Chat LIVE with Ralph (DSO)!

Hello, hello everyone! How are you guys doing? It's your boy Rafa Lito here, back once again for another banger live session. Hope everyone is doing well. Uh, this was, uh, scheduled this morning, so I don't expect a whole huge crowd. Plus, um, Fridays are usually bad for doing these, but this is the only time I could squeeze in was this afternoon. So apologize about doing one of these here. Uh, it's been like 3 weeks since I've done one of these. Not good, but I got a good excuse. I was out of the country for a couple weeks beginning of the month. I went to Italy with the family. Technically, we went to Italy and then Germany. Germany was only the last 2 days of the vacation. My wife is from Germany. We went back to her old stomping grounds in Munich where she did her schooling years ago. But before that, we went to Venice, Italy, and then we took a train up for a few-hour train ride up to the Dolomites, which is the Italian mountain range there in the Alps. And that was beautiful. Spent the rest of the time there, and then the last 2 nights and took off back from Munich there. And then of course we get to the airport in Munich and our flight was canceled and had to stay an extra night in Munich hotel there. And then we get finally the next day, get to the States in Chicago, and had like an 8-hour layover due to a flight delay in Chicago. It wasn't fun. Traveling sucks. Traveling is just ugh. Just the whole process from beginning to end is just terrible these days unless you got good money and you can pay for like an upgrade to business class or something like that, which didn't have for this trip because it'd pay for all the kids and everything else. Um, it was myself, my wife, uh, for those that don't know, married, been with my wife for, uh, over 10 years now. And so, um, she is my second wife and we do have a child together who is 4 years of age. Uh, coming up here soon. And then, uh, her birthday's coming up soon, rather. And then I have 3 kids from my previous marriage, from 21 years to 18 and 13, and then the 4-year-old. And then my wife and myself. All of us went together for this trip. So traveling with that large of a group, all that luggage, you know, hauling it around everywhere. But I'm glad we went. It was amazing. For those that, uh, are from here in the States, Um, you know, I grew up in rural Indiana for most of my life, but I was blessed to have a, uh, a background— my family background being European. My mother's from Spain. She was born and raised in Spain, moved here, um, when I was a little kid. I was born overseas in Germany. My father was an American military dude, hence the international thing there. Met my mother when he was stationed in Spain there for years, and then, um, they had me, moved back to the States when I was about 3. And we lived in Indiana for most of my childhood. So that's where I grew up, and I could say that I was a bit of an anomaly in little rural southern Indiana as a guy who had, you know, connections to Europe and international connections. I was— I would go back to Spain, you know, for summers as a kid, and, um, it, you know, it always amazes me just how many people have never left the country. You know, for those of you watching who are from Europe, that That's pretty common in our world to have Americans that have never left the country. Hell, I know people that never left their state. And, um, every time I go to Europe and come back, I always say like, you know, all you American dudes and gals for that matter who, um, have never left the States and never experienced that, uh, you know, the different culture and the different way of life and different pace of life and everything else, it's a real eye-opener to go to someplace like that. And it's not saying— I'm not saying it's better. In a lot of ways it is, in my opinion. That's a subjective thing, but, um, it's different. It's just a different way of seeing the world, different way of approaching the world and seeing how people live day to day. Miss, uh, Miss Leah says hello. Well, hello, Miss Leah. Thank you for joining me. Um, I hope you feel welcome here as a gal. A lot of ladies are like, I don't know, should I be in this? Because, you know, the majority, if not like 99% of my material, is aimed towards dudes. But yes, women are welcome to leave comments, join in on the conversation, all that good stuff. Uh, so welcome. And, uh, Christopher says, didn't know I was a fellow Hoosier. Yeah, I grew up, um, you know where Bloomington is, Bloomington, Indiana, where Indiana University is. And you know where Indiana State University is in Terre Haute, Indiana. Uh, the town I grew up in is right around, right smack dab in the middle of between those two. And I grew up in a town of about 5,000 people in Indiana, and, um, nothing to do there. So we would either go to Terre Haute or Bloomington for the fun, you know, go to the mall with the parents and stuff like that. So that's, uh, that's why I mentioned those two towns. So also, those were the two major universities. I went to Indiana State for 4 years right after high school. So yeah, fellow Hoosier. I don't know of any family there anymore. I don't go back there. I don't have any real connection there. So do I call myself a Hoosier? I guess if I lived there for a good— how many years was I, uh, in that area, counting 16 years. So yeah, that's a good chunk of my life. Uh, what's interesting is I have spent more time in Kentucky, which is where I'm broadcasting live from right now, and I have, um, even less of a connection to Kentucky. I don't have any family, nothing here. The only reason we moved here was because of the ex and her family originally being from here. And that's a very common story, isn't it? A lot of guys that I know are like, we moved across country to be close to the ex's family, and now that we're no longer couple. Here I am going, I don't have any friends, I don't have any family, I don't have anybody here. It's pretty common. Um, at a bigger picture issue is that a lot of us are moving away from community with our family, our extended families, and that makes raising kids and going through life a lot tougher. It's, you know, be nicer if we could