let's just put that out there. That is not me condemning marriage. That is not me condemning long-term monogamy and all that other good stuff. That's just realistic. And we need to kind of tell men up front that, more so than what we do traditionally within, uh, you know, when talking about marriage. Um, is marriage super important? Is family super important these days? There's probably more and more people saying not necessarily. And, uh, how much of that is due to the fact that a lot of word is getting out— thank you, internet— by, um, a lot of men saying, hey, don't do it. Don't do the marriage thing, don't do the long-term monogamy thing. Well, why not? And they will say what? And this is where a lot of men, a lot of women cringe. Um, those men will say, because dude, the, um, physical activity— I'm trying to avoid using certain words that Facebook and YouTube won't like. Yes, they're very sensitive in that way. Um, they will say, a lot of men will say, because the physical activity between the man and woman goes down into the toilet once you commit. Is there any truth to that? Yeah, in a way. Depends on how you look at it. You could look at it as a fault. You could look at it as a feature. You could look at it as an interesting quirk of human nature. A lot of different ways of— a lot of different ways to skin a cat when it comes to understanding the whole human sexuality and long-term relationships. But yes, any kind of anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, whatever. Like our pal who I often quote— maybe she's watching today, hello— Dr. Psych Mom, Dr. Samantha Rodman-Whiten. And then some really big figures in our world, ladies mind you, who I've quoted ad nauseam quite a bit, um, Esther Perel, psychotherapist, Wednesday Martin, PhD, author, and a whole bunch of others, including our new buddy, Miss, um, Michelle— forgetting her name. Michelle, what's her last name? She's the author of a book called, uh, Women's Infidelity 1 and 2. There's 2 different books. Michelle Langley. Just came to me, brain fart. Um, I just did an interview with her recently for the Help for Men podcast and Help for Men YouTube channel. By the way, you can go to— I'm going to send a message here that will— should show up for everybody. If you could do me a favor, I would really appreciate it, guys. This goes for all of you. Men or women alike, if you go to this— is that right? This link here, uh, go to YouTube and the handle for the YouTube channel is @realhelpformen. So if you go to youtube.com/@realhelpformen, the little symbol, or just do a search for @realhelpformen, you will find the Help for Men YouTube channel. If you could give that a follow, subscribe, a like, that would help me out a great deal. I would really appreciate that. Um, But anyway, I do interviews. I reserve that channel solely for interviews with intelligent, important people to talk about men's issues. And I've had Dr. Psych Mom's been on there, Dr. Robert Glover, Dr. Orion Taraban, and others have been on there. Dr. Matt Zuchreski, I had an attorney on there, we talked about divorce stuff, all kinds of cool stuff. Well, recently interviewed Michelle Lengley, author of Women's Infidelity, which was a book that you can find, I think, online only right now. I don't know if you can find it like on Amazon or elsewhere. Women's infidelity. And if you listen to her, and if you listen to the Dr. Psych Moms and the Esther Perels and the Wednesday Martins and so forth, they will tell you point blank, um, when— pardon me as I scratch my eyeball awkwardly— when, um, security, um, safety, familiarity— that's a very important phrase in all of this. When that comes into the picture relationship-wise, what tends to leave out the door? So picture like a house— what comes in the front door and what goes out the back door? When familiarity, comfort, security, safety comes in the front door, how do we achieve that? Marriage, commitment. You stand in a church or before a judge or whatever it may be and say, you and me together forever, correct? Sign here on the dotted line. It's a very— it's a very legal thing, isn't it? We've all learned that as we go through divorce. Um, it's a— it's nothing to take lightly. It's a big, big step for men and women alike, both. Okay, especially when you get kids in the picture. When all that comes in the front door, what goes out the back door? Not completely, but somewhat. And then for— unfortunately for some of us, for some of you poor guys out there and gals, it goes out completely. But that thing is called like, um, eroticism, uh, sexuality. The honeymoon phase, that, that super lustful in love, you know, the stuff that gets us men hooked, and women for that matter, but let's stick with men because I'm a dude, I can speak as a dude. That's what gets us hooked at the initial stage of the relationship. I want to commit myself to this woman. Why? Because of what I'm feeling right now. Um, this is why it's important to, when you're dating somebody, give it some time. Let some of those feelings dissipate. They won't dissipate completely, but they will go down somewhat, probably a lot if you stick around them. The longer you stick around with somebody, you see them in all their foibles, all their little faults, all their little whatevers. And, um, the feel-good chemical, the, the drunken high, because you're intoxicated on them, um, it's