Chat LIVE with Ralph (DSO)!

Alright, alright, alright. Welcome everyone, welcome to another exciting episode of Live with DSO. That's me. Is this an episode technically? And whatever, you know what I mean. Welcome, thank you for joining me today. I do appreciate it. My name is Ralph Brewer Brewer. For those that are brand new to all this, occasionally we get somebody who's never ever seen me before, just happened upon this beautiful baldness and they say, well, I got to see what this is about, right? Obviously. And they're like, what's this all about? Well, my name is Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer. The little bubble above my head says Help for Men. That's the name of a website you can go to, helpformen.com. Check it out. But you are watching this probably on a channel for Dad Starting Over, which is a brand, a name, or whatever that I've been creating content under for shit, I don't know, like 9 years now, I think. It's been a while and I've been heavily into the video world and the live streaming and everything for 3 or 4 years now. And I've literally over 1,000 videos out there now, I think. So I've been, been pretty busy, been going at it pretty hard. You'll see you can follow me on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, or else Twitter, X as it's called now, Instagram. That's one I don't mention often. I have a lot of Instagram followers, like 5,000 or something like that. So if you, you know, Give me a follow on Instagram if you could, please. Check out Dad Starting Over, and while you're at it, check out Help for Men. Um, some of the confusion about the difference between the two started out as Dad Starting Over. We had a private community underneath Dad Starting Over. We had all my books and courses and everything were sold under Dad Starting Over, and then put our heads together. And I said we put our heads together, um, it's myself and a team of other gentlemen. And, um, we talked about it, we need to create something more inclusive something with a broader scope. You know, we had a lot of guys that said, I like the content, I like this, but I'm not a dad, so I'm out. Like, no, no, no, don't, don't go away. And guys say, I'm not starting over, which in the connotation for a lot of people is divorce. A lot of guys like, I don't want a divorce, or I've never been divorced, so that's not me either, see you later, bye. So we had to do a lot of, pardon me, explaining to keep a lot of guys in the content. And we had to break down a lot of barriers and obstacles to keep guys around. And if you're a business person, that is not the Best way to introduce a product or service is to help try to explain confusion and, you know, don't run away, this is for you. So we created a more inclusive brand and everything and a name called Help for Men. Learn more at help4men.com. We moved our private, uh, community for men only called— it's now called the HFM, Help for Men Brotherhood. Help for Men Brotherhood. Again, you can learn more at help4men.com. All the books are sold under Help for Men. Video courses All kinds of cool stuff. We have free articles, free videos, all kinds of neat stuff. So check it out at helpformen.com. As far as Dad Starting Over is concerned, obviously I'm still pumping out content. We'll probably come up with different names. We also have one that I don't spend hardly any time on, I apologize, called Real Sexy Marriage. You can find it. The goal is eventually for my wife and I to sit down and actually create content for that. My wife's a doctor, so she's super, super busy and stuff. So good luck with that, right? And now we have a kid together on top of my other, my 3 kids from my previous marriage and long story. So we haven't had much time to devote to that at all, unfortunately. So, but we still have this thought in our mind of writing a book together and everything else. So we'll see. So check that out if you want to. Real Sexy Marriage, Help for Men, Dad Starting Over. Give me a like, a subscribe, a follow, or however it works wherever you're watching this, man. I would really appreciate it. Let me bring up comments here. Forgot to do that. Um, Call Me Stan says, like that smash button for DSO, subscribe and hit the bell, I guess. Yes, please do. If you're watching this on YouTube, Man, do me a favor. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. Hit the like. When you like— when you see videos of mine, you like them, all it takes is that little click, click. This really helps a lot. I've got a lot of subscribers but not a lot of likes. Um, the few that I do have are really, uh, active on there, and I got like 130,000 subscribers. I got some videos that hit in the hundreds of thousands of views. A lot of them are like in the hundreds and low thousands. So give me a like, give me a subscribe. We really appreciate it. Check out Dad Starting Over on YouTube. Help for Men is also on YouTube, a separate channel that we're devoting just to interviews with important, influential, and interesting people. I just came up with that, the triple I, important, influential, and interesting people. We've had Orion Taraban, Dr. Samantha Rodman-White, and Dr. Matt Zikreski, and soon here, oh, well, another lady, I'm forgetting her name, Jamie, oh, what's her last name? That's terrible. I don't remember her last name. She's an attorney. We talked about divorce on there as well. So if you wanna learn about trends in divorce and we talked about gray divorce and women initiating divorce more often than men and all kinds of good stuff on there. So check out Jamie on there as well. Jamie Davis, I believe was her last name. And then we have coming up here soon, coming up this week, I will post the interview with Dr. Robert Glover. Dr. Robert Glover, author of No More Mr. Nice Guy. So be on the lookout for that one. Very good interview. Lasted about an hour, just over an hour. So that will go up on the Help for Men page and I'll be posting clips across all the different channels. Dad Starting Over as well. Huh. Busy, busy. It never stops. The video thing keeps me extremely busy pumping out content. We also have a thing I'm going to put up here in the link, in the link, in the chat or in the comments over on the Dad Starting Over website, which is still up. That's startingover.com/dear-dso. People still fill out a form there quite often on that page, dadstartingover.com/dear-dso. That's if you got a question for me or a comment or story or whatever, and you want me to comment and create a little video about it, you fill out the form there and I'll do that. And that— I get those not every day, but pretty frequent. And so I go back every now and then and go, let me see how many entries I got to do videos on. It's like, oh crap. So now it used to be everyone that came in, I created a video. Now I'm more selective, otherwise I would never do anything else. There's dozens