Chat LIVE with Ralph (DSO)!

Alright, alright, alright. Welcome everyone. Welcome to yet another live with yours truly. Rafalito, aka DSO from Dad Starting Over, and now, as the thing above my head says, Help for Men. And you can learn more at helpformen.com. That's where all of our business is done. You can find all my books that I've written, courses coming soon. We had them up on the old site, now we're redoing them and having them up on the new site here, probably next week. What else we have on there? Private group for men only called The HFM Brotherhood. Check it out, helpformen.com, our private group. I won't go into all the benefits, but it's pretty awesome. And we even have a big discount for our veteran friends out there, our veteran guys. It's a group for men only. Can't, uh, stress that enough. Sorry ladies, it's not a group for you gals. Pretty much all of our content and everything else is for men, but I certainly welcome the ladies on social media. Into these live feed thingies, whatever you call it, live streams. Welcome everyone. I'll give a little bit for folks to file in here. Let me make sure everything is kosher on the Facebook page. It's kind of my indication that all is well. There it is. Yep, we're good there. So Give a little bit for you folks to file in here. Welcome, welcome, welcome. So right now, there we go, starting to come in here. Hello folks, how you doing? We are live streaming on— I got a shiny nose today and shiny head. Everything's shiny today. Um, we're live streaming on Facebook, on YouTube, on Twitter or X, across all the Dad Starting Over social media channels or accounts, if you will. So welcome everyone. If you are joining us today, let me know where you are joining us from. Always interesting to hear from all you guys where in the world you are. I love to hear. We usually touch— pardon me— we touch every corner of the globe with these things, all the way from all over the US, Europe, South Africa, Asia. So welcome everybody, welcome, welcome. Please don't be shy. Let me know where you're coming from. Again, my name is Ralph Brewer. Camp David, Maryland. All right, Mr. Darren, thank you for kicking things off. All right, welcome, welcome. Are you a veteran, my good friend Darren? Um, uh, we have a special deal. Um, I'm gonna put this up here so it'll be here for you guys to see. Let me Pardon me for not being— Veterans join, there we go. Special deal for our veteran pals out there. If you want to join our private group for men only called the HFM Brotherhood, you guys get a whopping 40% off of the fee for joining our group. There is a small fee, it was already pennies a day, now it's even less for you veteran dudes. We want to invite a lot of veterans into our group. We've learned over the years that the veterans, um, You know, especially those poor dudes coming off of active combat duty and stuff. They, they need a lot of men in their lives to help cope and deal with a lot of stuff, rejoining the civilian world, as it were. And a lot of them don't have a lot of dudes in their life, unfortunately. And we've opened up our group to the world, including a lot of veterans, and we've realized over the years that the— our veteran brothers out there make for really good members. Very active, very disciplined. Very helpful. And so we're saying, guys, we need more, you know, we need more veteran dudes in our group. So please join us, help4men.com. I put the link down there, help4men.com/veterans/join, and that'll get you to the discount. You just have to upload a military ID so we can see that you're in fact with the US military. And actually, not just US, anywhere in the world, military dude from anywhere in the world, and we— you have ID to prove that. You're more than welcome to join us, the HFM Brotherhood, for a pretty steep discount. So check that out, folks. What other deals do we have going on right now? Pardon me for a moment. I am woefully ill-prepared here, but let's do this, shall we? Let me go to— all right, all right, here we go. I'm getting a link for you guys right now. We have a special deal going on. Get all the business stuff out of the way here. Here's a copy link. This is a link to Amazon, to the Amazon Kindle version of my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, which is by far my most popular book over the years. I've written 4 different books. This one has outsold them all and then some. But we have a special deal just this week, ending pretty soon here, $0.99 for the Kindle version of The Dead Bedroom Fix, 3rd edition. Dead Bedroom Fix 3rd Edition just came out last year, July of 2024, and you can get it for this week and this week only. I'll probably redo the promo here sometime in the near future, but for now, uh, 99 cents until Sunday, I believe, if I remember right. So can't beat that. A dollar, you get to download my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix 3rd Edition, Kindle version, Amazon. Check it out. If you don't like the Kindle version, yes, you can still get the paperback. Yes, you can still get the Audible version. You Yes, you can get it on Apple Books as well. Yes, you can get it on Barnes Noble, wherever books are sold, as I often say. So check it out, The Dead Bedroom Fix. I've also written a book called Divorce Panic. I've also written another book called Real Talk: No Bullshit Life Advice for Young Men. And I've written another very short read called Red Flags. It's about 20 things to look out for when looking for a potential new lifelong mate. So check 'em out, you can learn more, helpformen.com. Help4men.com. We are putting more and more articles up on help4men.com. Just uploaded, uploaded, I think, 3 new ones in the past couple days. We're cross-posting videos from YouTube channels and things on there, so check it out at help4men.com. You can go to help4men.com/articles and read all the latest and greatest content for free. Can't beat that, so check it out. Other piece of business, happy to report that we have completely sold out of the BroFest which is the cute name we give to our in-person annual conference in the United States, BroFest. We had one— we have one lined up for April— pardon me, May next year, May 2025, May 1st, I believe, in Charleston, South Carolina for our members. And we have just 10 spots open for that one, doing something a little different. Usually we had it open to— we don't care how many we had, at most 50, I think, in Austin, Texas, a few years back, but this time we limited it to just 10, doing something special, doing a house on the beach in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, just outside of Charleston. And we've just sold out of those. So we're looking at potentially doing something in the fall. I don't know what we're gonna do fall of 2025. Open ideas, maybe keeping it small again. But thank you to, if you're an HFM Brotherhood member, brother, and you have signed up for BroFest, thank you. If you're like, shoot, I missed it, well, we're gonna look at maybe doing another one in the fall of 2025, so keep your eyes peeled. And I say that's our annual conference in the States. There's also one for our guys in Australia, and they call it MateFest. BroFest and MateFest, get it? And so we're very lucky. We have hundreds of guys all over the world. Australia's a big market for us, so if you're an Aussie, You're in good company. Check it out, helpformen.com and the HFM Brotherhood. Now is the time when I open it up to any questions that you ladies and germs may have. Anything at all, anything that you've seen of my content here recently you would like to explore further. Anything in the world of relationships and dude talk, being