very much akin to a drug in your brain. The, the chemicals also cause you to be super duper horny. If everything is functioning as it should, you want to get it on quite a bit, right? Well, what throws— if that's a fire, let's call it, you know, picture a fire of raging inferno within you with the lustfulness and the sexuality of the eroticism. What douses that flame pretty quickly is saying I do. That, that lowers the flame quite a bit in a lot of people. Again, not a condemnation of marriage, but an illustration of human nature. Interesting. And then what slowly— what causes us to keep throwing water on that fire? Saying I do, moving in together. I'm picturing buckets of water being thrown on this. What I've seen in my experience— some people may disagree with me, but just from what I've seen, the men that I talk to— so to be fair, let's illustrate who is it that's painting the picture here for me is the men that come to Ralph Brewer, Dad Starting Over Help for Men, and say, please help. Amongst those men, the story I hear again and again is, man, things started going downhill sexually when we got married, we moved in together, and then it died when— drum roll— kids. When my wife gave birth to a child, new woman, just like that. That's what a lot of men say, which is understandable, by the way. Anyone with a modicum of maturity within them will say the same thing. Well, duh, she's a new person. She was the vessel for a new little human for 9+ months. And then she ejected said human and went through a physical trauma. Us men cannot fathom what that's like. Thankfully, I don't want to go through that. I don't know about you guys. And then on top of that, there is a hormonal cascading series of events that take place that we also can't fathom. Women go through a minor league version of that on a monthly basis. Thank you, menstruation. PMS and all that other stuff. That is times 1 million. It's— I'm super simplified, and maybe women will be like, oh, shut up, Ralph. Uh, that times 1 million is childbirth, and that can have a very detrimental effect on what? Your sex life. Some people hear that and go, well, duh, of course, what's a big deal, right? New chapter of your life. Well, there's a lot of men wide-eyed going, it's, it's kind of a big deal. It's a very big deal, actually. It's the biggest deal. So much so, guys, that if of every topic that I've ever talked about— and I've talked about raising kids, divorce, finances, business, fitness and health, fill in the blank. If it's a dude going through life, I've talked about it. But then I talk about what? Sex and marriage, more specifically the lack thereof. And the world wakes up and says, I want to hear more about that, Ralph Brewer. Why? Because almost every man raises his hand and says, I, I don't like this. I don't like the downturn. And society overall, the reaction has been one of what? Shame. What tool can we use to, um, satiate the males? Not the right term, is it? To shut the guy up, to make him not cause such a scene, to make him not cause chaos within the marriage and the family and so forth. In the form of what? Becoming violent, angry. That's one chaotic reaction to said event. The other is to cheat, to go off and screw a bunch of women and cause chaos and everything else. How do we control these men and keep them from going nuts? We shame the hell out of them. You should feel bad for feeling that way, dude. You should feel bad for having said needs and desires. New chapter. New chapter involves children and moving in, more domestic. Women seem to be better at— most, not all women seem to be better, maybe most is too strong— a lot of women tend to be better at, oh, what's it, resigning, I guess, is the word, to the new chapter, resigning themselves to the new chapter, to recognizing new chapter not nearly as sexy, sexual, etc. And some women take it too far and say, no sex at all, that part of our life is over. Those men are like, anyway, it's not so simple, is it? It's not so nice. And it is a struggle. And it is a— a lot of men have likened it, and they will— or like, they describe it as, rather, this is a sacrifice on our parts as men. To dial that down. But, um, and this is why I contend that the majority, yes, of men within a long-term monogamous relationship and marriage are not getting their needs met 100% in the sexual realm. Well, that's a very strong statement. Are all men unhappy then? No, they've learned to suppress, they've learned to redirect said energy, and there's a lot of things out there, good or bad, however you want to look at it, that are a good source for that energy redirection. How else to say that without getting penalized here by YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, wherever else I'm streaming this. Adult entertainment, that's the phrase I like to use to circumnavigate the systems here. Those, that, as well as all the way to the extreme of like sex workers, OnlyFans, that's a form of sex worker. Prostitution, obviously sex worker, and everything in between. All these things exist for a reason. They're like, hey dudes, we recognize you're not getting your need met 100%. Over here, give us money, we'll take care of you. Men have been forking over billions of dollars for generations for that. So let's not act like this is like a total like, holy shit, men aren't happy sexually within a relationship. No. And