be with our extended nuclear families— grandma, grandpa's aunts, uncles, cousins, you know, all living in the same town, if not the same neighborhood. But that seems to be Um, kind of rare these days, unfortunately. Makes raising kids tougher. Um, anyway, welcome guys for joining me today. For those that don't know, my name is Ralph Brewer Brewer. I'm sorry, I wish it was something cooler. Um, but I do go by the name of Dad Starting Over. I've been putting a lot of content under DSO, Dad Starting Over, for years and years now. And, uh, started off as a blog, eventually grew into videos and I've written books. One of those books actually got really popular. Uh, really, really popular is a subjective term. In terms of a self-published book, it actually did pretty well. And that book is called The Dead Bedroom Fix, and you can learn more at deadbedroomfix.com. That's the most popular thing I have ever done, ever. Um, because of that book and because hundreds of thousands of people read it, a lot of guys have come to me for advice on a lot of other things. So much so that we started coaching. We started a private men's group, a community called The Brotherhood, and you can learn more at help4men.com/join to learn more about the Brotherhood. Um, we started, as the website there implies, we have a whole separate world called Help for Men. That's actually our parent, I guess you could say, organization. Right above me, above my little bald head there, you see the little sign behind me, Help for Men. Uh, Dad Starting Over is kind of, we always say, kind of part of the Help for Men network, and we would like to have other content creators join Help for Men and help grow our membership there. But if you go to help4men.com, you'll find articles, videos, courses, our private membership group. You can jump right to the join page there at help4men.com/join. Um, the brotherhood is probably the thing I'm the most proud of because we help out hundreds and hundreds of men from around the world. We have private discussion forums. Nobody can see what you say in the forum. Nobody even knows you're in the forum. We use a private Facebook group and we use Discord for our online discussion. And then we have live online Zoom meetings, which I want to mention we have one coming up tonight that everyone's invited to. You just have to register in order to get in there to keep out the spammers and all that good stuff. But I'm having a meeting tonight at 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock Eastern time, that everybody's invited to. Bring your questions, all that good stuff. Anywho, and we could talk face to face as opposed to texting little comments here and there. Um, what else do we do in the group? We do get together in person. We have conferences every year in the US and in Australia. Um, the This year in the US, we were in Charleston, South Carolina. Next year we are in Louisville, Kentucky, and everyone is invited. You do not have to be a member to attend our annual conference this coming year, 2026. We want to invite it. We want to open it up to the general public so you can see what the— men only, want to point that out— so you can see what the Brotherhood is all about and see if we can— if you want to join us and you could get in on the fun. We're having a lot of cool things coming up. You can check out and learn more at brofest2026.com. brofest2026.com.. You can meet myself, other guys on the team, as well as Dr. Robert Glover, author of No More Mr. Nice Guy. He will be hanging out for the weekend. And you guys may know Lauren, the Dadvocate. She's kind of a big shot in our world, in the social media world. She's, as her name implies, an advocate for men, dads in particular, post-divorce. Lauren, the Dadvocate, will be hanging out with us, as well as Adam Nissensohn, the Betrayal Shrink. He's a guy that helps out dudes going through betrayal, infidelity, and guys that have difficulties with sex addiction. He is licensed in both of those fields, talking about betrayal and sex addiction. And he will be with us for the weekend, put on presentations and so forth. So check it out, brofest2026.com. We would love to have you. Pricing for that goes up here on July 1st. We have early bird pricing. So if you're interested in going, that sounds right up your alley, Louisville, Kentucky, March next year— I forgot to mention that— March next year. I think you might be interested. Check it out, brofest2026.com. Sign up now before you miss your spot. Before the pricing goes up. Check it out. Uh, what else do we have going on here? We have, um, we do have free stuff. Who doesn't like free stuff? Uh, The Dead Bedroom Fix is my best-selling book, and, and to, um, ride on the coattails of that, take advantage of that, I also created a free course, no strings attached. You just got to give your name and email address and you get access to this free course called The Dead Bedroom Fix Course. And you can learn more at deadbedroomfixcourse.com. I believe it's 10 separate videos that you can watch me talking all about this stuff with sexless marriage and dead bedrooms. And in addition to that, you get a free ebook PDF version of the book The Dead Bedroom Fix. So check it out, pretty cool. Um, I was going to say a lot of bang for your buck, but it's zero, so no, no cost to you whatsoever. So check it out, deadbedroomfixcourse.com. Um, if you're new to me and you're wondering why this guy is talking about dead bedroom, sexless marriage stuff and all that other stuff, I talk about actually a whole myriad of issues in the world of relationships and being a dude and everything else, all from a male, hetero male perspective. Um, out of all the topics that I've ever talked about, the number one topic by a long shot compared to everything else, not even close, is sex and marriage, or lack thereof. That's the thing that gets most men going, uh, I want to talk more about this, because why? Out of everything, that is the most painful. I know a lot of women are like, out of all the stuff you could talk about on the planet Earth, that's the most painful to men? Yes, that shows how important that is. The number 2 most painful thing that men talk about in our relationship sphere, if