on there that I haven't gotten around around to yet, so I apologize if you've sent me a message and I haven't created a video. It's not that I don't like you, it's probably that I don't have time, and I'll get around to it eventually if your story is a good one. Every now and then I skip one, I'm like, I don't even know why they submitted a story, this is the most uninteresting thing ever. Sorry, no offense, but, uh, that I can see guys want to get stuff off their chest. So check that out at dadstartingover.com/dear-dso, and, um, it's a good one, I'll create a video out of it, as I say at the beginning of all those videos. What else we got going on? We're working on the idea of workshops. Oy, pardon me while I adjust. This is the most uncomfortable chair. I've got this, what do you call it, like a gaming chair or whatever? I was thinking that it would be comfortable. No. It's still painful. I got it off of Amazon cheap. But anywho, what was I gonna say? Oh, workshops. We're thinking about doing workshops, small groups in person to the office that I have in— it's a long story, I bounce between two places— in Plano, Texas. So we got— I got a facility there, an office that I rent, and they have facilities we can rent. We have an all-day workshop, small group. I'm thinking myself and 8 gentlemen. It'll be a fee involved, obviously, and we're thinking there'll be 8 hours, a full day thing, lunch included. Included with that is a one-on-one after follow-up session with myself over Zoom. So we'll make it like a whole package of stuff, and you'll leave with homework and all kinds of good one-on-one info and good way to meet myself and get involved with our private group, the HFM Brotherhood. If you're not yet a member, please join. Brotherhood members will get those workshops at a cheaper rate than the general public will, but we're hoping that will allow more people to see what our group is all about, what the content's all about behind the scenes, in person. It's really cool. So those aren't ready yet. So it's just right now in the building phase. Got a website up, a webpage up rather, on our site. And we'll make that available to the public here soon. So be on the lookout for workshops on help4men.com. What else we got going on? We got our big annual conference in the States coming up next year in May. We're already sold out, guys. Sorry. We'll see about doing maybe another one in the fall of next year. We'll see. No promises there. And then, um, our guys in Australia coming up here, and I believe a couple of weeks— don't want to lie— uh, they're having their annual conference in Sydney. They've bounced around to different cities. It's Sydney this year, it's hard to say. And, uh, they're going to get together. They always get like 20, 30 dudes, I think, together, uh, annually there. So it's always a good time. Uh, we in the States, we call our little gathering BroFest. It's kind of a funny story behind where we got that name. Somebody's angry, now ex-wife called our annual gathering like, you're gonna go to your stupid BroFest? And we're like, sweet, new name! So we named it that. And then the guy— so borrowing from that, our guys in Australia, they named their annual conference MateFest because they always say, you know, good day, mate. Isn't that cute? So, and you can see behind me, I always get— there we go, right there, a little boomerang I got from a little plaque one day. I'll show you guys that. It's a little pla— thank you gift that they gave to me, the guys in Australia. And above that is a license plate from the guy up in Canada gave me. And over here, guitar, is my play button from YouTube that says I got 100,000 subscribers. That's pretty cool. And over here is my G&L Telecaster style guitar, and that's my PRS McCarty for you guitar people. And behind me, behind me, can you see that? God, I always get this backwards, is my, uh, uh, what the hell do they call that? Why am I drawing a blank right now? Oh, I can't use lack of food as an excuse. Kemper, that's my Kemper Profiler. This is all guitar geek talk. For the guitar geeks out there, they're like, yay! For the rest of you, you're like, what, who cares? Sorry. Um, when is EuroBroFest, Joe asks. I'm sure your life would like a chance to— your wife would like a chance to come to Germany. My wife is from Germany. She's going to be there. When is she going? It's around the time of BroFest next year. She's going. See the fam and everybody else. Good idea. Not sure we have enough guys in Europe, you know. Here's the negative: to put on a bro fest or conference, whatever you want to call it, they're so— I almost said a bad word, sorry— they're so freaking expensive. You have to have a facility, you know, something with a roof over your head. Right away, that's a fortune. Then you got to feed everybody. That's a fortune. And then afterward have some kind of cocktail hour, dinner, yada yada. You got to bring stuff for people to take home. It just— everything costs a fortune. So we got to know when we reserve a spot and all this other stuff that we're going to have X number of guys show up. And it's always kind of a gamble. And we've come close a couple of times going, man, I don't know if this is going to work out. And in the end, enough guys show up. We're like, sweet. We've had the most guys we've had show up to one of those was 50, around 50 guys showed up in Austin, Texas. Um, so I don't think we'll get anywhere close to that in Europe. I could be wrong. And where exactly in Europe? Every little place is different. I know it's easy to get around in Europe. I've been there plenty, you know, my wife and my family's from there, everything else. But, uh, I don't know, we'll see one of these days. Um, oh, Poland, very cool, excellent. So we got questions coming in, man. I appreciate it, guys. Thank you so very much. Jamie says, hey, bub. Or hey, right back to you. I'm not called bub. Very often. I kind of like it. You can call me bub all you want. I've been called dad. I don't mind. It's kind of cool. Uh, JP Ryan says— JP Ryan from Facebook says, do you believe there might be a way to extend the, quote, honeymoon phase of a sexual relationship? Do you know if anyone has studied this idea? Somebody wrote a great book that's recently released its third edition that seems to point to men constantly improving themselves which simultaneously reboots a desire in women to win, keep, compete for their men. Not always. Parentheses, best single sentence summary I could come up with. Lobbying for commitment, quote. Not necessarily. Do you believe that staying just shy of the level of commitment a woman wants might keep her yearning for just a bit more? Man, what a good question. The book he is talking about is one that I wrote called The Dead Bedroom Fix. Let me pause here for a moment. I'm going to put it in the chat. DeadBedroomFix.com for those listening or watching