a dude post-divorce, being a dude going through marriage, trying to keep it all together. Being a dude that's, you know, in the process of divorce, been through divorce, dating again, whatever it may be, I'm here for you live. Don't do these super often, probably on average once a week. So now's a good time that you got me in the flesh. Not really, you know what I mean? Live. I'm not just one of those little pre-recorded bald head dude clips. And yes, I put out a lot of videos. If you guys, if I'm on your feed a lot and you're like, what is with this dude on my feed constantly? Probably because we're constantly pumping out videos. That's how we reach, you know, tens, hundreds of thousands of people. Sometimes we hit the millions. Every now and then one of them, one of those little clips takes off, so we just gotta, we just keep pumping out stuff out there. What are some of the, Darren asks, what are some of the best resources you recommend for healing from divorce? Well, Darren, now you've opened up to me being Mr. Salesman here, but you have resources in terms of ingesting or taking in stuff like books and videos and things like that, right? Go to library, go to the bookstore, go to amazon.com, knock yourself out. A variety of things about starting over and healing from childhood wounds, which is really the kind of source of a lot of this stuff, to be honest with you. The next, next level in how to expedite healing when it comes to this kind of stuff, and I'm not bullshitting you, any kind of therapist or anyone that's in this world will tell you the same thing. Especially for men, we say this, and I'll tell you why. And the prescription is you need to get with other guys. You need to hang out with other dudes. If it's even better if it's other dudes kind of going through what you're going through. So you can talk to men that have been there, done that, as I often say. Guys who say, "Oh yeah, I encountered that, dude. You're not crazy. The exact same thing happened to me." You know, that gives a lot of, it relieves a lot of pressure on men. Like, "Oh, thank goodness. I thought I was crazy. I thought I was all alone in the world." Oh no. Hundreds of guys have gone through what you're going through. And then, hey, I've been through that, here's what I did, here's, you know, give me a call, give me a chat. That's what you need. Often, and I say, we say this to men often because so many men are just like, I've been hurt, I've gone through this emotional trauma, screw the world, I'm just gonna hole away in a cave somewhere and lick my wounds and come out a better man. And it doesn't quite work very well for a lot of guys going into what they call monk mode. You know, ignoring the rest of the world, just, I'm just gonna work on myself right now. I get it. I'm prone to that myself. But also, we need to recognize that you can go out, you need to go out, and you need to work with other dudes. It just, we're engineered to socialize as human beings. And especially post-trauma like that, going through something emotional, our lady friends do a way better job of that than we do. You know, they've been through some kind of breakup, they get on the horn, their friend comes over with a bottle of wine and a pizza and they just cry all night together, yada yada. Men tend to not do that, especially today's modern-day dude who is so over-concerned with being the best dad on the planet combined with the best employee combined with being the best co-housekeeper and husband and all that. Suddenly, you know, the husband part suddenly goes away and he's just like, "Oh, I still gotta coach the baseball team, I still gotta mow the yard, I still gotta do the laundry." Who has time for dude friends, right? On top of the working, some of us like 12 hours a day or whatever it may be. It's tough to shoehorn in dude time in there. Well, helpformen.com, check it out. And our private group for men only called the HFM Brotherhood. Let me rattle off some of the benefits of joining, if I may, if I may play Mr. Salesman here. But this is the, the pinnacle of things as far as I offer. That group is it, man. It's so much good stuff is done in there, and it comes with a lot of benefits, including a private discussion forum, multiple for men. We have Discord and we have our private Facebook group. No one can see what you're saying, no one knows you're a part of the group. It's completely private, private. And in addition to that, we have live Zoom meetings, so you get to chat much like this via Zoom with myself and others. Um, you know, I get on there and host a meeting, so do all the other— we have 5 other, 6 other coaches, I believe, on the team, and they also host meetings. And we talk You know, you can have 20, 30 guys in a meeting. We all talk about all kinds of different stuff, and then we record all those meetings so you can listen back to them. And we put them like in a podcast format for people to listen to, our members, for members only. And that, as of now, is up over 700 hours of recorded meetings on so many different topics. You'll never run out of stuff to listen to. And then we have a podcast, which is like monologues just for our members. And then all the books that I mentioned, the 4 books that I wrote, plus a book that Austin— he's on our team— he wrote Those are all for free for our members, PDF, audiobook format. And then we get together in person, and then we have our one-on-one counseling or, or mentoring or coaching, whatever you want to call it. We offer that for our— from our team members. We all have our own little specialties, and you can chat with myself one-on-one or other guys on the team. And if you're a member of our group, it's way, way, way cheaper to do that, plus get together in person, plus stuff I'm forgetting, I'm sure. Just all kinds of cool stuff to join. We created the group to help dudes out, to expedite that healing process, to help us all get better no matter what our lot in life is, whatever it may be. So check it out, helpformen.com. All right, we got more stuff came in. Mr. Chris says, Chris from Facebook says, thoughts on wife saying I love you, but I'm not in love with you. Uh-oh. And then finding out she's been sleeping with another guy. Well, there you go. That's where I was gonna go with my thought process. You beat me to it, Chris. Chris, been married 16 years and she moved out and I'm home with 3 kids. Any thoughts? Well, Chris, if you don't know, number 1, or first of all, let me pause here. He's got another comment that says, we also got her a tummy tuck in February and she admitted to loving the attention. How long before that excitement wears off? Well, Chris, my friend, what do I think about all this? I think it sucks. I'm sorry you're going through that. It's horrible. But Chris, your relationship is over. Your marriage to this woman is done. Don't chase. Don't sit back and wait for her to suddenly, you know, for suddenly the fog to clear and for her suddenly to go, "Wait a minute, what am I doing? I'm nuts. Chris, I'm sorry, I love you. Let me come back to you." Why do I say that? Why am I so cynical and negative about this? Well, first of all, Chris, let me pause that and say, You know, I've been through this exact scenario, right? Literally, uh, married 16 years. I was married 15, home with 3 kids, same thing. My youngest was a year and a half old when, uh, my ex did what she did. And no, there wasn't a tummy tuck, but there was, um, a lot of physical change in the form of, uh, working out. And so, been there, done that as well. So have, you know, millions of other guys have been in your shoes, dude. We will all tell you the same thing. So listen