you will, is infidelity on part of their wife in particular. So wife's infidelity, cheating wives. So I created a free course on that too. I call this one like a mini course because it's only like several videos, and it's called My Wife Cheated, or the actual title of the course is So Your Wife Cheated on You. But we have the domain of mywifecheated.com. So check it out, free course, mywifecheated.com. Uh, if you're going through the whole issue of you, you're having a difficult time coping or moving on in life after discovering that your, hopefully by this time, ex-wife cheated on you, you might want to watch that course to learn all about my thoughts on the matter and everything I've learned over the years. And yes, I have endured that myself as well in the past, marriage number one. Um, so again, deadbedroomfixcourse.com, free course all about the dead bedroom. And mywifecheated.com. What else? I want to grab this here real quick. Let me copy this. Pardon me, folks. And there you go. Oh, I actually— I posted at the beginning, uh, there in the comments. If you'll see it, it'll be in the chat on YouTube. Join me, uh, live on Zoom tonight. You see the link there? I'm going to post it again in case you missed it. Um, Zoom meeting, so we can talk, you know, and you actually use our voices to chat back and forth with each other. You know how Zoom meetings work. We're doing one free tonight. Um, for our members, we do anywhere from, on average, 6 to 8 live Zoom meetings every single week, and they're typically an hour or more. So our members get a pretty big bang for the buck. Um, and by members, I mean members of the Brotherhood. Alphormen.com/join. Check it out. Um, but, uh, we're gonna do one for free, open to the public. Check it out. So go to that website there. I created a little tinyurl.com/dso-zoom, and you have to register, and, uh, that keeps out the spammers. And join us live tonight at 5 o'clock. Would love to meet with you and chat with you. Bring your questions, all that good stuff. Um, now is the time where I say, guys, got any questions? You know what, what's this do when I do this? Oh, I see, it opens a little window on the side there. So show comments on stage, and we don't need that. Um, these are, uh, these lives are not so much for me to hide that, um, you know, talk incessantly and do monologues and stuff. There's plenty of videos of me doing just that, and believe it or not, I get tired of hearing myself talk. So now's the time where I say, guys, Got anything you want to ask yours truly? Anything you want to bring here to the world? Any stories to share? Anything at all? Now's the time to do so. Do not be shy, um, don't be embarrassed. Oh, whatever it is, I'm sure I've heard it before, believe it or not. Um, so, uh, please feel free to ask any questions you may have there in the comments, and I will read them. Uh, these little lives are recorded and they're available like on YouTube and Facebook and everywhere else, so I don't necessarily call out your first and last name because it will be on the recording for everybody to share. But I may call it like your first name. I may say, "Leah, go ahead with your question," or "Leah, Leah, post this," or something like that. I won't read out her full name. And also, while I'm thinking about it, if you could do me a big fat solid favor, por favor, if you could give me a like. So pause what you're doing there if you're watching this, give me a like, give me a share, all that good stuff, however it works. Or if you're watching this, you know, YouTube, Facebook, wherever. Give me a subscribe, follow, however it works. I would appreciate it. Thank you. Um, got a lot of stuff going on in my world. What else we have going on in addition to the BroFest? Uh, the member meetings. I wrapped up 3 meetings myself. I'm doing 3 meetings of me personally, uh, every week for each week of July coming up. Um, Yeah, 3 meetings next week, and then after next week it's already July, isn't it? Time goes fast. I don't know about you guys, as I'm getting older— I'll be 50 years old later this year. This is where you go, no way, you— I used to get that all the time. I don't get that anymore. I used to be pretty much a pretty baby face. I used to have a very young face, and I also had hair, believe it or not, back. Uh, I started really rapidly losing my hair around the age of 30. It was before 30, um, but before that, nice thick head of hair. And I always used to be carted everywhere I went, you know, one of those guys, the baby face, the thing. And then just something changed, and now everybody, when I say I'm turning 50 this year, they're like, yeah, good. So yeah, hitting the big 5-0. But when you get older, I don't know about you guys, man, it's, it sounds stereotypical, doesn't it, that time flies? It just feels like we just hit 2025 and we're already halfway through, guys. Um, what are you guys doing this year? What do you got planned for the rest of the year? Self-improvement stuff? One thing I am working on— my wife, I don't know if I mentioned, is German. Yeah, I mentioned that at the top, where we went to Munich where she went to school. And I do not speak German. I pick up words here and there and get a general gist of kind of sometimes when people are talking to me in German, but overall I don't speak German. There's no— by any stretch of the imagination. So I'm trying to learn that through an app called Babbel. So I'm doing my little German exercises on a daily basis. That's one thing I want to be better at by the end of the year, is speak a little German. So I'm working on that. My 4-year-old daughter is bilingual. She speaks English and German fluently, little smart thing. And my wife speaks English, German, French. My mother speaks English, Spanish, a little bit of French. I'm the only one that speaks only one language. Kind of, kind of pitiful, isn't it? So we're trying to remedy that. Yes, my mother is Spanish and I don't speak Spanish. Um, when I was a kid, she always used to say her excuse for not sitting and teaching me was that she was too busy trying to learn English herself. So when we came to the country, she's trying to learn English, so to speak Spanish to me, it was kind of going backwards