for the most part, a lot of men go, yeah, It's cool. Really. So when is it not so cool to men? Hmm. When men have options. That's when it's not so cool. If, if there's a predictor of male infidelity, screwing around outside of the marriage, we can— to oversimplify it, we can describe it as a dude with options. Let's look at an extreme, extreme example to illustrate the point. If I'm a billionaire dude, billion dollars in the bank, now on top of that I'm handsome, got a full head of hair, super handsome, like looks like a male model looking dude who's a billionaire, and he travels all over the world doing business deals on his private jet, Bugatti, Ferrari, Lamborghinis, and that, that dude, and he's got a wife back home. Um, do you think that that guy has a higher chance of fooling around on his wife than the dude who works, um, stocking shelves at Walmart? I think we would all agree, obviously. Yeah, dude. Now we can go on and on about morals and dumba blah and everything. Sure, okay. But let's just look at this pragmatically. Let's look at this rationally. Of course he has more— a higher chance of that. We also know that scientifically, guys who have higher levels of testosterone in their system tend to cheat more than men who don't. A lot of guys don't like to hear that. Guys, if we're going to be rational about this and call ourselves the rational dudes and we're scientific and we don't let feelings get in the way, then we need to look at the not-so-nice stuff about us as the male species. And everything would seem to indicate, at least all the science that we have, all in the best we can do is to anonymously ask people, hey, don't leave your name, don't leave or whatever, are you a male or female? Like on the internet or whatever. Are you a man or a woman? Check man, woman, whatever. Have you cheated on a relationship, yes or no? We've done some semblance of that survey for years and years and years. And every time we do it, it would seem to indicate that men cheat more than women. Yes, sorry. I know some of you guys have been cheated on, myself included. And we're like, but hell no, the women are just as bad as us. In a lot of ways, sure. In some ways worse, just as we're worse in some. We seem to take the prize as far as infidelity is concerned. Every study we have seems to indicate that. And then when we drill in further and go, okay, who is it that cheats? We see, well, it seems like if, if we do the, the testing, you know, they do the saliva test on men or blood test and they say, have you cheated, yes or no? And then we test their serum testosterone levels, whatever you want to call it. Um, yeah, higher testosterone equals higher chance of cheating. Interesting, right? Something to think about, all you guys doing testosterone replacement therapy, which is a lot of you anymore. But anywho, plus guys who have options tend to cheat. So that's one avenue for exploring, um, getting that need met. And it's not nice, and it, it does break up families, and it causes all kinds of chaos. The other thing is the adult entertainment. The other thing is just suppressing that need until it explodes, so to speak, in not so nice ways. And I don't think we have— I don't think a lot of ladies have a real genuine appreciation for the sacrifice that is made by men for not doing that deed. And a lot of women roll their eyes like, oh, here we go. What are we saying? Like, these men just can't control themselves and they're just these testosterone animals that just need that, whatever. It's like, no, again, I don't think you appreciate just how many men, the vast majority of men, don't get that need met elsewhere with another human, they tend to redirect that in other ways, such as the adult entertainment and all this other stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they, they keep that away from wife because they don't want to hurt her feelings. They don't want her to find out about that, and they have a lot of shame about what it is they're doing. But they're trying to find a way, damn it, to fill that need while still staying happily married. And that's the majority of men. Um, now where things get a little hairy And my pal Dr. Psych Mom had some posts about this, and she got all kinds of reactions. She can see that it gets men riled up. Example, real world example that I hear all the freaking time. And guys, please feel free— I'm blabbing away a lot here. Once you get me going, I don't shut up, as you can tell. But please feel free to ask questions or comment on anything I'm saying here today. Anywho, um, let's say a dude is like, um, goes to the doctor I'm not feeling too good. Doctor's like, dude, your blood pressure is pretty high. And he's like, oh shit. Like, yeah, um, if I may be so bold, Mr. Patient Man, you need to lose like 50, 60 pounds. You're overweight. Guy's like, oh shit. Yeah, um, I'm gonna give you blood pressure meds. Uh, I'm going to, um, strenuously suggest that you hit the gym. And change your diet immediately. Here, I can refer you to somebody for the nutritional help. Go join the gym, do some cardio. At your age, let's say the guy's like 55 years of age, right? 