up, okay? I'm not trying to be mean. I'm not trying to— I'm not one of those screw all women, they're all evil, rah rah horseshit. No, but this is reality. Your wife has shown through her actions what's really going on under the hood. And it's not all pretty, is it? I'm not saying she's a monster. I'm not saying she's evil. But she is quite frankly not wired for this long-term relationship with one person for life thing. I know probably she was a great mother and you had great times and everything else for 16 freaking years. And then in your mind, suddenly she has morphed into this new person that you can't recognize. Am I right? Well, with time, my friend, after years later, when your own fog clears and then you start seeing clearly and not so emotionally about all of this, You know what you're going to say? You're going to say, oh shit, yeah dude, I saw this coming. And you're like, what? How? Why? Let me guess, Chris, she didn't come from the greatest family, did she? A lot of chaos, dysfunction going on there. Her mom and dad, probably not the greatest relationship in the world, I'm assuming. I could be way off base here, you know, but this is more often than not the case. And you're seeing a front row seat for how a person copes when things get super, super stressful. Number one, you know, parent with 3 kids, say no more, right? And number 2, how they cope with— or what's a better word— how they react to another little change in their relationship. For example, your wife wants a tummy tuck. So her body was, like a lot of women out there, God bless you, was really ravaged by the process of giving birth to 3 little humans. Something that us men cannot relate to. So they push 3 humans out their body, their body tries to bounce back in shape, and it's just like, "Eh, it ain't happening." Sometimes we need a little surgical help. They have a little belly overlap or whatever it may be. They get the excess skin cut off and all this other stuff, and they feel a lot better about themselves. Well, this may be hard for a lot of you guys out there to believe, but for some of those women, they take that newfound confidence and energy and they direct it towards husband. "Husband, I suddenly feel sexier or whatever. Let me buy some new outfits and let's go out dancing." And the husband's like, "Woo-hoo!" That happens. That's a quote, "normal" response to that. What is not normal is, "I feel suddenly sexy and everything else, and anybody else want some of this?" That is not good. And that shows that she has very little in what we call boundaries. The stuff, the boundaries between her and other human beings. She's supposed to have that mechanism in place to say, no thank you, I'm married. I appreciate the compliment, but thank you, goodbye. She doesn't have that. She's, oh, I look good, do I? Tell me more. Yes, you may have my number. And away we go. And then the I love you, but I'm not in love with you. You know what that means, right, Chris? It means, Somebody has tapped into some old feelings that I forgot all about. That early new relationship puppy love limerence feeling that we all feel at the early stages of a relationship. She's experiencing that with a new person and she's like, nothing can compete with this. This is the most amazing feeling on the planet. I haven't felt that for hubby in years. Well, of course she hasn't, because you've been married for 16 freaking years with 3 kids. And she's like, there's no going back now. I got a taste of this drug. Over here. Sorry, hubs, I love you and all, but not like this. I don't have these feelings over here. I'm not in love with you. You don't push that button anymore, but this dude over here sure does. Woohoo! Uh, be careful. Um, what I've seen often is if suddenly the fog does clear and she's like, what the hell have I done? And she comes crawling back to you and says, I want to work on this. And you guys do the counseling and you try to figure out where this came from, and you start identifying some stuff in her background that leads her to carry on in this way and do this kind of behavior, the chances of it repeating, happening all over again, either with a guy that she already, you know, was with or with somebody new, are pretty damn high, my friend. And at some point, you have— you're going to come to the conclusion that you shake hands and go, this, this ain't working. This is nuts. I can't— I can't be in a marriage with a person like this that I can't trust. You know, she's 3 hours late from the grocery store, and I'm like, is she banging some dude in the parking lot, or did she get a flat tire, or is she dead, or what's going on? And eventually you're just like, I can't I'm not gonna put up with this. This is nuts. What am I doing? You start getting some self-esteem back, some self-worth. 'Cause, you know, we've been picking on her a lot with this big speech of mine here, but she's only one half of the equation. You're the other half, brother. You got some shit you need to work on. Otherwise, you wouldn't put up with this nonsense. Otherwise, you wouldn't be kind of hinting at, hey, how long before this wears off? In other words, you still wanna work this out. Fine, normal human thing, you know, going through a breakup, it's tough. But eventually, I hope you get to the point of you have a sense of worth and a sense of value, self-esteem if you want to call it that, to where you say, I'm, I'm better than this, this is nuts. And you wish her all the best. Part of you still loves her, sure, your wife for 16 freaking years. But you also need to recognize not the best person for you in your life, unhealthy, and you need to protect yourself from this kind of behavior. All right, and I know not what you want to hear, but that's the truth, brother. And check out our group, help4men.com. Go to the website, a lot of good articles in there for you to read for no charge whatsoever, our videos and so forth. Um, and, uh, take the next step and join our group, the HFM Brotherhood, and you're going to talk to hundreds and hundreds of dudes that have been in your exact shoes, my friend. Um, Misterio from YouTube says, why does it seem like relationships are shaky today? Even if you can get into one. My friendships are better than any love relationships that I have ever been in lately. Well, then you're opening up to all kinds of questions here, Mysterio. How many relationships are we talking about? How'd you meet these gals? Who are these gals? What's the criteria for meeting them? You know, I'll have some guys like, all women are insert bad word here that I won't say to get this whole thing taken down or demoted. These social media accounts are pretty touchy, in case you didn't know. Pretty sensitive. So, When men say that to me, I go, okay, give me your experience with women. And they will rattle off usually very little experience, be honest with you. I'll have some guys that are like, I've been with 3 different women. And they will tell me how they met these women and everything. And you're just like, dude, what'd you expect? While some men are like, I've been with countless women. How'd you meet them? In the nightclub. I go out to the club, I'm snorting this, I'm drinking this, yada yada. So she, next thing you know, we're back at her place, wham bam. 