for her. So she just always spoke English. And all through my childhood, if my parents didn't want me to know about something, they spoke Spanish in front of me. So there you go. But I— it's one of those things that when people speak it to me, I kind of know enough to pick up words here and there and get the general gist of what they're saying. And I can read it kind of fluently. I— it's kind of weird. I can, I can do the accent pretty well and read it pretty fluently, to the point of fooling people sometimes into thinking that I'm Native Spanish speaker, but who? No, sir. And for those that don't know, Spaniards from Spain, where my mom's from, speak a really different type of Spanish. It sounds very foo-foo compared to your Mexicanos and the, and the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans and so forth. They sound way different from Spain. Spaniards sound kind of very foo-foo. They speak with a lisp, literally. It's very, it's very unique, the Castilian. Dialect of Spanish. But anyway, enough about me, guys. Uh, I don't see any questions. We're gonna wrap this, wrap this up soon. I hate for this to be like a, you know, 20-minute infomercial, but, uh, if there's nothing you guys have to ask, I will, I will cut it short here. Thank you all for joining me today. Anybody have any questions at all? Please do not be shy. Um, that's what I'm here for. Um, I have two channels, if you don't know, on YouTube. One's the Dad Starting Over channel You guys are watching live there right now. And we have also another channel called Help for Men, and the little— the handle there is @realhelpformen.com. Instead of me just saying it, how about I put it in the chat here? Comments? YouTube.com/@realhelpformen. Boom. If you go to that, um, you will see videos of me interviewing folks. And have some pretty big shots in our world on there. Dr. Robert Glover, uh, Adam Lane Smith is a big one. Orion Taraban, Dr. Orion Taraban, he's a big one. Mr. Psych Hacks himself. We have chatted a couple times. And so check it out at realhelpformen.com. The Orion Taraban, I did live with on Dad Starting Over. I did a live with Dr. Glover as well as an interview, both of them. I did an interview as well as a live with a lady by the name of Michelle Langley. That got really popular. She is the author of Women's Infidelity, a book— two books, Women's Infidelity, hard to say, Part 1 and 2. And she's really outspoken. She has a lot of opinions about the world of relationships, and for whatever reason, that's very popular with men to hear from her, hear her talk about that. Her book has been pretty popular, kind of as a cult following online. Her book's plural, and she doesn't do interviews, so for us to get her on interviews and do a live with this was kind of a big deal. So, and it was a a big hit with everybody. So check out those interviews with Michelle Langley on the Real Help for Men channel. And you can— anytime you go to YouTube, some people don't know this, um, there's a whole tab section for live. So you can see videos and you can see the— what do they call them— shorts. And then you can see, um, videos, meaning long-form video, the shorts. And then you can see there's a community tab where you can post pictures and, and things like you post on Facebook and so forth. So YouTube's trying to get into that world. And, uh, and then there's the Live tab, and you can see archived live broadcasts like this one. So if you want to see Michelle and I do, you know, talk live, you can see the replay of that, as well as Dr. Glover and Dr. Samantha Rodman-Whiten and I talk a great deal. Dr. Psych Mom, you may know her, follow her, Dr. Psych Mom. She has good stuff, and we have collaborated quite a bit as well. Uh, what else, ladies and germs? Any questions? Anything at all? Hey, don't be shy, guys. Our numbers are bumping up here a little bit more. Viewers, I do appreciate it. Um, help4men.com's website, check it out. I really don't have much else, guys. Any questions? I always depend on you guys to feed me stuff to talk about. Uh, I have plenty of videos on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X, or Twitter, whatever you call it. Follow Dad Starting Over on all of those. I'd really appreciate it. And, um, yeah, give me a follow, give me a like, all that good stuff helps me out a great deal. But, you know, we don't need to sit here and watch Ralph blab on and on. I'll give you guys a little bit here. Oh, here we go. Mr. Fight for Better Now, a regular from YouTube. Hello, Mr. Fight. He says, I just got finished watching a video and they were talking about the Daniel Penny case. I'm gonna have to plead ignorant ignorance. I don't know anything about that. You want to fill me in? Should I know about that? Maybe I should go and do a little quick search here. Maybe seeing, uh, that will ring some bells. Ah, can't type. Oh, okay. Well, this is kind of out of left field. So it was, um, New York City subway, uh, homeless dude started going a little crazy, history of mental illness. And, uh, Penny, the— he's a former Marine, Daniel Penny, uh, got into an altercation with crazy homeless dude and put him in a chokehold, and he nearly killed the, uh, homeless dude. And I guess was put on trial for it. Is that what you're talking about? It's kind of out of left field. Um, oh, so you're saying— okay, follow-up here. And I was curious about your thoughts, says Mr. Fite, on the growing number of people who try to help and get punished for it. Can you give me other examples of that? Is— you know, it's interesting, we hear these stories, um, that get a lot of attention simply because they're emotional in nature and they get a lot of people going emotionally and get us really thinking and sharing and acting and going, can you believe this horseshit? And start sharing it. And you see that again and again, you're like, man, this is a really common thing, which in fact it's not. It is not a common thing for people to fight off crazy homeless people and get punished for it. That's a relatively rare thing, so much so that it makes the news when it happens and guys go on trial and everything else. So just, you know, to talk about it as if like, man, this is a growing trend, I don't