here, they can't see the chat. DeadBedroomFix.com. Anyway, so this is a touchy subject, Mr. JP. It's one that your red pill-ish, the misogynistic kind of manosphere guys take, they take a little bit too far in this direction. And it is one, uh, one that can— the subject matter can lead you down a road of this is just flat-out manipulation, and that's not what you want to get across. But there's a grain of truth to it, isn't there? Which is, when I— whether it's a man or woman, this isn't a sex-gendered thing— when I know that my partner is desired by others, that ramps up my— I'm doing a lot of hand motions today— that ramps up my desire for them in turn. Is that bad? No, that's human nature. To soften the blow of all this, it always helps when I flip the script with the genders because then the women tend to get really angry about this kind of talk. So ladies, let me put it in terms that you would maybe relate to better by showing you the, the perspective from a, from a man's perspective in this way. Let me explain. So This has happened to me. Wife and I, it's date night, or we go away on a trip somewhere. Like, I'm thinking back to New York City years ago we went to. We did like a long weekend in New York City, right? And she takes all her outfits and yada, let's get all dolled up and go, and we're gonna go to the comedy club, we're gonna go to this fancy cocktail bar to get drinks in this nice place in the museum. And I wear, you know, I don't know what I wear, button-up shirt, slacks, that kind of thing. It's a very old man term, isn't it? Slacks. And then she unveils like this wow outfit that just makes me say, okay, we don't have to go anywhere. We can stay here. Like I was instantly like ready to go because she was just all dolled up, looked super sexy. It was awesome. We go out and I see heads turning. When she's walking by because it's like over-the-top sexy outfit and a little revealing. I like it. I'm not so insecure to be like, oh, men are gonna want her. Fine, let them. She's going home with me, right? And that built up that desire. I couldn't keep my hands off of her all night long. I'm looking at her, I'm looking at people look at her, men and women alike are doing the old double take thing, and it just makes me feel better because I I got a person like that. That makes me feel better about me. Keeps the sexiness thing going. Same thing reversed. I have women who have told me point blank, I've never been more turned on than when we went to a company function for my husband or whatever, and he got up on stage and won an award for Salesman of the Year. Or when— some women admit to this— Not often, but men will say to me, we went to some kind of event, company function, family function, whatever. And some woman, probably after a few cocktails, starts cozying up to husband. "You're so handsome," and says to the wife directly to her, like, "You're so lucky to have a man like him. Look at him. Did you pick out his sweater? He looks so handsome today." Yada, yada, yada. And laughs at all his jokes. Then they go home that night. Wife is maybe a little pissy about it, like, "Your friend sure seemed to like you," or whatever. But then sure enough, the man's like, "We had the most awesome 2 hours ever after that." It's like the woman realizes she's got a good thing. Does it instill in her anxiety of some kind, or is it a good kind of anxiety? Is it what we call like a positive emotional tension? However we want to frame it, it's a very natural process, and from what I can gather, a very kind of crucial component to the whole thing. If my wife walking down the road with me going to dinner turns a few heads, and maybe sometimes the women are more overt about this because they're safe to do so, saying to her randomly, "You're beautiful," and she's like, "Well, thank you." Like the waitress who wants a really good tip, she's like, "I'm here to take your order." "Oh, you're so pretty. You're such a pretty young lady." You know, she's like, "Oh, thank you." Makes her feel good, makes me feel good. I'm with a pretty lady. She's getting compliments. You know where I'm going with this. So anyway, back to your original question. Do I believe there may be a way to extend the honeymoon phase? The honeymoon phase is the honeymoon phase. It's here. It reaches this point, it's done. Now, is there a definitive chomp moment where it's just the finish line? If we had to describe it, many say, yeah, it ended the moment I said I do to my wife. Somewhat rare, but we hear that. Um, it was— I saw a little cartoon of a man and woman after saying their vows, walking back down the aisle, and everyone around them. And the bride turns to the groom and says, "I didn't like the way you said 'I do.'" The beginning, right? That's where it went from honeymoon phase to the pestering, nagging, angry wife phase. Some people say— men say that they happened during that point. I think it's more common to say after we moved in, comfortable, years went by, we had children, Then the honeymoon phase ends and she doesn't seem to have much interest in me in that way anymore. That's more common. So it's kind of tough to say when it be— where it begins and ends is what I'm trying to say. It's kind of a foggy gray area there. Can you extend it? No, I think, and I did a video about this, uh, uh, do I take time to find the video on YouTube? Go to Dad's Heart in Over. You'll find it. One of the sort by views, I think you can. I don't know if you can or not. I know I can behind the scenes. It's one of the top viewed ones. The Truth About Sex and Marriage, I think is what it's called. Basically, to summarize the video real quick, here's libido and sexual desire from our women at the honeymoon stage, early relationship stage, getting to know you stage. Commitment happens. Eh. Moving in together. Eh. Kids. Hrrr. But then every now and then, the lucky us guys who know what we're doing in relationships, we have those innate skills, or we're charming guys, etc., etc. We take time for each other, date nights and all this stuff. It— the hunt— the sexual desire from our spouse is not here again, but it's down here, and then every now and then it goes brrp, brrp, brrp. Blips on the radar, spikes, you know, like a, you know, what do you call the EKG thing or whatever. That's more realistic. Within the marriage, within all the stressful, boring times, all that stuff, we see blips on the radar of connectedness, and the wife seems very turned on. Things that can influence that include, oh, biological things like ovulation. It's that time of the month. Her body and brain and everything is saying, "Make babies, make babies." And she feels more alive. She feels more sexual, sexy, fun, positive, and more sex happens typically in that phase than in any other phase. And as an aside, we know statistically women cheat more during that phase than any other phase. Interesting. But