'Oh my gosh, she's crazy. Who saw this coming?' And they do it again and again and again, and that paints a picture for, 'Wow, they're all nuts.' Like, 'Well, dude, I don't know what to tell you.' You know, it's like metaphors and analogies I often use. As you go into the tiger cage and you keep getting bitten by a tiger, like, 'What the fuck? Tigers are all crazy.' He's like, 'Maybe you should stay away from the tigers for a while, buddy. And once you go over here to the, um, I don't know, the manatee exhibit, they're a little different. You'll be— you won't be in danger over there.' But you get where I'm going with this. So, but with that being said, yeah, the relationship game is definitely different today. The game has changed, and the game has changed in terms of, you know, guys, we got spoiled there for a little while. Now, this is from a very pro-male dude. You know me. Um, it used to be— the game plan used to be you got a good job, you got a good career, you're a good man, you got a good head on your shoulders, you can protect her and take care of her and the kiddos, and she doesn't have to do shit except stay at home and take care of the house. And the— I say not do shit, that's not a very nice thing to to say, you know what I'm saying, as far as outside of the home and getting a job and everything else, that's all taken care of. I'll pay bills, put food on table. She take care of children, home. It's a good yin and yang relationship. Yeah, raw. And because of that relationship dynamic, if you will, or template, uh, we as men were able to for many years go charm, working out, dressing well, Hygiene? Who needs all that shit? As horrible as that sounds, that's kind of the mindset for a lot of guys for a long time. And then suddenly women are like, you know, we can make our own money now. You know, I don't need you in that way. So what else you got, dude? And a lot of guys are like, I don't really know. I, I don't— I gotta— I got a John Deere tractor. That's pretty cool. And a lot of ladies are like, oh, yawning, you know, like, we don't care about that stuff. And then men get angry, like the game has changed, all they're, all they're doing is going for the 6-foot, 6-figure blah blah. It's horseshit. I've known plenty of men who are charming as hell, that have an excellent personality about them, can charm the pants off of anybody, and these men are not much to look at. Now, with that being said, do looks matter? Absolutely. You want to be in decent shape, take care of yourself, hygiene, all that stuff. That's like a baseline level of normal that we all need to have. Exercise on a daily basis, God forbid. Don't eat like shit. Don't be overweight. Go travel the world and see how the rest of the world— I'm talking to my American brothers out there. Go to— I— one of my favorite places in the world is Italy. Go hang out in Rome for a while and get an idea for how men dress, how men look. They're not ripped Adonis's, but they, they're not loathsome, schlubby, you know, chubby American dudes either. I'm going off on a tangent, but I think we as men put a lot of this, everything is so difficult, a lot of it we create ourselves. And yes, it's not so easy anymore. You got the gals online who are bombarded with attention. That doesn't help our, you know, we're one of many in the conga line of men vying for her attention. You know, will you go out with me? Will you go out with me? Can you imagine hearing that hundreds of times a day? I'm talking about the online dating thing. I think many men have said online dating, it's not for me. It's kind of a, A losing game? Cool, then bow out of it. If you want to get in the relationship game, try something else. But circling back to, you don't have to be in the relationship game. You can be a single dude, single bachelor, whatever, God forbid, go out on the occasional date or whatever. You don't have to commit to one gal for life. I know, crazy, some of you are saying right now, but that's true. Um, Caleb is asking me, hello Caleb, he's also from our group, what does shadow work look like? I don't know, Caleb, I don't know what that is. Caleb, I'm gonna pick on you a little bit, and you and I are talking next week, but I'm gonna say this: you are a hyper hyper— what we call it— investigator, learner. The words are escaping me today. You, you have probably read 20 times more books and watched 10 times more videos and everything than I have on the subject matter, and I don't necessarily think that's a good thing. Take a step back. I know you're hyper-aware right now, your relationship falling apart and all the other stuff going along with it. But you need to cool it with all that. It's not healthy for you. And you're— you've thrown a lot of these terms at me. What does this mean? What does that mean? I've seen the comments on the— on YouTube and on Facebook and everywhere else. I see Caleb everywhere. We were in a meeting yesterday. We chatted for an hour and a half in our meeting yesterday, helpformen.com. Check it out, helpformen.com/join. And I'm saying this with all the love as your fellow brother, put my arm around you and I would tell you if I was there with you, I would close your laptop and I'd say, let's just go hang out. Cool it with all this stuff. Back off. None of this is doing you any good, brother. I know we're kind of going off on a left turn here. Everybody else is like, what? What's going on here? Who's Caleb? Well, I know Caleb, I know him. We've chatted for a bit yesterday and everything else. So this is in line with, you know, you're throwing terms out at me. Yeah, what does this mean? What does that do? What is this? You know, this doesn't make sense. How come they say this but they say this? Close the laptop, walk away from all of it. Your wife has checked out from your relationship. It's time where you say, message received, I will back off, I will give you space, do what you need to do. When somebody tells you, get the fuck away from me, listen to them. Back off. Give them the space that they want. It's the old, uh, proverb. I don't know, the old saying: if you love them, let them go. If it's a bird, you know, let it go. It'll fly around. If it comes back and lands on your shoulder, then maybe there's something to work on. If not, then not. But, uh, anyway, enough about that. Um, Mel from YouTube says, I got the 'I love you, but I'm not in love with you' last September. She gained weight, she had zero libido, total burnout. I don't think she's had an affair, but she simply has hit perimenopause hard. That's tough on women for sure. But now that I have lost weight, working out, and ramped up my game, she is starting to take account of where she is and do some work. Well, very good. Um, and then, uh, Mel says the '80s and '90s, the, the game was way easier. Easier for who? For us dudes? Yeah, arguably, probably. Pre-internet has a lot to do with it, right? Um, the As years go on, the more and more successful our ladies get. And the common phrase I often use— I start to annoy myself from saying these phrases over and over again— a common phrase you'll hear me use is that the ladies are beating us in the corporate game. And it's not unusual for me to hear guys that I talk to one-on-one tell me, I'm a stay-at-home father and I have been for years. Maybe they'll have like a— pardon me— like a side gig or something like that, but they don't have a got a genuine 9-to-5 career, full-time work. They're in charge of the home, the kids, and everything else. They got this little side thing, and the wife is the one that's gone 8 to 10 hours a day. Not unusual. That was way less common in the '80s and '90s, and I was born in the '70s, so I know that time well. And I think, Mel, I think you got a few years on me. Mel, you're a name that I see come up quite a bit on YouTube, so thank you for watching and commenting. I appreciate it a great deal. Does anybody else have anything? As you can see, once you get me going, I don't, I don't shut up. Like most men, I love to hear myself talk. Oh, if you could do me a favor, wherever