know if that's necessarily true. Or people in general helping others and getting trouble for it, you know, that's like, um That's been a known thing for, you know, ages now. There's a term for it, a phrase for it, um, no good deed goes unpunished. Um, and this is such a known thing about people getting involved and helping others that you end up getting hurt in the process. So much so that people would become very cynical about it. And you will have, you know, somebody on the street bleeding out and begging for help, and people just walk right around them saying, nope, not me, I'm not getting involved. And it's sad, isn't it? Um, Fight for Better Now, you say there was a guy who gave a girl the Heimlich maneuver and was taken to HR for sexual assault. I want to look— I want to hear more about that. That sounds, that sounds really nutty. And then a guy gave woman mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when she almost drowned, and she accused him of assaulting her because he wasn't hot enough. Was that in the— okay, here's what you're doing, Mr. Fight. Um, pointing at some pretty out-there crazy stuff and just saying this is a trend, this is what's going on for a lot of men. I'm going to say, Mr. Fight, I'm going to fight back. Irony there. I'm going to fight back against this and say, um, for every man that saves a woman with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, there are probably literally 10,000 other men who get a pat on the back for doing so. So for the 1 out of 10,000 who gives a woman mouth-to-mouth and brings her back to life, who the woman ends up being a psycho and saying, you assaulted me, I didn't ask you to touch your mouth to mine, there are 10,000 other dudes who are treated like a hero that they are. So don't let the, the bad, um, bad example of a relative few spoil the whole bunch for you. Uh, and this isn't a gender thing. I'm not picking on dudes who do this. This is a human nature thing. Um, you know, there are plenty of women in that I see in my comments, for example, in videos saying, why don't you ever talk about the fact that all men cheat? Why don't you ever talk about the fact that all men— the R-word, I don't know if I should say that out loud, for some reason social media and the algorithm really hates it— sexually assault and so forth? Why don't you talk about that? Well, because it's a relatively rare thing. No, it's not. It happens all day, every day. Again, for every one man that does that to a woman, there are a million that don't. So why point out the one? Uh, you know, why do we need to as a result of that one being a sexual assaulting animal a-hole. Do we need to then put all kids in, in school to teach them how not to sexually assault women and all this other stuff? It's, you know, a knee-jerk reaction. And that you're kind of along those lines, Mr. Fight and others. Like, can you believe there's this woman who— guy did mouth-to-mouth save her life and, and she accused him of assault? Yeah, psychos exist. They're crazy people out there. A guy gave a woman Heimlich and she said, you're sexually assaulting me. Again, a lot of psychos out there. It happens, um, but he didn't. And probably that wouldn't stand up in any court whatsoever. All they'd probably do is go to the tape, look, woman bent over backward or bent over at the waist choking to death, man came up, gave her a Heimlich, chunk of food flew out, ta-da, no sexual assault, case over. That's probably how those would go, let's be honest. Um, uh, and then you say that— you're not saying it's a common thing, what you're saying that it's becoming more frequent. I don't know that for a fact, and I don't think you do either. You know what's becoming more free? I know I keep fighting back with you, but just, you know, I feel like I'm a father figure here for you, but, um, I don't even know how old you are. But, you know, my, my sons and things come to me like— or you know who comes to me with stuff like this? Interesting. I don't think this is a coincidence. Um, the most anxious person I've ever known in my entire life comes to me with stuff like this. You know who that is? It's my mother. God bless her, love her to death. But the most anxious, neurotic, uh, anxiety-fueled human being I've ever known in my life. You know what she comes to me with all the time? Can you believe that this is going on? Send me some video or news story or something like that. I'm like, if it bleeds, it leads, Mom. You know, it's— this is not indicative of society as a whole. And same kind of thing, you're hearing all these stories. I— you know what, I hadn't heard those stories, but you have. You know why? The algorithm, that old and evil algorithm Um, it knows what Mr. Fight likes, and it knows what causes Mr. Fight to, um, click and share and talk about and talk to Ralph Brewer and others about. So they keep feeding you more of that stuff. But again, it ain't that common, dude, at all. Is it a growing trend? Probably not. Seriously, um, it's something that's happened forever. Like I say, it's gone on forever, and people know, don't get involved. Somebody's, you know, somebody— I heard somebody say once, if you're like being attacked Don't yell help, yell fire or something like that, and then people will come and see what's going on. If you yell help, people are like, I'm not getting involved. Why? Because they know no good deed goes unpunished. I get involved in that, I'm getting involved in their drama, I'm gonna end up getting hurt, I'm gonna end up— it's not worth it. So don't yell help, yell fire. That's been going on forever. Um, here we got Mr. Andy from Facebook says the ex-fiancée was having issues with her daughter's emotional issues. She was in counseling. She ended up getting kicked out of her school. The kid got kicked out of school. This caused a lot of anxiety for me and my ex, who I now believe, due to her past and, and her behavior, is an avoidant type. Okay. My ex then left me a few days later saying she needed a break via text. It's pretty common. She moved out of the house and my stuff from her house while I was at work. She has been cold and distant. This came out of nowhere and really pulled the rug out from under you. Um, I heard