so we see blips on the radar. Some guys are flatline. They don't know how to get the blips. The blips happen once a quarter, whatever. Not healthy, not good. But check out the Dead Bedroom Fix, and I talk about how to make those more frequent, basically. Or God forbid, get up here. Some super lucky bastards are able to do that, right? Because they're well matched, they know what they're doing, they're perfect match with their gal physically, emotionally, mentally, intellectually, all that good stuff. Um, so the question is, do you stay just shy of that level of commitment? Here is an uncomfortable truth that nobody, especially women, do not like to hear, that a lot of men agree with, but I'm gonna put some caveats in here. This is not an anti-marriage statement. It's not an anti-commitment statement. It is a scientific statement, and it goes like this. If you are a man who is able to get frequent sex outside of commitment, There are a handful of men that can do this. Frequent, meaning they could have several women in a week if they wanted to. One of those lucky bastards, right? Your players, whatever they call them. If he wants to maintain some semblance of that hypersexuality in his life, it behooves him to not commit, marry, or cohabitate with a woman. And most definitely not procreate with said woman. Those are sex killers. Now, some men hear that and go, then why the hell get married? Dude, if the whole purpose of you getting married is to get laid, you're going down the wrong, I'm failing for an analogy here. The marriage ain't the way to do that. But in those men's defense, they'll say, "Yeah, but I want a partner for life. I want somebody to go through life with. I want children. I want to do all these things. And yeah, I want a hypersexual relationship with this one person." You can't have your cake and eat it too. Dude, we've seen this for generations and generations. That's why there are some cultures that it's perfectly understandable for dude to have something on the side. Our very modern and kind of prudest culture in a lot of ways deeply frowns upon that. Like, "Oh no, no, no, no, no. We don't even go down that road. We don't mention that." Which, when things aren't mentioned, they tend to kind of bubble under the surface and explode eventually. Cheating is more common in men than it is in women. Sorry guys, statistically that's true. Men that claim to be very happy with their marriage overall still cheat. 56% of men that are involved in affairs, that's the majority technically, just barely a majority, but the majority of men rate their marriage as very happy. What the hell? Women, on the other hand, something like 30% of women say they're very happy or happy, period, with their marriage if they're in affairs. Like 70-some percent say, I'm very unhappy with my marriage. So you see the difference. That sexual connection is, Very, very important to men, getting that need met. We seem to be wired for that. So to accomplish that within a strict monogamous relationship is super, super tough, especially for you guys that got a taste of the good life and you're able to navigate that world of hypersexuality outside of marriage, and then you expect that same atmosphere to occur within a marriage. No, it doesn't work that way, dude. Sorry. So Yes, JP, if you want to, you know, keep hypersexual, then stay shy of that commitment. Yeah, but I want to come— I want a life partner and I want kids and I want— you can have it both, dude. Sorry, you can have some semblance of that, the spikes, but 3 chicks a day, having sex every day if you want it, sometimes multiple times a day— what percentage of married couples achieve that? 0.5%? I don't know. You'll hear them though. They're on my comments every now and then. Some guy's like, I'm 70 years old, we still do it, you know, every day. It's like, dude, that's awesome. Holy shit. But that's not most human beings. Nowhere close. Hmm. Mr. Carl from Facebook says, how do you deal with an ex-wife that ruins your reputation with lies in the community. What respectful response do you give to people in the community that brings this information to you? Hey, thanks for letting me know. Appreciate it. But I think we both know, kind of bullshitty, right? But hey, whatever. And move on. The end thing that I always say to a lot of men is, you know the truth, dude. You know what's right or wrong. Who cares what this gal says and that guy thinks or whatever? If they believe your wife over what you know are facts, your ex-wife rather, over what you know are facts, then just cast them aside. You don't need them in your life. Now, with that being said, sometimes those lies and so forth can go down to the, I'm no attorney, libel. You know, if what she says prevents you from making a living, for example, If it ruins your reputation and you are in fact like a politician or some kind of public figure and you need your reputation in order to make a living, looking down the line in the future and you're like, what I do now impacts my future a great deal, what people think of me in this community. You know, you could be some kind of, oh, I don't know, something as public-facing but not as impactful. That's kind of horrible to say. You know what I mean? Like a real estate agent. People that put their face on the billboards. Why do they do that, by the way? Like, like it's important. Bob so-and-so, the real estate agent, you know, to the stars. And suddenly some rumor gets out that he beats his wife or he's cheated on his wife, and he's like, what? No, I've never done anything like that. Then maybe you want to find the source of said rumors and take them to court. I don't know, some attorney. Maybe if you're on here, you'll be able to explain that better than I can. Otherwise, it's just Oh well. Hmm. Southwest Minnesota in the house. Something from nothing. Welcome. Hmm. Call Me Stan says, as a fresh dad and a guy being in a long-term relationship for 18 years and married for 3. Oh wow. I wish I had found your content sooner. I'm learning a lot about myself here. Mistakes were made. Well, very good. I'm glad to hear. Just curious, that's a long relationship. 