you're watching this, give me a like. Give this a like and give my account a like or a follow or however it works. That helps me out a lot. That tells the Facebooks and the YouTubes of the world that this account is important and let's show it to more people. It's a roller coaster ride. I was just saying on my, uh, our Brotherhood meeting yesterday that last month was one of the best sales months for books ever. What happened, Ralph Brewer? Well, I can tie it to my social media reach was like this as well. As this goes up, book sales go up, memberships go up, everything else goes up. So I'm very much at the mercy of Social media presence. This month, social media presence has started to do this, and book sales have started to do this. So you see me ramping up the social media and stuff. I'm hoping that something hits and something gets the hundreds of thousands of millions of, of views, and book sales go up and membership goes up. I wish we weren't so dependent upon book sales, but that has been our number one driver for all the other parts of my business and being able to help guys. That seems to be the, the gateway drug for them to get into my world is a book.. And that book is usually The Dead Bedroom Fix because sex sells, you know, what can I tell you? So I would love for these things to get more people into the world of our private group, helpformen.com/join, the HFM Brotherhood. Check it out. And Mel says my advice helped save his sanity. Well, thank you, Mel, I appreciate it. On a side note, my ex-wife's name was Mel. It's not her full name, Melanie, but so when I see the Mel come up on my screen, there's a moment of you know, not that she's horrible in any way, but there's still that little twinge of anxiety. Um, it's funny, I did a video, one of my first little videos that went kind of viral. For me, viral means like hundreds of thousands of people, sometimes low millions, right? Um, that took off. That's a better way of saying it. One of them that took off was that I went on there and confessed that yes, even at that point it was probably like 10 years after the fact. But now it's— we're like 12 years after my divorce and all that other stuff. There are still things that give me that little twinge of ick anxiety. You can call it PTSD, whatever you want to call it. I don't know if that's the proper term for it or not. I think it's a little bit overused term. I'm not belittling people who do endure that, and I know it's not limited to just those who have been through combat and war and so forth. That's the most common use of the, or known way of labeling PTSD. Some people have gone through genuine, really huge emotional trauma, and I guess you could say what I went through was pretty bad, and I still have those little reminders of that every now and then. Something in my life just makes me go, ugh. And one of those things is, um, like, for example, being on the beach. Like, how crazy is that? If I go to the beach with my family, the very first time we walk up and I smell that, that salt water hitting me and smell the cocoa butter, you know, in the air, whatever, or hear the music playing and the typical beach stuff, that gives me a little twinge of anxiety. Because why? Because when I discovered my ex-wife's affair and the divorce and all this other stuff happened, I happened to be on vacation in Florida. So it's kind of interesting how that works. And even to this day, certain songs that I hear played make me go, "Guh," like, "Turn it off, I don't want to hear that." Why? Takes me right back to that moment. So I guess I'm sharing that to say, like, guys, if you are still experiencing that months, years down the line, it's okay. It's human, you know. I, I've— when it was funny, when I shared that 2, 3 years ago in a video format, I had so many people commented on there giving me advice on how to get over that. Have you tried low-dose, you know, mushrooms and therapy? And here's a book, Ralph, and here's a video. This one really helped me a lot. And here's 'Have you tried smoking pot?' and all this other stuff. I'm like, 'Guys, guys, guys, I appreciate the sentiment, trying to come to my rescue or help a brother out. I get it, that's awesome, great.' But we also have to realize this is just normal. It's okay to feel a little twinge of anxiety. It's okay to feel a little sad sometimes. It's like my father passed away like, shoot, almost 19 years ago now, and every now and then, still miss something about Dad. That's normal. You don't need to come to my rescue and say, here's a book on overcoming the grieving process and so forth. In other words, I think we take it too far sometimes. So there is something to be said for— it's the human condition. Life is not perfect. Sometimes we need to kind of go with the flow, shrug the shoulders, and go, it is what it is. These bad things happen. It's all in how we react to it. And every now and then, if you feel sad, shameful, blah blah blah, a little twinge here and there of something, and that's okay. It's okay to feel. It's all in how you react to that. That's what it's all about, right? Um, so I don't know how to— Jumi JC, you know what, is that the Linux logo? I used to be an IT guy back in the day. I remember the little penguin. I think that's from Linux, right? Um, What is your opinion on dating a single mom of two, or advice you can give? Well, dude, I don't know. It's, you know, I tried— people like to talk in platitudes, stay away from single mothers, um, they're bad news, yada yada. What advice can you give? Well, for most people like my age, 40s, 50s, right, if I were suddenly single, I have to recognize that the vast majority of also single women in the age range, let's say I'm good to date like 30 and up or someone 35 and up or whatever it may be, I have to recognize that, dude, you're gonna probably run into a lot of also parents much like myself. Big deal, right? Well, where that can be a big deal to some is you need to kind of level with yourself and say, what is it you're looking for in a relationship? If you're like, I want to be able to go out and hit the town and have fun and have a sexy, good adult time a couple times a week, every week, yada yada, whatever it may be. I don't know, I'm making this up. And you have to realize that that may not be very realistic for a woman that's like, sorry, I got my kids most of the time. Or I got, you know, every other week I have my kiddos. And even on the weeks I don't have my kiddos, I gotta go to the baseball games and I gotta do this. And sorry, I can't go out tonight. And that may be a bit annoying to you. And that's okay. I'm not gonna shame you for that. You know, if that's your take on it and you're like, ugh, here we go again. Well, then maybe you need to say to yourself, knowing that you've just severely limited your dating pool, you need to say to yourself, yeah, that's not cool, man. No kids, please. You know, be honest. When I met my now wife, wife number 2, no kids. And that was a big, big, big component of why we were able to grow so close. And why we were able to make it work. I'm trying to think. I had the kids like just over half the time when we first met. Yeah, not just over, over half, three-fourths of the time for a while there. And, uh, so it was stressed out Ralph Brewer, ready to get away. Let me go see a new girlfriend. She was my adult oasis away from all of that stress. So if I didn't have at that point in my life like the adult oasis away from all of that and able to revisit my old adult pre-kid ways and, and I guess you could say reinvent myself, whatever term you want to apply here. I'm not sure the relationship would have gotten to the level of