55, 55 years of age. It's important you do like resistance exercise, strength exercise. Every study seems to show that the more resistance training you do, the healthier it is for you as a man, etc., etc. And then he— and the guy goes, I ran your blood tests Your serum cholesterol is way too high. I'm going to put you on a statin for that. Diet and exercise will help with that as well. Maybe then we can wean you off the statin. And by the way, Mr. 55-year-old man, your testosterone is really low as well. That may be as a result of your weight and maybe this and that. But if you'd like, if you got like one of these really liberal progressive type of doctors and not politically in terms of medical care, this is, this is not that usual, not that normal, by the way. But every now and then you'll get a doctor that will say, if you'd like, I can prescribe testosterone to you as well. And then the guy's like, anything else we need to talk about here, Mr. Patient? So I got the blood pressure med, you got your statin, how about some testosterone? You're gonna go lose weight, right? Right. Okay, anything else bothering you, Mr. Man? The guy says, well, actually, um, on one of the rare occasions that I'm able to get it on with my wife, what she will allow— again, typical average dude— um, I have difficulty. The old Johnson's not working like it used to. Erection quality is like down. And the guy goes, eh, not unusual for an overweight 55-year-old man with blood pressure problems. That's pretty normal. Um, it will probably improve with your weight loss. We get your blood pressure under control, all this other stuff. But if you'd like, I can also put you on a low-dose Cialis, Viagra, or something like that on a daily basis. It's perfect for you. It'd probably actually help with the blood pressure and everything else, and, um, that will help with the erection thing. So guy goes home with a pile of stuff. He's got his testosterone and his blood pressure meds and his statins and his Viagra and he done and he comes home and he's like, look, wife, look what all I got. What do a lot of wives— and this is something that Dr. Psych Mom hinted at, not hinted at, hit at in one of her posts— the reaction by a lot of wives is, I don't like that. And the guy's like, what do you not like? Testosterone, Viagra, definitely no. Well, why not? Those two things are just gonna horn you up, dude. The distance between you and I libido-wise is like you're up here and I'm here. The woman is saying testosterone, Viagra, it's just gonna do this. It's gonna grow the, the distance between the two of us. Not healthy for our relationship. And the guy's like, "Huh, I don't know if I like that. That sounds kind of controlling. It sounds like a wife who's like succumbing to an old age or whatever it may be, and I am wanting to fight that. I want to be healthier. I want to be more virile and yes, more youthful, and I want to feel good. And this doctor says my blood pressure is high and da da da da." I don't see any problem with any of this. Are you trying to say, wife, that if there was a female Viagra equivalent, which there's not, by the way, men and women are different how we work sexually and biologically. There's no such thing. If anybody ever tells you this is the female Viagra, it's bullshit. They're way more complicated than we are. But anyway, if there was a female Viagra equivalent, are you saying, wife, you wouldn't take it? And a lot of wives are like, no, I don't give a fuck. I don't want— I'm cool with the way things are. I don't want to take that. The guy's like, huh, that doubly sucks. So there's no right or wrong here. I'm very biased, obviously, as a dude. Here's my thinking as a 50-some-year-old— I'm not 50-some, almost 50-year-old dude, I'm jumping ahead in the future there. Let's say I'm a 55-year-old dude. If I'm a 55-year-old dude, which ain't too far down the line for me, I'm gonna inject, take whatever, as long as I'm healthy in the process, to stay as virile, energetic, healthy, live long, do whatever, be strong, and all that stuff. And yes, if it has the ancillary side effect of increasing my libido, so be it. Part of me, my knee-jerk reaction is, that's a wife problem, not a guy. That's not a me problem. You're unhappy with that? I'm improving myself because it may have the ancillary side effect of increasing my libido, which you have a problem with? Mm, that don't sit well with me. Now, if the end result is, but I want us to stay together, the case could be made, well then, wife, I'm here, you're here, and I'm going like this. Maybe you should— novel concept, right? Maybe you should kind of catch up with me. If it's a race, so to speak, it's not fair, it's not nice. A lot of this stuff is not nice, is it? It's not lovey-dovey, wholesome, sweet. Safe, secure, comfortable. I'm likening back to, or hearkening back rather, to what I talked about. I got a little timer here that shows me 30 minutes ago or so. I mentioned when familiarity, comfort, safety come in the front door, what goes out the back door? The eroticism, the over-the-top sexuality, and everything else. You are saying as a dude, let's bring some of this back. And she's saying that she understands it innately. That means that this comfort, security, that goes out the front door a little bit, doesn't it? A little bit, yeah. Let's be honest. Let's say 55-year-old, 50, 60-pound overweight dude, um, suddenly loses 60 pounds, suddenly literally has the six-pack abs, and his testosterone goes from 190 or whatever it was to a total of 800-something. That dude's going to feel a lot better. That dude's