that one a lot. Not that exact story, obviously, but what we hear often from people is got with person, in your case fiancée, who had a lot of baggage, for lack of a better term, a lot of stuff from their past that has been kind of bubbling under the surface. And these are the type of people that we often say, I can't believe all the shit that this person went through and all the psychos that they had to grow up around with. And look, they still became something, as, as you know, in spite of all that. Because of that, that actually makes me respect them even more. But you don't realize that stuff's still bubbling into the surface. And it's not until something acts as kind of like the, uh, the straw that breaks the camel's back, or that's another analogy, the, the little crack in the dam that causes the whole thing to blow, the volcano to blow. One little, one little break in the surface that causes the whole volcano to blow. And for you that little stressor was, um, the kid getting kicked out of school and stuff. I've also heard it's the parent dying, it's the loss of a job, it's the— you get some kind of prognosis for some kind of illness or something. Some major holy shit moment acts as the catalyst to boom, the volcano goes off, and they leave you, they cheat, they start drug habits, something like that, disappear, who knows, they take off and the walkaway wife syndrome. I've heard this one where the wife just says, screw you, husband, screw you, kids, I finally had it, I'm done, I'm overstressed, I'm over— life has put too much on my shoulders, I'm out. And when those things happen, you can often point to some kind of major acute life stressor that really served as the tipping point, pushed them over the edge. And for her, that was that. So, Andy, that was going to happen regardless, probably years down the line, months down the line, whenever It was bound to happen eventually. It happened now. Thank your lucky stars, my friend. I know you're not feeling this way right now at all, but Andy and others that go through this, um, she's a fiancée, or was a fiancée. Dude, this could have been a lot worse. This could have been the wife and mother to my 3 children type of thing. And here, that's what I hear more often than not, unfortunately. And the guys are left like, I got these kids to watch, mom took off, I don't know what the hell to do, or mom is acting all crazy and accusing me of all kinds of things. And well, dude, where'd this come from? I don't know, it was ever since her brother went to prison, she's started going nuts ever since her sister killed herself, ever since her mom got this cancer diagnosis. She's just been acting all— stress does a lot to people, and it just uncovers a lot of bad stuff that kind of lurks under the surface. That's what I've seen again and again. Um, Mr. Jimmy from Facebook says, what are your thoughts on talking to other women during divorce? My wife moved on from me 6 months ago. However, divorce isn't final until the end of the year. My common bit of advice, Mr. Jimmy, and others is how about you just give the women a break for a while? Just cool it with the, with the women. Why? You don't know it, Mr. Jimmy, but you're going through a lot. Mr. Jimmy, one year from now is going to be a completely different person. Once the divorce is done, once you start getting into the rhythm of your life and you're taking care of, you know, financial things, and if there's kids— I don't know if there's kids involved— kid thing and all this other stuff. Things kind of smooth out. Uh, you don't know it, but when you go through a breakup and divorce and you're in the state of limbo, you're kind of, you're kind of nutty and you're not attracting the right people. And, uh, it causes more nuttiness and chaos. And invariably, like 100 out of 100 dudes that go through this go, man, I should have waited a little bit, that was crazy. They get with some gal, they fall in love, and all hell breaks loose. And then they break up and they're like, this actually feels worse than the divorce. What the hell, man? It's like, yeah, you should have taken a break. You ain't quite ready for that, dude. And you're probably not quite ready for that. Now, with that being said, a lot of men hear me say that and go, dude, I'm not looking to jump into another long-term relationship and marriage, and I just want to have fun, man. I just want to get out there and get my jollies and, and sleep with women and all. It's like, good, okay, I got you, dude. Sounds good on paper, but the majority of men that I talk to try to sell me on that, then they end up falling for like the first or second woman that they sleep with. And it's the woman, after so many months, he's like, oh shit, what have I done? She's a little nutty, she's a little crazy, she's got this drinking problem, she's got these other issues I wasn't aware of. You know, as they get to know her, they uncover stuff about her. I'm like, ugh, here I— and here's the thing a lot of men say: holy shit, I got with my ex-wife all over again. Not unusual, probably more common than not. So, hey, just give them a break for a bit, dude. What's the hurry? The women ain't going anywhere, dude. Trust me, you'll be fine. They'll be fine. I know you're horny, you're, you're lonely, you're a human. That's okay. Um, also, you need to kind of ask yourself the question of what is the purpose behind me going out and forming these relationships? That's what you're doing, whether it's just casual sex or whatever it is. You're forming relationships with all these other women. While I'm not even divorced yet technically? With some introspection, the answer to that question probably is, um, I don't like myself very much. I don't feel very good right now emotionally. I'm hurting, and getting with these women, having sex, all that other stuff makes me feel really good. In other words, you are using these other human beings, these women, as kind of a human Band-Aid over your emotional boo-boos, aren't you? And that's not fair to them. If you have kids, it's probably not fair to the kids to bring those other people into their world. Even if you never introduce the kids to those people, they're still in your world and they're still