connectedness and everything else that it is now, or if it would have even have survived if, you know, if I went to go see her and she's like, I can't tonight, got the kids, whatever it may be. So I can totally see why guys may kind of steer in the opposite direction away from that. There is also the very real, not nice, not kind, but real biological phenomena of we're animals, we're mammals, the human animal, right? We're primates, and we tend to not do well with other dudes' kids. Trying to— nice way of saying this. Here's an extreme example to illustrate that. If I'm a, a mother— if I'm a kid and my mom has remarried and I as the kid am murdered or abused, the number one person that the police go to is the stepfather or new boyfriend. Why? Because statistically he is the one most likely to inflict harm on the kids that are not his. Again, extreme example. That's a vast small minority of men that would even engage in that kind of behavior, but it exists. A more minor league, applies to most guys kind of behavior is we kind of have an aversion to, "Eh, they're not my kids. I don't have feelings for them, and in fact, just keep them away from me." Sad. That's how a lot of guys act, and that's what a lot of guys think. And I think that's a lot of guys' knee-jerk reaction too, Single mom, ew, yuck. It's not because, I don't know, she procreated or whatever, that's gross. It's because she had kids and the kids aren't mine. I think it's a very visceral biological kind of reaction. Not nice, not kind, not necessarily my reaction, but it seems to be a reaction for a lot of guys. Random Fandom from YouTube says, crack out of your shell, dress sharp, work out, eat right, practice good manners like opening doors, engaging in chitchat. Everyone is attracted to the bon vivant. All right. So be just an all-around good dude, right? Crack out of your shell. Let's dissect that one a little bit. That usually means cool it with the social anxiety. I did a little video, got a little bit of heat, saying the number one thing that I see in a lot of men that is, you know, if I had to categorize all the things that make potentially a man unattractive to the opposite sex, hetero dudes, hetero women, And if I had to categorize them, top of the list is probably things that, things that show you have a problem with anxiety. You act in an anxious way. That's unattractive to most women. All those anxious-y guy things, all those neurotic things, they're not attractive. You're stressed out easily, you freaked out at this, yeah, you're spazzy, you don't want to go out, you don't, I don't want to talk to them. And very anxious behavior and very unattractive to most women. Sorry. Yeah, you need crack out of your shell, Random Fandom says. Amen. Gotta work on that, guys. If you're new on the market, you're freshly divorced, one of the things I tell a lot of guys is number one, cool it with the relationships for, let's say, like a year. Don't go out dating, putting on the dating profile and stuff. Instead, for a lot of you men who are anxious, and it doesn't apply to everybody, um, go out and just start smoozing and chatting with people. Not in a romantic way, not in, you know, I'm trying to get in this girl's pants kind of way, but in a, hey old lady, may I help you with your groceries way. Dude, I love your car, tell me more about it. I'm a sneaker guy, I love your sneakers, where did you get those? These sound random, but this is welcome to my world. I love talking about cars and sneakers. And if I see a dude in the airport with a guitar, You better believe I'm like, whoa, what you got in the case? And we talk guitars. Next thing you know, I got a guitar buddy. I'm— that's something that I've had to learn, and it's become like second nature to me. Um, sometimes that kind of works against you. I was telling the story the other day in one of our membership meetings, um, that there was— I was at the Louisville airport, and there was two lines, one for the TSA PreCheck, which I am, And then the line right next to that was for this relatively new thing called CLEAR. They just start— it's not new, it's been around for years, but it's a new system of surpass or, or circumventing the, the security and going right through, right? They have this system called CLEAR, you sign up for it. I don't know exactly how it works, but they're right next to each other. And I'm watching, and I'm going through TSA and the people going through CLEAR, and it's pretty much the exact same time. So the dude ends up in front of me in line, and we're putting our bags through the security, and I was like Excuse me. And he's like, yeah. And it's like, what the hell is the advantage of the clear thing? If you and I— I go, this— I'm totally new to this. I don't know anything about it. Like, sell me on it. Why, why the clear thing? And he went on and on of selling me on this clear thing, and he wouldn't shut up about it. We're walking to the gate and the dude's like yapping the whole way, and I'm just like, okay dude, I, I gotta, you know, sorry I asked. It's like, all right, I'll see you. I gotta go to the bathroom. I come out of the bathroom, dude is still there. Wants to continue the conversation. So sometimes this backfires and it goes a little far, but it's kind of cute little funny story. Made a new buddy talking all about Klier, right, of all things. But you got to work on that kind of stuff. That makes you an all-around— you know what's funny, I was going to say it makes you an all-around more attractive human, but you know what it also makes you? A healthier human up here in the head. And in essence, if we had to boil down what makes you an attractive mate to sane individuals. Let me preface it with that. To a sane person, it's stuff that makes you a healthy individual. Let's rattle down what Random Phantom here says. Get out of your shell. You have low anxiety, working on your anxiety, you're more outgoing and so forth. Mentally healthy people do this. You dress sharp, you work out, you eat right. Healthy behavior. Practice good manners, opening doors, being nice, being kind to your fellow man and woman. Engaging in chit-chat, again with the social anxiety. These are all mentally and physically healthy things. Work on your mental and physical health and everything just kind of takes care of itself, doesn't it? The job thing, the romance thing, the friend thing. Food for thought, guys. Um, Colby Jones from YouTube says, we've been separated and divorced for about a year now. She has a new man that she wants me to meet and bring around the— she wants to meet Oh, she wants you to— okay, let me start over. She has a new man she wants me to meet and bring around the kiddos. I'm torn on what to do. Thoughts on this? We are very amicable. Well, here's the thing. At some point you're gonna have to do this, dude. She's not going to remain a nun and celibate for the rest of her life now. But it's about a year, still relatively new. There is nothing wrong with you, my friend, saying I'm not quite ready for that yet. Boom, you're showing her weakness. You're showing her that you're still stuck on her. No, not necessarily. This is one of those old boundary things. Eh, not quite ready yet. Hey, wife, ex-wife that I'm amicable with and everything else, I appreciate it. Thank you for thinking of me. I get where you're going with this. Let's make this out in the open. Let's make this healthy. Introduce the kids properly. Introduce the ex-husband. I want him to— I want the ex-husband to see that this guy is normal. And he's not a threat to the kiddos, etc., etc. But if, Colby, this introduces like a level of anxiety and hurt and stuff that you're just like, my heart's pounding out of my chest, I'm not ready for this, I maybe need to cool it a little bit, right? Is there a middle ground somewhere? I don't know. Text the guy and just go, hey, it's, it's Colby Jones, I'm the ex-husband, just want to say hey, um, look forward to meeting one of these days. Take care. I don't know, but maybe you're not quite ready for that, and that's cool. Or maybe this is a lesson in kolbi, buddy. Um, it's over. It's been over. Been over for a while. Maybe this will help solidify that, and you need to get over yourself and shake the guy's hand and just say, hey, I'm the ex-husband. If anything has to do with the kiddos or whatever, I'm here. Here's my number. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me in case anything happens. I'll be right over, whatever it may be. Wish you and the ex all the best. Thank you. Sounds pretty adult, right? And there's a lot of men, um, you know, the, the male ego is something that is trumpeted or picked on by a lot of women as the fragile male ego and everything else. A lot of these stereotypes don't just fall from the sky. There's something to that. Um, meeting the other man, competition. Especially if it's the guy that took your, your wife away from you. And that doesn't sound like that's the case here. It's a new man, it's been a year. But for those guys that that is the case, that's like an extra sting, like, oh God. But if you want to help masculinize it or whatever to protect your ego, it could be said that, um, showing up and shaking this guy's hand, giving him a man hug or whatever, kind of shows her in the world that I'm, I'm not affected by this, I'm bigger than this. This is— my ego is not that fragile. You got a new dude, you got a new dude next year and the next year too. Whatever, ex-wife, cool. It's your life. Do what you want. You know, I wish you all the best. I hope all these guys fill you with happiness, whatever. I'll do my thing. You do your thing. Let's just take care of the kiddos. That's a very strong sentiment, at least from where I come from. I don't know what you guys think, but good question, Mr. Colby Jones. We're coming up on 45 minutes, or actually we're past the 45-minute mark, coming up on the hour mark. Thank you all for joining today. Appreciate it. Help4men.com. I'm gonna put the link up to join our men's group. If you're a dude out there, please give it a try. Give it a month or two. If you don't like it, you can cancel. No skin off my back. I'm not gonna— you're not gonna have to chase me down to get your money back or whatever else, you know. You keep charging me for something I don't want. I tell you, every now and then we have some guys like, I canceled 2 months ago and I just saw you just charged me for the 2 months, whatever. I'm like, oh shit, dude, I'm sorry, you know. Apparently we didn't click the button. Find his email where he canceled, and I just refunded in the last 2 months. It's not a big deal, you know. Every now and then somebody slips through the cracks. We've got hundreds and hundreds of guys. Every now and then that happens. I'm not here to steal your money. I'm not getting rich off of this. This is— we're just trying to help as many men as humanly possible. And if our group— if you're— if you try it out for a month or two and you're like, this ain't really for me, it's not my vibe, I don't have time to put into this, yeah, yeah, cool. You can cancel any point. Again, not trying to take your money out, trying to steal from you or whatever, but what I found is the majority of guys not only like it, but they do the yearly thing and then the lifetime thing. Uh, 3/4 of our membership have paid for the lifetime membership. They plunk down all the money up front. They don't want to do the monthly payment thing. They believe in this. They love supporting this, the Help for Men thing, the Dad Starting Over thing. They love supporting their fellow dudes. They love the help they get from the group. And they're just like, this is a no-brainer. I spent— some guys are like, the cost of a lifetime membership to this group and all the help I get is less than the cost of one counseling session I had. I'm like, I don't know if that's a condemnation of us that we need to charge more or that the counseling costs way too much, but, uh, good to hear. And some guys are like, it's just a no-brainer. So check it out, guys, helpformen.com, the HFM Brotherhood. Healthformen.com/join. And I posted a, a link earlier for our veteran brothers. You get, even with the low cost, you get an even lower cost at 40% off. So if you're a veteran and you have an ID to prove it, active, retired, whatever, got your military ID, you upload it in the system, we review it, and we say it looks good. Jason checks it out. Jason's, uh, just recently retired from the Army after 20-some-odd years, um, and he'll check it out and give the thumbs up, and you're good to go. Pretty easy stuff, so check it out. And I also posted the link earlier for the, uh, 99-cent promo on the Dead to Bedroom Fix book, my most popular book ever, and you can read it for 99 cents off of Amazon this week, the Kindle version. So check it out. Christopher from YouTube says, my wife is the gamer previously mentioned on DSO. We are still together, but it isn't great. She's now sick and I'm stuck in a situation like in a situation I couldn't have previously imagined. So you, Christopher, are literally the guy from the video. How cool! So it shows, guys, I'm not making these up. These are people that, you know, reach out to me via message and I do the videos on them. Dear DSO, if you haven't seen it, I'll put the link here. Go to, uh, oh man, I can't see, dadstartingover.com/dear-dso, fill out the form. Dear with your story or question, and if it's good, I'll create a little video and then I, you know, put on YouTube and everywhere else for the world to see. That's what Christopher is responding to here. Um, so if I remember right, Christopher, I've done so many of these. Caught the wife in an emotional affair. Did it go beyond that? She was a gamer, connected to inappropriate relationship with another guy. You're still trying to work it out and everything else, but now she's sick. I'm sorry to hear that, number one, but what does that mean exactly? Is this like a chronic illness, like cancer type of thing, God forbid? Or she had the flu? Like, what are we talking about sick? And you're stuck in a situation that you couldn't have previously imagined. Help us out here, Chris. Fill in the blanks. What's going on, buddy? Sorry to hear that. Sounds like you're going through it. Um, sorry, cold. Um, but that sucks. So let us know what's up, what's going on before I hang her up here. I'll hang out for another 10 minutes or so, as long as we have people, uh, interacting here. If you could, guys, give me a like. Like this live stream, like the channel that you're watching this on, subscribe, follow, give us a share, give us a like. That helps me out tremendously, helps spread the word, and we can get guys more and more help out there. All right, that's all I ask. Please like me. Um, But anyway, take a drink while we wait on Mr. Christopher. If you have any more details to share, if you feel comfortable in doing so. I used to, uh, like some politicians. I think it was Trump or something. Not trying to get political here, but politicians in general. I think there was another Democrat as well that was a little goofy. You watch them like eat or drink on, on camera and they looked very, very awkward. Now I totally like relate to that because it's such an awkward thing to Watch me drink, guys. Can't imagine here eating a bowl of ice cream. Who