15 years of not being married and then married for the last 3. Did the— just curious, did the switch flip, Call Me Stan? Did you notice a major difference between the physical connection, I guess you could say, physical and emotional connection, the sexual connection between you and your partner pre and post marriage? Just curious. And newish dad, say no more. So are all married men, uh, are married men just all riding the town bicycle? How are cheating numbers not roughly equivalent? Well, uh, Mr. Man, let's look at it from— Mr. John, let's look at it from real extreme. Sometimes we can use extremes to illustrate the point. It helps with statistics. Mr. Playboy, Mr. Player, has 30 gals in his roster, and he's married, let's say, and he's got 30 mistresses. And of those mistresses, 3 of them are married. And they're all— each of those 30 women, let's say, although this is probably unrealistic, but let's just say, again, extreme. They're only having— each of those are only having sex with Mr. Player, Mr. Playboy. He's having sex with 30. Each of those are just with him. Not unheard of, right? That's an extreme example to illustrate the point of how it's not a one-to-one thing. With that being said, cheating aside, we know statistically when we poll people, it seems to be the promiscuous match up with the promiscuous. That isn't, again, not necessarily a marriage cheating thing, but just let's say on the dating market, they're all If I got a guy who's been with 30 women last month, the women he's with usually are paired up with— they usually are promiscuous as well. That's what we've seen. Does that apply to the marriage world and cheating world? Apparently not. And John, the only thing we can go on as far as cheating is concerned, what we call anonymous surveys, hey, Fill out this form. We don't want to know who you are. All we know is, are you male or female? What age are you? Whatever. Have you ever cheated while in a committed marriage? That's all we ask. And we have trust since it's anonymous and everything that they're telling the truth. And the numbers are always— since we've been doing such surveys, the men always stay ahead of the women. With that being said, it seems the women are starting to catch up a little bit. And also when you break it down by certain age groups, it varies and so forth. And so forth, but overall men are still winning the cheating prize, so to speak. Is that a— that's not a condemnation of men. It's a human nature thing. There are a lot of bad things that men do. This is something that I see in a lot of the man-related relationship talk world. It goes too far into not only are all women horrible creatures— not true— but then they swing the pendulum over to and thus all men are angels. You're like, okay, dude, no. I've known a lot of horrible men in my life. We are no angels, guys. You know, we're the majority of serial killers, rapists, murderers, everything else. Women have their own flavor of bad stuff too. But as far as the cheating thing is concerned, no, we still get the trophy for that. It's just human nature. That is what it is. We're not demons. We're not evil. We just, we win the prize when it comes to that. Women win the prize when it comes to a lot of other bad stuff. Hmm. Call Me Stan says, being avoidant and finding excuses not to marry for a very long time. In the end, it might have been a mistake. Still working on it and figuring it out. I love my kids so much though. Oh, so this is, sorry, this is in response to why you didn't marry. It took a long time. So you were afraid of the commitment, in other words. That's a very, Typical dude thing, right? Um, Something from Nothing says that wife has been having major back issues. Someone she works with asked her what is she holding in. The lady asked my wife how her marriage is, and my wife replied that she has been actively blocking my effort. What? Have you ever heard of physical problems when you're bottling, blocking effort in relationship? Well, I don't know what you're referring to by bottling and blocking effort. Can you explain that further? But what I do know is that, um, I'm no scientist, but pain in the body is, is sometimes not so straightforward. Like, this hurts. I used to be married to a physical therapist and now married to a doctor, so I hear secondhand a lot of this stuff. This hurts. What may surprise you is that this hurts because of a bicep tendon problem down here, like refers to. That's one way physical things, pain is kind of misleading, right? Also, there's an emotional component to pain. We know, for example, women, it's mostly women that suffer from something known as fibromyalgia, which is another term for we really don't know the source of your pain. You're obviously in pain, You're hurting, we can see it, and sometimes we see inflammatory markers that show you're under stress and in pain and so forth, and you seem to respond well to pain meds and all these other things, but we don't really, we've scanned you from head to toe, there ain't nothing wrong with you. Nothing wrong with you. And what we've seen is that a lot of these people, mostly women who have fibromyalgia, for example, respond well to antidepressant medications. So any doctor will tell you it's amazing, the brain's effect on the body. Um, I've mentioned before in previous lives that I've done with these, uh, that, um, we've seen some men, for example, that take, uh, exogenous testosterone, testosterone therapy. Their levels are like 1,000 or something, almost super physiological like that. They're feeling great, and then something traumatic happens in their life, maybe the death of a spouse or death of a child or job loss or whatever it may be. And those men will say, I have zero libido, I have zero oomph, I feel depressed. And they feel heavy, and they're like, there's erectile dysfunction that's come out of nowhere, and I can't even get it up if I wanted to. This is all very real physical stuff. All why? It's emotionally traumatized. And when you put the scans and the blood tests and everything else, the doctor's like, you're fine, dude. You're just depressed, you're stressed out. So yes, stress, depression, severe anxiety, and other things can affect your body in a variety of different ways. And the back thing I can personally relate to. I just talked to a dude about this the other day. Um, his wife was having repeat back issues and she was going in for follow-up tests to see what the hell's going on. And he was concerned, like, what if they find nothing? And I was like, dude, I can relate to the wife I had for probably most of my young adulthood repeat back problems, spasms. So something would happen which would cause the muscles in my lower back to spasm. Super painful. Basically, basically walking like a zombie everywhere. Can't turn your head because it hurts. Can't, can't do this, can't do that, can't twist your body. You can barely roll out of bed. Gotta keep walking or else it just locks up. Horrible stuff. And then I got divorced. I think I've had in the past 12 years one back spasm. Prior to that, it was, I don't know, every few months. Pretty, pretty common. Pretty, pretty much a repeat thing for me. Regular thing. And I just look back on it and go, wow, I think the stress of the situation, the anxiety I was experiencing, that really affected me physically and caused my muscles to tighten up and I don't know, I'm no scientist, I'm, you know, physiologist or whatever you call it. I don't know the mechanism in play there, but yeah, the stress and everything else can severely affect, uh, how you feel. So maybe that's what you're, uh, the