going to be running through walls. That dude's gonna be ready to take on the world. That dude's gonna be horny as shit, and she's not. And that is not, quote, fair, and that is not good for the relationship, meaning it's going to cause the disparity to grow even further between the two of them. A lot of people have the mindset of kind of, welcome to the real world. It's almost like a Sexual capitalism, isn't it? You know, some people complain that the wealthy just keep getting wealthier, that there's a growing disparity between the haves and have-nots, and it's not necessarily fair. And if you ask the people over here with— that are working really hard, and like a, like a CEO, serial entrepreneur type that just sold his company for billions of dollars, and he's working on the next company, and he's got another company, and he's working on this deal, and he's working on that deal, he's investing millions, you know, one of those kind of guys. Not necessarily healthy, but there's some people wired that way. If you went to him and said, you need to cool it with all the work and you needed to come down here to catch up with— so there's less disparity between the two of us, he would tell you, go fuck yourself. Excuse my language. He would tell you, go fuck yourself. Um, versus those people down here are like, no, no, no, I don't like the disparity. And so the woman is kind of the, the have-not in that scenario. And then, and the man in that scenario was the CEO that just sold his company for billions of dollars, and he's ready to do the next deal, the next deal. And she's like, this is not fair. Ask him, he says, I don't care. Ask her, and she says, but I can see you, we're distance, we're growing apart. Okay guys, enough of me talking. What do you guys think about all this? Am I making sense here? Is this from a guy's point of view, from a gal's point of view? Ladies, if you are on with me live here today, please do not feel afraid to talk. I do not hide any— I'm— this is not anti-woman by any stretch of the imagination. I'm hoping you listen to this and say this is a valuable perspective from a guy that maybe you hadn't thought about before. Um, I did a, a chat with a gal, and I will be doing another. I will be on her podcast next week. Monica, last name— it's a Latin last name— Almeida. Can't remember. Anyway, um, last time I spoke to her— she has her own YouTube channel, podcast, and so forth— she is of the, you know, we talked about the up here, down there. She's up here. She's shooting whatever into her body. She has, you know, she went to the doctor and said libido's down, I don't feel so good, and they put her on the hormonal replacement therapy, and she's like, I ain't going back, new me. And she said what a lot of women say when they go on those kind of therapies. I finally get it. Get it meaning what my husband, his thought process when it comes to all this stuff. She is now more on team dude. She feels it and she's like, I understand now and I'm not going back. And her whole mindset has shifted in terms of what it takes to keep this relationship machine running. It's not so much resignation as it is active work. And some of that active work is kind of shallow and not so nice, and it involves the physicality and staying in shape and working out and injecting this and taking this pill and da da da. And yes, some of that may result in libido going up and, oh, can't have that. Well, she's like, I like that. And she's— she is better attached in a stronger way to her husband as a result. Is that bad? Is it bad because this woman over here says, I don't want to go down that road of shooting and injecting and all this and medical interventions? I just want to be me. That's not bad either. She has every right to say that. God bless her. I always say I love the comfortable, sweet grandma. My comfortable, sweet grandma didn't inject things and go to the gym at 50, 60-some years of age or whatever. She was baking cookies and pies. If that's you, that's you. Cool. But it may not be your hubs. And is that bad? I don't know. Interesting to think about. Greetings from Denmark. Well, there's a new one, Mr. Steen. Greetings from— how you pronounce that— Tønder, Denmark. I don't know, I don't know about you Denmarkians. Anywho, what do you guys think? I'm tired of talking. I'll take this and turn this into a video, me blabbing away. That's what I do with these. But if you would like to be a part of said video and clips, say something, folks. Let's hear it. Where do you stand on this? Does that making sense to you guys and gals? Where do you stand on the matter? I'm hoping that all the comments are coming through here on my end. Let me do a quick look-see over here. No, looks like I'm all caught up on Facebook at least. Yeah, don't let me, uh, let me sit here alone blabbing to myself, folks. Boise, Idaho. I appreciate it. That wasn't necessarily the feedback I was looking for. Um, maybe, maybe you guys are just getting caught up on the video here, but so far I got Denmark, Idaho, Alaska. What else we got? Australia. Very cool. Welcome, guys. All right, anybody have anything to say on the topic of, oh, uh, fighting Father Time, keeping the Oh, I don't know how to say it. Putting high-octane fuel in the old relationship machine in your body and the effects that it does and comfortability and eroticism and all that fun stuff. Anything