affecting time with kids and they're still affecting your emotionality and everything else. And these kids are probably sitting back watching dad acting kind of erratic and manic and crazy as he's having all kinds of fun with all these strange women. Yes, most of them you'll get with will be strange. So funny that, um, What often happens is the guys will not listen to my advice. Most men don't. Most men are so horny and lonely and everything else that they, they run out and start dating, and then they meet somebody and they fall for her, and they do a campaign on me. They— because I talk to men one-on-one, you can book time at help4men.com with me if you want to— and, um, they will do their best to convince me like, no, no, I know you give the warning about the crazy ladies and this and this, but dude, let me tell you, this one's different. And they'll rattle off, she's got this positive thing, this positive thing, this— I think I just lucked out and God has dropped this gift in my lap, this is amazing. I said, well, good luck to you, dude, I'll see you in a few months. And sure enough, he comes back with his tail between his legs saying, yeah, that ended horribly. Um, when we're in that initial stage of the relationship, getting to know each other, sleeping with each other, that helps expedite things. You get— you put blinders up. You don't— you're not thinking straight. You're in the honeymoon stage. Everything just looks amazing, rainbow and sunshine. Oh look, there's— I often use this example, this example, because I experienced this myself in the dating phase. Oh look, there are a bunch of wine bottles in her kitchen trash can. Hmm, I wonder how long those have been there. Just something to keep an eye on. Oh well, she treats me well and we're having great sex, so I'll just ignore that. The next day or next week you go by and you're like, those look like different wine bottles. Yeah, shit, does somebody have a drinking problem? Oh well, she makes me feel good. She's, you know, makes me feel amazing. We have a lot of sex, let's just ignore that. Next thing you know, you got a woman with a drinking problem. And when somebody says, did you ever see any signs? You're like, yeah, date number one I did. What? Yeah, I was in her kitchen, I saw the bottles. Well, why didn't you do anything? Because I was feeling really, really good. Because she made me feel good. Because I didn't want to give up this good feeling. And so you'll overlook all kinds of horseshit, and it doesn't end well. So, long-winded way of saying, Jimmy, let's give the chicks a break for a bit. All right, uh, good questions though, guys. Thank you. I was about to wrap it up. Always happens, right? When I'm about to wrap this up and just say, I guess this is a, you know, a bust, people come up with some really good questions. Jimmy, Andy, Mr. Fight, thank you. Anybody else before I call her quits here? As you can see, I love to hear myself talk. I just said I don't like to hear myself talk, but I do, don't I? Who am I lying to? Um, it does get— it physically gets tiring after a while because I do so much video stuff or whatever. I recorded, um, how many, 5 or 6 new videos this week which are getting edited and will go up on YouTube, Facebook, and all that others. Um, so I got that going on. Um, Mr. Jimmy says thank you. You're very welcome, Mr. Jimmy. Um, and so Andy, thank you. Um, next week is kind of big for me. Has nothing to do with you guys, not directly in any way, but I am, uh, I have two different spots. If you haven't noticed, if you've watched my material, I always have like two different backgrounds. This one's probably the better of the two. I have decent lighting in here, although the lights flicker every now and then if you can't notice. Um, which makes it look pretty good. It's not the best in the world, but, um, my other location in Texas that I'm at about half the time, I, uh, uh, it doesn't look so good. It's a really cruddy little area. The lighting's horrible. I'm paying somebody to come in next week and we're gonna redo the whole thing. I bought all new equipment, new fancy camera, lighting, the whole nine yards. So the quality of live streams from location number 2 will be improved greatly. And I'm going to be bringing, I think, the, the camera over here as well, back and forth between the two spots. So the quality will be a lot better between the two spots. So you may notice like, whoa, Ralph's looking good there. It ain't me, it's a camera and the lighting and all that good stuff. So be on the lookout for that next week. I'll be setting that up. Um, what else? Oh, I did a, um, earlier this week I did a, uh, a photo shoot for like promo material, you know, pretty shots of me so I can use it for like YouTube thumbnails and promo graphics and stuff like that and on the website and everything else. Um, So I've never done anything like that before. As a hobby, I used to be like an enthusiast photographer for years, pre-divorce. Kind of sad. As soon as I divorced, I dropped that completely. I just lost the interest. Um, every now and then I'll still pick up my phone or another camera. I can still— I know, you know, I know all the ins and outs of photography and ISO, f-stop, depth of field, and all the other stuff. I get all that, so it's somewhat interesting to me, but I just lost the interest. But anyway, um for the first time I had pictures taken of me professionally, and I had a makeup artist and the whole nine yards. It was— that was the first. But it's kind of enjoyable being pampered and, you know, have your picture taken and feel like a king there for an hour or whatever. So be on the lookout for pretty new pictures of yours truly that'll be shown. Should be pretty obvious when you see them. You'd be like, who's this? Uh, where's the yeehaw? I don't have the— do I have the— yeah, I don't have the yeehaw here. That's in Texas. Um, I have the— is this— I don't know, can you hear? Oh no, we can't hear that. Hold on, that's for Kentucky. I assume you guys could hear that. Um, but, uh, yeah, so anyway, you'll be seeing some cool pictures. I'm just trying to, uh, bump up the image of all this, make it more professional. You know, I think I've mentioned here before