person's referring to with your wife blocking your effort though. That's an interesting way of putting it. I don't know if you want to flesh that out a little bit for us, as I often say. Good questions and comments here, folks. We've been at it for about half an hour now. It's getting hot in here. I'm sweating. Hope the air conditioner is not broken. It's been having problems. I really don't want to spend thousands of dollars on a new air conditioner, but that's what the HVAC guy told me last time I was here, which was last year when I had similar problems. Um, Something from Nothing says, oh, wife used to tell me to suck my gut in during pictures. Due to your book, I'm down 55 pounds. She has only mentioned weight loss 4 times now. I'm glad you're keeping up, I guess. She tells me, go get on your tippy toes to look taller in said photos. So your wife's an asshole. Just, you know, calling a— what's the term— spade a spade. I don't know if that's a proper thing to say. Just calling it like I see it here. It's just You're in a picture sucking your gut, fatty. Thanks, I guess. Stand on your tippy toes so you're not so short. Is your wife just a massive dickhead or is it just me? I don't know. That's not very nice of her. Can you imagine saying that to her? Common phrase I teach men. Why would you say that to me? This is you saying this to her. Why would you say that to me? I can't imagine ever saying something like that to you. What's going on with you? Throw it right back at her. You know. A kind, loving, but stern, I don't put up with bullshit kind of way. That's not nice. Or was she poisoning you? Fight for better now, says— I doubt it, severe, sincerely. But hey, you never know. No, she was not poisoning me. Let's not go down that road. Um, I was just a very anxious, stressed out dude, and I have been for much of my life. Um, yeah, sucking your gut is one thing, standing on your tippy toes is another, says— it's just ugly, says John. I got serious nose shine here. Look at the, the head. I'm surprised like birds aren't landing on my head thinking it's like water or something. Look at this. Ah, every now and then somebody asks, yes, my hair fell out. This is not a choice. I mean, I have the stripes on the side of my head, you know, the old man clown thing, but this is all just completely gone as of my late 20s. Fun, fun, in case you're wondering. I know you didn't ask, but whatever. Obviously it's a sensitive topic for me still to this day after so many years. Hmm. Wow. It's been almost 20 years I've been bald. Holy shit. It has been over— has been 20 years. I'll be 50 years old next year. Hmm. That bothers me. You know, I joke about it, but yes, it bothers me. I have more years behind me than I do ahead of me, probably. Oof. That's sobering, isn't it? Anything else? Anyone? Please don't be shy. I'm here for you. You got my time. Let's use it. If you want to ask me something, something based on maybe a video you've seen of mine recently. I love seeing all the YouTube people here. It's usually mostly Facebook peeps. So thank you, YouTube guys. If you could share— guys on YouTube, give me a subscribe or a like if you haven't already. Share the stuff. If you see those, you know, share a link with your buddy. Check out this video. This guy, he's He's awesome and bald and sexy as hell, whatever it may be. So please give me a hand in sharing all that in Facebook as well. Always need to add new peeps. And check out help4men.com. Help4men.com, articles, videos, courses, books, and our private community for men only that we call the Help for Men Brotherhood. Pennies a day, ladies and germs. Germs, men only, please. It's only for men. In that group, we have a private discussion forum, very, very active, Facebook and Discord. We have, um, uh, live Zoom meetings hosted by myself and other guys on the Help for Men team, typically an hour or maybe two in length. If you miss the meeting, no big deal, we record them. We also have a podcast just for our members. We also have all my books in audiobook format for my members, no, no extra charge. As well as PDF format of the book. You can download and read it on your device if you want. What else do we have? Um, we get together in person. The courses and coaching that we have on the website are way cheaper for our members than for the general public. All kinds of very, very cool stuff. Um, did I mention the audio? We have over 800 hours of audio content for our members. 800 hours, and we keep adding to it every single week. You're never going to run out of stuff to listen to. So if you like, you know, podcasting and audiobooks while you're doing your walking or your treadmill or you're driving or whatever it may be, we got you covered and then some. So check it out, help4men.com and the Help for Men Brotherhood. Hmm. An update from Fight for Better Now says reconnecting with dad is going well. Oh, very good. Awesome. You had a breakthrough where he realized what he lost and what he was missing. Oh, well, that's good to hear. So I'm glad you guys are doing well. I do remember your story. That's excellent. Pardon me. Jason asked, how long after wife one did you meet wife number two? Way too soon. And I always preface this by saying it was like a little less than a year after the divorce that I met wife number two. And I always tell guys to wait like a year before you date and do everything else. Well, I just jumped right into that world. I jumped into dating immediately and I met psycho, psycho, psycho, psycho. And then I was like, I need to take a break from all the psychos. And that's not true. There was some nice ones in there. Um, but I need to take a break from this and yada yada and work on myself more and, you know, start up the Dad Starting Over thing and all this other stuff. And then that's when I met Natalie, my, my now wife, as I call her, wife number 2. And then we dated for about 3 and a half years before getting hitched, tying the knot. It's kind of like men say, well, I'm jumping right into dating right away. And I'm like, don't do that, dude. Learn from me. Give it like a good year. And they're like, well, it worked for you. It's like, it worked in spite of, not because of, is what I often tell guys. It's kind of like the analogy I often use is, you know, don't take drugs. Don't, especially the heavy drugs and everything else. It's just no good for you. And then some guy would be like, well, I see guitars in the background there. Every famous guitarist who has ever lived has been heavy into drugs. Jimi Hendrix and yada yada. I'm like, they were good in spite of the fact that they were, you know, Eric Clapton was good in spite of the fact he was addicted to heroin and Jimi Hendrix and he died from all doing what he did. I think he choked on his vomit while he was sleeping or whatever. They were good at their craft and what they do in spite of all that stuff, not