at all, ladies and germs, please don't hesitate to say something. This is awkward. I'm talking to myself. No. Yes. No. Maybe there's a bit of a delay here. Could very well be. Usually there's more involvement at this point. Maybe not. Um, anyone, anyone going once, twice? Hey, while I wait, do me a favor. A couple things. I got a book. It's my most popular book that I've ever written, ever. It's called Dead Bedroom Fix, and you can learn more at deadbedroomfix.com. I got the domain, had that for years now. deadbedroomfix.com. On there you will see it, that you can purchase the book directly like $9, something like that, on the website. And then you can download a PDF, which you can— it's formatted so you can read it from your phone, pretty convenient. Or you can go to one of the retailers. I have all the links right there on that webpage, deadbedroomfix.com. You go to Amazon, Apple Books, Audible, everything in between. If you are a Spotify Premium member— I don't mention this enough— you can actually listen to the audiobook version on Spotify if you're a Spotify Premium member. That gets you access to a lot of audiobooks on there, in case you didn't know. And you can do a search for Dead Bedroom Fix and you'll find it. Make sure it's the 3rd edition. That's the latest and greatest version. That should be automatically what you see on Spotify, for example. But, uh, some retailers still have all the versions on there, so make sure it's the 3rd version that came out in 2024. It says right on the COVID 3rd edition. That has— that's the latest and greatest one, has all the best new stuff in there. So check that out, Dead Bedroom Fix, my most popular book. I also have courses. Along the same vein as the Dead Bedroom Fix. Hold on a second, um, let me do this real quick. Turn that off. There we go. Uh, deadbedroomfixcourse.com. It's a video course. I believe it's 9 videos in total that you can watch and hear me talk all about the subject of keeping the passion alive as a man in a relationship. Yes, it's aimed at men. Basically video version of the book. The positive is, after I just got done telling you where you can buy the book, this is how you can get the book for free. deadbedroomfixcourse.com. Not only do you watch videos, but you also get a PDF version of the book at no extra charge. No charge, period. That's the extra charge. No, the Dead Bedroom Fix course, by the way, completely free. I know you're thinking, what, what's the catch? There's no catch. Only catch— well, there's a catch. You give your email address once you create an account. Now I have your email address and I can market to you. Basically, I can send you newsletters and updates about everything Dad Starting Over and Help for Men. And hopefully you will eventually join our— if you're a man— our men's group, the Brotherhood, helpformen.com. So check out the Dead Bedroom Fix course. As I hit the microphone, deadbedroomfixcourse.com. Free Dead Bedroom Fix course. You get a free PDF version of the book. How cool is that? In addition, now we're on the subject of courses, mywifecheated.com. mywifecheated.com is a course, just what it sounds like. If you're a dude that's like, I just discovered my wife cheated, having a difficult time with this, don't know where to go next, check out mywifecheated.com. Quick little mini course all about the subject of infidelity from a man's perspective, what to do about all that stuff. And, um, and then once again, the group, uh, the Brotherhood. Learn more, help4men.com. You can go right to help4men.com/join, help4men.com/join, and you can learn all about the Brotherhood. And there are fees involved, very small fee to join. In fact, if you're a veteran, it's even cheaper, it's like 40% off, uh, to join our group, the Brotherhood. Help4men.com/join. Ladies and germs, if there's nothing else, I'm gonna skedaddle. I got stuff to do. It's like 2 PM Eastern Time, basketball's on. Who's your favorite team? Mine, mine just lost. Louisville, University of Louisville lost yesterday to Creighton badly. Creighton looked really good, so now I have to cheer them on. We're going to cheer today. If you could all join me in wishing that the University of Kentucky loses. That would help me out a great deal. I appreciate it. It's so funny, my son, my youngest son, is a big, uh, University of Kentucky Wildcat fan. Hate them, always have. I grew up in Indiana mostly as a kid, so naturally you hate, um, you know, the University of Kentucky. Hey, look, a comment, and a big one! Oh, thank God. Mr. Graham. Graham from— where are you from? Facebook. All right. Mr. Graham says, I kind of agree with everything you're saying. My ex-wife did the old resentment rejection. She also did the meeting mating dance again. I think you mean to say, well, during really when I started to better myself, she got even more jealous and then went on the hate campaign again to me. So be it. So she was up and down with her. So she's not— maybe she's kind of emotionally unstable in a way. Uh, now he says, I don't take testosterone, but for a time there I thought I might need it. Roll forward 18 months and I've met somebody else. Oh, so you guys separated? Who— she's on the HRT and she says the same as you mentioned, there is no going back. Her marriage failed to the dead bedroom, but since hormone replacement therapy, HRT, she has felt so much better. Oh, so that's