in a live that I had an agency come in and kind of give me an hour consult on some things, and image was the thing that really needed improving and more of me out there. And since I'm kind of the front face of the Dad Starting Over thing and help for men things, so a lot more of me out there. So unfortunately, and that's not comfortable for me. I don't like seeing myself. I'm not a— I'm not narcissistic in that way. I don't look and go, hey, there's me again. I always go, God, there's me again. So It's always a struggle doing those things, so we'll see how that all turns out. Um, there was something else I had going on. Oh, I also hired an agency to help me with booking me as a guest on other people's podcasts, and it has just taken off. I should have hired these people years ago. Um, what's the name of the company? Interview Valet. Interviewvalet.com. You can check them out if you're a content creator and you're interested in getting on other people's podcasts and they book you on there. They take care of everything from A to Z. It's awesome. And I believe 6 or 7 already for next month lined up. So I'm gonna be— next July is looking insanely busy. Got my 4-year-old daughter's birthday, she'll be 4 in July. Uh, my oldest 21-year-old daughter— listen, I got a 4-year-old and a 21-year-old. I have to pause for the stress of that statement. The 21-year-old is going to go do a kind of like a clinical thing. She's, uh, in— she's going to her senior year of school, so she has to do like little— what do you call, like, internship clinical type things. She's going to go do that in Texas. She's going to be shadowing my wife who does, uh, she's a surgeon at a hospital for a children's hospital in Texas, and she's gonna go shadow her for that. And my daughter wants to get into psychology or social work in some way. She's not sure exactly where she's going to take it, if she's going to go the full-blown like PsyD, PhD level, or if she's stop at, uh, family therapy, social work, and that kind of thing. So she wants to get into that world, so she's going to be going to Texas for that. We just got all kinds of stuff going on, so always, always fun in Ralphie's world. Um, anybody else have anything before I wrap her up? We're almost to the 45-minute mark. It's usually do about 45 minutes to an hour with these. If not, I'll call it quits. Guys, thank you all so much for joining me today. I do appreciate all of you. 5 o'clock Tonight, why don't you join me for a live Zoom meeting? You don't have to text, we can actually talk and see each other on camera if you choose. You don't have to, you can just do the voice thing if you want, but I'm going to be, uh, live on Zoom. Where is that? There you go. Um, join me live on Zoom tonight, 5 PM. You can go to that little tinyurl. I already posted it on the chat, so I shouldn't have to do that again, should I? But in just case, I'll do it here again. There you go, there's the link. You have to register, give your name and email so you can join us. But I would love to see you guys, talk to you guys, and let's do it. 5 o'clock tonight, it's kind of a preview for what our Brotherhood meetings are all about. We utilize Zoom for our HFM Brotherhood meetings. And if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about with Brotherhood meetings, um, there you go. Join us there if you're a dude. Private support community for men, big fraternity if you will, for men., we just talk all about everything all day, every day. And, um, often a lot of dudes that I talk to don't have other men in their life to talk to about this kind of stuff, relationshipy stuff. That's what our group is for. We have all kinds of, uh, cool benefits to joining, uh, not just discussion forums, not just Zoom meetings, but we also have books and courses and coaching. And some of that's free, some of that'll cost you, all kinds of good stuff. If it costs you, it's way cheaper for you than it is for the general public. So there's benefits there to joining, discounts and free stuff and all kinds of cool things. So check it out, the Brotherhood, helpformen.com/join. I see a lot of you regular dudes on here, you're, you're talking to me all the time on my comments, but only a handful of you actually join the Brotherhood. And I gotta tell you, from the things I've seen from a lot of you— I'm not going to call you out by name— you need some kind of additional help in your world. Otherwise you're just spinning your wheels. Seriously, you're just gonna be the same place year after year after year. Don't do it, guys. Life is short. Take it from old dudes like me, turning 50 this year, man, I was 20 yesterday. This shit goes by fast. Get with a group of people who can help you, real constructive help, brotherhood or anything like it. help4men.com/join. I'm a little biased, I think our group's the best out there that there is, but check it out. And Mr. I don't know how to pronounce that, I want to say Gesundheit, Christoph. Christoph. He says hi. Well, hi, Mr. Kristoff. Um, Fight for Better Now says to tell my daughter to dig into NLP, neuro-linguistic programming. I'm familiar with that. It's kind of a controversial thing. Some people are like, horseshit. Some people are like, it's the bee's knees. Yes, I just said bee's knees. So, uh, but anyway, I'm sure she knows about it. Um, and Christopher says that you just finished my book Divorce Panic and it was great. Well, thank you, dude. I appreciate that. Do I have a thingy for that? No, I don't. But you can go to divorcepanic.com and learn more about it at divorcepanic.com. Um, that's the second book I've ever written, so thank you so much. I appreciate it, guys. With that being said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna shut this down for good now. So thank you. Until next time, 5 o'clock tonight, join me on Zoom, guys. It's free. Check it out. I gave you the link. Check it out. If you only can stop in for a few minutes, do so. Would love to see you. Would love to say hi in person. In person? Face to face. You know what I mean, via Zoom. Anyway, Guys, thank you all so much. I appreciate each and every one of you, and I hope you have an amazing weekend if I don't talk to you before then. A toodaloo!