because of. So I am successful in the relationship with Natalie because of, or rather in spite of, not because of the short time between divorce and meeting her. Um, oh, and then follow up to the whole thing with the dad thing, the from Fight for Better Now says the biggest advice that helped was to give yourself a little grace for what you're feeling. Very good. Yeah, men tend to be kind of tough on ourselves. I'm sad and I'm not getting over it fast enough. I must be a weakling. I must be like, dude, just— you're a human being. The fact that you're working through this is the positive. You're going to have setback days, weeks, months. You're going to have not so good times. You know, guys that have endured like discovering their wife's infidelity, for example, it's a betrayal thing, and that really hits you very deep, man or woman. When you discover that, like, a person's been leading a second life and doing things to hurt you and your family and all this other stuff. Like, what if they spent, like, a ton of money and doing illegal things and stuff like that, or the infidelity thing or whatever? And to recover from that takes a long-ass time. And you may think you're doing everything great, and then something, quote unquote, triggers, and you're sitting in your car in the parking lot crying. And the guy's like, what the hell's wrong with me? I'm broken. I'm crazy. I'll never get better, blah blah blah. And you're like, dude, Give yourself a little bit of grace here. You've been through a trauma. You're a human. You're working through this. It's not going to be just perfect like this. It's going to be a roller coaster for a while before you even out. That's just human nature. It's just how it works. So very good. I'm glad to hear it. That's excellent. Anything else? Anyone? HelpForMen.com. Check it out. Give me a like and subscribe or whatever, wherever you're watching this. I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you. Anything else, ladies and germs? If not, we will call her quits. Um, think if there's anything else to, uh, share today. No, I really don't come to these things prepared, anything in mind other than the general promotion stuff and answer any questions you guys may have. So you're the ones that bring the stuff to the table. We've already had some good stuff here. I appreciate it. How this typically works is I take the recording of this and then we will cut it up into little clips. So you will see me, my little bald head show up on your Feed, Shorts, long videos, TikTok, whatever, me answering questions like, what, what, where did this clip come from? Where's the rest of this? Well, go to the live archive on Facebook, YouTube, whatever, and you'll find it. Oh, so here we go. Right when I'm about to— it's always right when I'm about to call her quits or hang up here. Jason says, Jason from YouTube says, what do you think about hooking up? He puts parentheses, not dating. After the divorce goes through. Well, I'll tell you what, mister, let me preface all this by saying this. I tend to attract to my material, not all of you, but the majority of you, a type of dude that we call kind of an anxious guy, really working on his relationship, really hanging on tight, trying to research and decipher, determine how this relationship broke down and how to be a better dude, really working on himself. Some of this has very positive repercussions. Work, work, work, they get better. You know, take this anxious mentality combined with being a dude, combined with being Mr. Fixer and everything, and some really, really great things can happen as a result, right? Well, when you're newly divorced and you're Mr. Anxious, there's just a storm of bullshit going on in your head. It can be argued, and this is my argument, not the best time to bring other human beings into your world. Now, especially for vulnerable intimate relationships, right? Now, the argument from a lot of dudes is intimate schmintimate. I'm just trying to get laid, dude. Like, I can bring a chick home, slam the bejesus out of her, and send her on her way, and I'll— I don't ever have to talk to her again. It's like, okay, I guess if that's your world. Not the healthiest thing in the world, to be quite honest with you, but whatever, right? As long as you're two consenting adults and you're both on the same page, then who cares? I'm not one to, you know, belittle you for that. But here's the thing, going back to the Mr. Anxious Dude thing, those dudes— it's not a knock against them necessarily, it's just what I see— tend to fall for women pretty fast, pretty easily. What was I'm just in it to get my needs met because I was in a dead bedroom marriage for so many years. I'm gonna go out and get laid, goddamn it. Very quickly becomes, okay, well, I met this chick, and I know I said I wasn't going to get in a relationship, but she's different. Hear me out, dude. I've heard this countless times, and I'm just on the other end going like, oh God, here we go. He's like, no, no, you understand, she's a good woman. Her dude cheated on her, left her. She's got 29 kids. She came like, oh God, here we go. It's bad. And I hear that again and again and again. So some people jump right into the deep end of the pool when it comes to relationships, and more often than not, it ends up kind of in a not-so-good scenario for the dude. He's broken, she's probably broken. That's how they got together. Two broken people getting together, even if they just want to have at it and have sex and be done with it, it usually ends up more than that. A lot of guys like to pride themselves on, I don't get attached, and I'm able to, you know, keep that disconnect. I don't catch the feels, as they say. And a lot of those guys are just flat out wrong. They're just trying to out macho their pain or whatever. And it's like, yeah dude, you're a human being. We tend to want to bond with other human beings and come together with them. Even the most alpha male tough dudes has a chick on the back of his motorcycle, right? And it's just what we do. So you're playing with fire, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Some men are able to navigate that. From what I've seen, the majority of my audience cannot. Um, with that being said, what percentage of guys don't listen to my advice? The ones that say I need to get laid, probably 100% of them don't listen to me, and probably 100% of them come back and go, all right, you had a point, maybe, uh, maybe I should have waited a little bit. And then they tell me the horror stories of the crazy that ensued. This woman ended up, you know, 2 AM on my front door screaming and yelling, woke up the kids, I had to call the police, and all this other stuff. And they realize, oh God, I need to stop this nonsense. I don't need to be involving myself in that crazy world. Time out. By the way, that was me, my world. Um, not necessarily the showing