very interesting. So, and you're from the UK, thank you, Graham. Um, so you are saying that, um, her previous marriage ended in part to this dead bedroom thing, and she was the one to abstain and say, 'Me no want.' And then after the divorce, she's like, 'Baby, I got a problem.' And she went on the hormonal replacement therapy, and she's like, 'Oh,' and she came alive. And she's like, 'Yeah, I ain't going back to that anymore.' So she recognized that she was in part at, quote, 'fault' for some of what happened in that first relationship. Very interesting. And do you feel pressure to keep up with her? Um, are you looking at the testosterone thing as maybe a, 'Maybe I want to Um, you know, keep pace with her, like this is using— again, using the race analogy— and otherwise she may lap me, so to speak. Lapping meaning go around once while you're, you're going at this pace and she's already gone around once. That's called lapping you. Um, it's interesting. So thank you for sharing, appreciate that. Yeah, this, uh, the hormonal replacement therapy thing is something that is, um been around for a while, obviously, but it is something that I think it's growing in popularity. And we hear from a lot of women— there's a lot, there's always a lot of absolutes and, and big platitudes that are shared when it comes to the relationship game for men and women both. Both of them spit out stuff, and a lot of times it's horseshit. And one of them is a lot of women saying, you don't understand how difficult it is for us women to get something like hormonal replacement therapy prescribed to us. Yeah, I hear you, that's tough too. Where the bullshit thing comes in is where they say— and men have no problem with that. Now hold on a second, I have plenty of men who come to me to say they go to their doctor, like in the example I gave with the, uh, your family doctor, your general practitioner as we call it in the US, and you say, I don't feel so good. This is a very common sentiment, or very common story rather. Doctor, I don't feel so good, I'm going to the gym, I ain't gaining any muscle, my libido's starting to go down a little bit. I'm only, let's say, like 45 years of age. I'm too young for this shit. So I did a blood test, doctor, or, hey doctor, let's do a blood test or something like that. I want to test for testosterone and other things, see where I'm at. A lot of doctors will be— do the old eye roll and go like, oh God, another one of these guys, dude. They will say, you're no He-Man, you're 45 years of age, welcome to the real world. You're not going to be as virile, muscular, energetic, and yes, horny as you used to be. Sorry. Welcome to being a human being. We all go down and the guy will be like, look at me, I'm 50 years old and I have no testosterone left. I'm happy. Why can't you be? Or something like that, right? A lot of shame. Society overall, you know, if you want to look at this kind of conspiratorially, we tend to look up to the He-Man superhero types, don't we? We love us a good athlete. We love us the military guy. We love us the badass guy who sticks up. And a lot of women will admit, that's kind of attractive, that over-the-top kind of masculine thing. But only if it's a natural dude. We don't want to hear like you're some kind of guy who shot up some testosterone or you got to go to the gym 7 days a week to look like that. We want to know a guy who's just naturally manly. And of course it's horseshit. There's no such thing as a natural. Everybody has to work at it in some way. No such thing as a natural. Um, but, um, so a lot of us men are shooed out of the doctor and say, beat it. And that's such a common thing that the market has responded to this need for somebody to step up and fill the void, so to speak, with these clinics. There are private clinics all over the place. Um, I, I'm about 40 minutes away from one right now, right up the road in Louisville, Kentucky. And, uh, Louisville is a metro area of about a million people, so it's like a medium-sized city. Smallish city, and I think it— I don't know, it may have like a dozen hormonal clinics just in that size of a city. So you can imagine if you're in a major metro area, Google, you'll find them. So it really is, are you willing to pay for it? Because most of them don't take insurance. You're talking maybe like a couple hundred bucks a month or something like that, probably at most, to get your— no, well, it depends on what they prescribe to you. They could go everywhere, anywhere from like your testosterone, estrogen, progesterone for the ladies all the way to something like growth hormones and peptides. And it gets complicated with all this stuff the more you look into it. The point is, is that a lot of ladies go, my doctor just shoos me out of the room and says, beat it, lady, you don't need hormonal replacement therapy. Besides, that causes cancer and all kinds of horseshit, right? Which, by the way, no, do your own research on that. But, um, there are these private clinics and they take ladies, and the population of ladies that are going to them is going up big time. And I often joke that if you talk to some of these clinics, of which I have, um, uh, you will ask them, you know, who's your population? How are the women doing? A lot more ladies coming in. Are these newly divorced women? Yeah, a lot of them. Why is that? Just like, you know, um, was it