was it, the Buttigieg, or somebody looked really, really weird on, uh, on camera. I got messages from the wifey here. Oh, my wife is at a cat cafe with her daughter. She sent me a picture. Oh, marriage. See, picture, cat, calico, a fat calico. That's pretty adorable. Anyway, if there's nothing else, guys, I'm gonna hang her up here. HelpForMen.com, HFM Brotherhood, check it out. Dad Starting Over, Help For Men. Oh, we got the Help For Men— I haven't mentioned this yet— YouTube channel. I'm reserving the Help For Men podcast and YouTube channel just for interviews with important people that help out dudes. And our first, right out of the gate, our first interview was with Dr. Orion Taraban. You may know him from the YouTube channel Psych Hacks. Controversial figure, has some interesting takes on the world of relationships and everything else. He— I reached out to him like, shit, months if not a year ago and said, let's talk. And then he finally got around to getting back to me and said, let's do it. So he was my very first guest on the Help for Men podcast and YouTube channel. So check it out, Help for Men on YouTube. I think our handle on there is Real Help for Men. So if you go youtube.com/@realhelpformen and you'll jump to the Help for Men channel and you'll see the interviews. We have more coming up. Got Dr. Robert Glover coming up. That'll be cool. The author of No More Mr. Nice Guy. We have anybody else coming up? I think another one after that, but got any ideas for somebody that I should interview? Let me know. Shoot me a message. You can shoot me a message, Facebook, YouTube, wherever. However that works, wherever you're watching this, and, uh, I'll reach out to them. Um, all right, just— it's always right as I'm about to hang up, somebody slips in through the cracks. Mr. Guitar God, a regular from Facebook. Aren't you usually on YouTube, or are you— anyway, um, Guitar God says, what do you think about these coaches who say women just need to be shown more love, etc.? Like she first feel emotionally safe or romance, that sort of thing. Is it usually just way wrong advice as far as getting the wife more sexual? Oh, Guitar God, we still going on and on about this, my friend. I hate to sound like I'm picking on you. I picked on poor, uh, Caleb earlier, but we're going around and around with you, pal. Um, you still— I know you're trying to hang on like crazy with the wife. You're trying to figure all this out. Should I be more loving? Here's the thing, um, it's almost kind of a spectrumy take on all of this, and I don't mean that in an insulting way. Spectrumy referring to the autism spectrum. Guys that are often in the autism spectrum look at this romance thing as a very technical thing. How many of this should I do? How many of that should I do? Should I do this or not that, etc.? This is in part why a lot of the red pill, or, um, what do we call it, like, uh Oh shoot, what's that? Uh, I'm— I can't, I can't think today. Pick-up artists, that's what I'm looking for. The pick-up artist stuff appeals a great deal to guys that are on the spectrum because it really takes and dissects people and turns them like into lab rats. Like, say this to women, don't say that to women, act like this but don't act like that. Here's the thing, you need to show more love and da da da da da, women need to feel safe and romance and all this other stuff. So let me just wipe the table clean of all the rhetoric and everything else and just look at you, Guitar God, and say, don't be a dick. There, I just solved all your problems. Be a loving dude. Well, if I'm loving and she doesn't give back, that's a very insecure take. You're a loving, kind person to the person you love, right? You do love her. You like her. You want to be loving to her. Yeah, but she doesn't give me sex back. Then leave the relationship if that's important to you. But I don't want to leave the relationship, I love her. Can't have it both ways, dude. Okay? Are you gonna, you know, be pouty and throw a fit and not be loving and sweet to your woman because she doesn't give you what you want? Then what are you doing? Are you just sitting back and punishing the woman over and over again? I will show you how unhappy I am by being a dick to you, by not being loving and sweet to you. Why? Okay. Or just shake the woman's hand and say, love you, but this ain't working for me, and go your separate ways. But should I be loving, make the woman feel safe and romance? Well, what human being wouldn't want that? I'll tell you what woman doesn't want that— an avoidant woman or man kind of rolls their eyes at the whole love romance and love notes and walks on the beach, and they're just like, get the fuck away from me. No, I don't want that stuff. Leave me alone. Oh my God. That stuff's for when we were first dating, not now. Come on. That's a very avoidant take on that. A lot of men are like that, and a lot of you guys are married to women like that, and they don't make the best romantic partners, in case you didn't notice. And maybe that line of advice for those men is kind of fruitless. It's a good, holistic, healthy person line of advice, but a lot of you guys and your partners aren't necessarily in a very healthy mental space. And so that may not be the best course of action. The best course of action may be you guys need to get the hell away from each other because this is wildly dysfunctional and chaotic and holy shit, what are you doing, dude? That's often what I find myself saying to people in these kind of situations. So with that being said, I say these things to people over and over again and they just listen and go, uh-huh, yeah, you got a point. All right, so anyway, should I give my wife coffee in the morning or not? And you're just like, dude, you're just not getting it. You're trying to break it down into ones and zeros where it doesn't belong. Um, you give your wife coffee in the morning because you love her and that's what she likes. Yeah, but she doesn't give you blowjobs anymore. Okay, if that's important to you and she refuses to, how important to you is it? Is it important for you to now punish her by not doing your regular morning coffee by not saying good morning, by not saying I love you, maybe then she'll get the hint and eventually give me blowjobs. It doesn't work that way. And frankly, that's a very childish take on all this. I know that's not what you said. I just went off on a tangent there, but it's a very common sentiment amongst a lot of men and a lot of, um, relationship advice out there. Punish them, make them feel bad. Um, that being said, don't reward bad behavior. If she treats you like an asshole and belittles you and everything, you certainly don't, "Oh, I love you," and chase after her. You say, "Whoa, time out. This is no good. I can't live like this anymore. We gotta fix this or else." But a lot of you guys, a lot of you anxious guys, you're afraid to take that step. So this is why we go around and around and around. All right, guys, if there's nothing else, I'm going to wrap her up. It is 12:30. It's been an hour. Thank you all so very much for joining me today. I greatly appreciate it. Again, my name is Ralph Brewer, Help for Men, helpformen.com, Dad Starting Over. Follow me, give me likes, give me shares, all that good stuff. Check out the books, The Dead Bedroom Fix, Kindle version on Amazon is 99 cents this week. Can't get much cheaper than that, folks. So check it out. Good way of a good introduction to my philosophy and all this relationship stuff. All right. Thank you all so very much. I appreciate all of you and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your Thursday. A toodaloo!