up at my door screaming and everything, but some not so good stuff. So anywho, I speak from experience. Um, uh, Fight for Better Now says toys and porn are cheaper and waste less time. Well, I'm not necessarily a huge fan of pornography either for a variety of reasons. I understand it. I get it was created out of a need. This is something that a lot of women struggle with, is that the world of pornography and sex work and so forth is a response to the market, the demand within the market. It's not like some men got together in an office somewhere and said, "I got an idea for a product, it's called porn." They're like, "What? What is this?" Like, "Yeah, hear me out. Pictures and videos of naked people doing stuff." Why the hell would we do that? I don't know, I just have a feeling it will be a big hit. It's like, no, that's not how that worked. Thousands of years ago, somebody started drawing pictures of naked people doing stuff on pottery in ancient Greece and Rome, and this stuff's been around forever. And sex work is the world's oldest profession. So, but I get it. It doesn't necessarily mean it's the healthiest thing in the world. It can become addictive for a lot of men. A lot of men flat out have a difficult time functioning with real humans. You know, let's say you do the toys and porn. I guess you're really taking it to the next level with toys there, Mr. Fight for Better Now. No judgment. But let's say you do that for like a year or two, and then you're like, time to go out and meet some real humans. What a lot of men realize is, oh shit, I've kind of short-circuited my brain, and I have a difficult time performing with a real human. I'm so used to going from A to Z in a matter of minutes or seconds with videos and toys and so forth that when the real human is in front of me, Oof, no worky. That's not good. Uh, not to mention a lot of the psychological things. It paints human sexuality in a very unnatural light for a lot of people. It shows you a very unrealistic view of sex and sexuality in humans. It's showing you a fantasy. It's showing you a hyper-sexualized fantasy world that 99.99% of us will never ever experience in your life, and it shows that that is the norm. And it's not. It's an exception to the norm, that kind of activity between two human beings. I'm talking about the really extreme stuff out there. There's some really out-there stuff. And I talked about in another video how a lot of, um, oh, social workers and clinicians and so forth who work with teenagers are seeing the repercussions of pornography in teens, uh, where a teenage girl will say, you know, I've had my first sexual experience with this kid it was his first as well, and it was— I felt very uncomfortable during it because he tried all these crazy out-there porn things with me. We did a thousand positions. He was putting things in places I didn't want him to put, and I left that experience very like traumatized. Like, I didn't like this. I didn't feel safe. I felt like I was this plaything for this guy, and he didn't take my feelings into account, and it was a very pornified thing. So we're seeing that with our youngsters. So I wrote a book— I wrote stumbling my words. I wrote a book, by the way, for young men called Real Talk. You can find it on the Help for Men website in the books. Go to Amazon. Real Talk: No Bullshit Life Advice for Young Men. And in that book, I talk in part about porn and other things, and sexuality and puberty and girls and all that stuff. For whatever reason, women really like that book. A lot of single moms out there, you know, dad no longer with them for whatever reason, she's struggling on how to talk to her teen boy about the old sex, and she finds this book and said, here, read this. And it's done really well. And Random Phantom says, when my son was in middle school, he was drawing stick figures having sex. Yeah, part of that is, do you want to be prudish and say sex is not a normal, natural thing amongst people? You don't want to go down that road. Yeah, what are you drawing there, kiddo? Sex? Cool. Where'd you get that? Let's talk about it. Maybe hearing it from me, dad, mom, whatever, is Better than watching those strangers on the internet doing that, how about that? Mm. Oh, and then Random Phantom says, "You took him to a Native American petroglyph site that was covered in vagina drawings." See? It goes back thousands of years. "And I told him that what he was doing was as old as human history." There you go. Hmm. Uh, Five for Better Now says, "That's why it's important to educate yourself in the kabuki of all entertainment." Alright, very good. Anything else anyone before we wrap her up? I thank you all for joining me today. I appreciate it. HelpForMen.com, please check it out. And wherever you're watching this, give me a subscribe, give me a like, share it, however this works wherever you're watching this. I would appreciate that a great deal. Check out the books. The third edition of The Dead Bedroom Fix came out July of this year, so now it's officially a couple months ago, and that went by fast. We'd love to sell more. We're selling them every day, but could always sell more, right? So check that out. The 3rd edition of The Dead Bedroom Fix, uh, Amazon, Apple Books, PDF from our website at helpformen.com. You go to deadbedroomfix.com if you want to get it like immediately. Um, Audible, the audio version has extra audio or extra content in it that is not in the other version. So it's an incentive to get the audio version as well. Audible. So check it out, audible.com. Uh, the audio version is also on Apple Books, same extra content. Uh, I believe there's a website called audiobooks.com. You can get it there as well. Probably if you search for audiobook, you'll find it in all different kinds of retailers out there. If most guys love audiobooks, um, but if you like the old paper, you get that as well. Amazon, Barnes Noble, wherever books are sold. So check it out, Dead Bedroom Fix. Ah, I think that's about it, ladies and germs. Thank you all so very much. I appreciate you. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your Tuesday. Rest of your week. I don't know if I'll do another one this week. I think I'll have time to, uh, my kiddos are going to a funeral. Rest in peace to their great-grandpa who was in his 90s on my ex's side. He was a wonderful man, uh, uh, really very sweet, uh, small. I'm not going to say his— he had a nickname which has to do with how tiny he was. He's a tiny little dude, but he was a very sweet guy. I loved him to death. So sad to see him go. So rest in peace to him, and they're going to his funeral here tomorrow. Yeah, so, well, maybe I'll have time to do another one of these. Kids kind of take up a lot of my time. So, uh, thank you all again, appreciate you, and hope you have a wonderful rest of your Tuesday and catch you on the next one. A toodaloo!