Graham? With your lady friend, because they're out post-divorce. And one thing is that really rejuvenates men and women both is getting out of a long-term relationship. Remember how I said at the beginning of this, when safety and security comes in the front door, eroticism, passion, everything kind of goes out the back, somewhat, sometimes completely for some of us? Well, safety and security, when it goes out the door with divorce, what comes right back in from the back door? Here I am again. Sexuality, eroticism, the new energy, the rejuvenated feeling of life. That's why a lot of people are like, I got rid of that asshole, now I feel like a million times better. I got rid of that boat anchor of a woman and now look at me, I'm flourishing, I've lost so much weight. We're just back in the mating game again. We're such dumb animals, that's all there is to it. And we're trying to project the best, most attractive version of ourselves to snag a new mate, to make more mates, plural. There's a lot of guys like to go down that road, seeing how many they can you know, bag and tag over the next so many years post-divorce. And I think a lot of us innately know what is it that gets that, that allows me to accomplish that goal more so than anything else? Youthfulness, energy, looking a certain way, whatever. What's going to get that accomplished? A lot of ladies go, I need to look into this HRT thing because I'm perimenopausal. I'm not feeling too good. I'm this, I'm that. And my lady friends want me to go to this exercise class and I just don't feel like it. And they're all getting in good shape. This is key. A lot of them say, and my girlfriend— the women talking— my friend from work, my girlfriend, she's on the pellets and she's on this, and she says, girlfriend, you got to do this. I feel like a million bucks. So they get into it. So that's a big population of women. They're rejuvenating and reliving life, and the kids are out of the house, or they're divorced, some kind of major life change. And this domesticity, safety, security, and stuff is not so important anymore. For whatever reason, now I want to you know, rejuvenate myself and live life again and get reborn. That's for a lot of— a lot of men have discovered that that happens while married. And for a lot of men, not the biggest, the best, uh, outcome. A lot of women go, what am I doing with you again? Hey, it happens. And some men, same thing. I'm all hopped up on testosterone and I'm a new He-Man guy, and what am I doing with you battle axe again? Who doesn't want to do anything and doesn't have any energy and doesn't want to go on trips, doesn't want to go on dates, certainly doesn't want to have sex, all that other stuff. They, yeah, and then they say, I think I want to move on to Plan B here. It's not a nice thing. It's not a fun topic. And I can certainly see it from both sides. Absolutely, I can. Probably more so from the dude who wants to maintain things side. I think I I know I empathize more with that side of things than the other, and I don't necessarily think that's bad of me. I'm not one to shame men for their sexuality. If a man says, in the hierarchy of things that are super important to me right now as a 55-year-old man, sex is right up there, I say, good for you, dude. Okay. And if he says it's not, I say, good for you, dude. Okay. It's a very puritanical point of view a lot of us have when it comes to the sex thing, especially towards men. How shameful of you to to think that that's important like that. Ugh, you should know better than that. You're a dad now. You're a husband now. No, stifle that, dude. Smother that. And I say, no, he's, he's a human. He's normal. Maybe come to some kind of compromise here and figure out how to best deal with that. Anywho, I'm gonna call her quits here, guys. Thank you all so very much. I appreciate all of you joining me here today. HelpForMen.com. If you're a dude, check out the Brotherhood. That's our private community for men only. If you like these kind of talks, We do these live back and forth. We talk back and forth all the time throughout the week. We have discussion forums. We get together in person. It's good support community for men. A lot of you guys aren't doing that enough. A lot of you guys are still stagnant and stuck and got your wheels spinning and you're stuck in the mud. And the thing that is keeping you stuck is your lack of working with other dudes, other dudes that are winners, that are trying, working hard. If you want to rise in the ranks, so to speak, and get over the hump and climb the hierarchy of dude-ness, if you will, you need help from other men in order to do that. I don't care what discipline it is. If you're talking about improving your business or improving your health or improving your family life or your marriage, work with other like-minded men. That's it. That's the secret, guys. I just unveiled the secret for you here that are wondering, how can I get over the hump here? Work with other like-minded dudes. The Brotherhood, help4men.com. Check it out, help4men.com, or go right to the page helpformen.com/join. You can check out our community for men only, the HFM, Help for Men Brotherhood. All right, ladies and germs, thank you all so very much for joining me today. I appreciate all of you a great deal. You're awesome. Love you. Have a good weekend. See you on the next one.