Chat LIVE with Ralph (DSO)!

Alright, alright, alright. Look at that radio technique there. See what I slid down on the audio for the music, turn on my mic at the same time. Not easy. Welcome everyone, it's your boy Raffalito here coming to you live from a pre-Thanksgiving Monday. Hope everyone is doing well. Good to see you guys again. It's been a while since I've done one of these. Seems like every time I come on here I say, "It's been a while." And so I need to space these out a little bit more evenly, but been a busy boy. Got a lot of stuff to talk about. A lot of stuff as far as like the salesy housekeeping business stuff. And my eyeball is bothering me. If it seems I'm distracted, I got something in my eye. I don't know what the hell it is. Ugh. It's annoying the shit out of me. Welcome everybody. Um, you know, as usual with these things, people file in a little bit at a time, if at all. But, uh, welcome everybody. My name is Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer. You're watching this on a channel called Dad Starting Over, which is a name that I've been creating content under, writing under. I've created books under the name of Dad Starting Over. It's been a, a very active, if you will, brand for quite some time.. And here recently we launched— I say recently, it was earlier this year— we launched, uh, Help for Men. You can see the logo above my bald noggin there. Uh, help4men.com is a relatively new brand. All of our business, our, our private members group, all the books you can buy on our Help for Men website, help4men.com. You can join the HFM Brotherhood, which is our private community for men only. Uh, we have live discussion forums that are extremely active. We have live Zoom meetings where we record all those Zoom meetings. We have all of my books available in PDF as well as audiobook format, no extra charge for our members. We have discounts on things such as coaching and courses, some free courses in there, all kinds of good stuff. So check it out at help4men.com. I'm going to put the link here in the chat, in the comments, so be looking for it there if you are a dude. And you would like to hit 2025 running, hit the ground running as they say, check out our group. Great group of guys, hundreds of dudes from all over the world, all the way from US. Our second biggest market, believe it or not, is Australia, and everywhere in between. We have dudes from all over the world. They're getting together and talking 24/7 on our forums. We're having up to, I think, 6 or 7 meetings every week now, live on Zoom. The average length of each meeting is an hour or more. We record all the meetings. You can listen to them from your phone. Over 1,000 hours of, uh, archived meetings, as we call it. Kind of like podcasts you can listen to on your phone. Over 1,000 hours of that, and we add to it every single week, so you're never going to run out of audio to listen to. So check it out at the link there, helpformen.com/join. The good news is that if you're like, I don't want to pay month to month for this, there is a small fee involved in joining. You can do the lifetime membership, pay one-time fee, Done. And you're a member for life. The good news is that at that address, helpformen.com/join, choose the lifetime option and use the coupon code BlackFriday, all one word, and you can get that lifetime membership at 40% off. Pretty good deal. 40% off. We've had, I think, about, oh, I want to say about 15 guys have just last week took advantage of that. So thank you all for Joining, if you're already a member, thank you for upgrading. I appreciate it a great deal. Black Friday, use the coupon code at checkout for the lifetime membership option. Um, what else is going on, folks? We have some new courses. You're thinking, oh, here he goes trying to sell something. Here's the good news: the courses are absolutely free, no strings attached, no cost. In fact, to sweeten the deal, sign up for the course, take the course, and you actually get a free copy of my very popular book, The Dead Bedroom Fix. You get an electronic copy. We're not going to mail you a paper copy, so forget that. We'll send you, uh, email you a, um, a paper— or pardon me, a PDF. Can't get the word out. A PDF copy of the book. So here are the links to a couple of the free courses that we put together. This first one, pardon me, mywifecheated.com. Check it out. It'll redirect you to the Help for Men, the page on the Help for Men site. mywifecheated.com is just what it sounds like. It's a free, we call it a mini course, not very long at all. My thoughts and advice on the, for those men who have recently discovered, doesn't necessarily need to be recently discovered, that your wife cheated on you and you're having a difficult time wrapping your head around what happened, what's going on, and how to move forward. Check it out, mywifecheated.com. And this next one is a much bigger course. Take you a little bit to go through this one, but again, absolutely free, guys. Absolutely free. And you get a copy of the Dead Bedroom Fix PDF to go with this. Same with the My Wife Cheated. We give you a copy of the Dead Bedroom Fix on there as well. That's just my most popular book by far. So I'm trying to spread the love, get this out to thousands, if not millions of more guys out there. And hopefully, eventually, some of you will join our community, the HFM Brotherhood, because I think a lot of you guys need that. We know that the more books we get in the hands of guys, the more our membership grows at a faster rate. So we're trying to grow our membership in the Brotherhood. We're doing so many good things. We're reaching so many good people. We, we hear so many good things from our membership. How can we grow membership? Providing these free courses. And at the end, it'll say, would you like to join our group? That's basically the, the catch to all of it. So you get a free course, lots of videos on the Dead Bedroom Fix one, a few videos on the My Wife Cheated one. Great stuff. Check it out, guys. There's the links, mywifecheated.com and— oop, that's deadbedroomfix.com. That's the book. Let me get you the, uh, course, uh, link there. It's deadbedroomfixcourse.com. Dead bedroom fix course.com. My wife cheated.com. Those are links to two, um, absolutely free courses for you to take. Check it out. What else we got going on, guys? If there's anybody joining us today, if you could do me a big fat honking stinking favor, please give me a like. If you're watching this on YouTube, give me a like. Better yet, give me a subscribe and a like. It really helps to grow. That tells YouTube that, hey, this channel's worth something, this guy's putting out good material, let's show it to more guys. Same thing, Facebook, give me a like, give me a share. I would really appreciate it. That helps spread the word about these live streams and the page in general. Thank you so much, gentlemen. If there is anybody listening or watching this today, do me a favor and let me know where you are watching from. Um, always gets the ball rolling on location. I always love to see guys from around the world. Looks like we don't have a whole lot on Facebook just yet. Like I say, usually, uh, guys usually file in after a little while. Uh, let's see here, what else we got here? Um, a good, um, fodder, I guess you could say, starting point for conversation for a lot of these is to go over some popular posts that I've made on Twitter, or X as it's called. Um, they're not popular on Twitter or X, it's when I cross-post them and take a screenshot of the tweet, as it used to be called. What are they called now? If they're a tweet then, what are they now? Anyway. Um, ex post. That's kind of cool. Um, my tweet, whatever. Um, I take a screenshot of it and I post it on Facebook, YouTube, and that's usually where I get the activity as far as comments and likes are concerned. Um, let me see, we got— oh, Fight for Better Now says in Cincinnati. You know, Fight for Better Now, I spent quite a bit of time in Cincinnati. My Natalie, who is now my wife, did her fellowship as a physician at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. She's a pediatric surgeon, so I know the world of Cincinnati well. I'm trying to think what's, uh, a good barbecue spot in Cincinnati. Eli's, does that sound right? I think it was called Eli's, near the riverfront, I think. And man, that was good. That's what I always remember about Cincinnati was Eli's. Let's see, some things to talk about. Um, let me see, we have a lot of guys, um, with wives who have basically generalized anxiety disorder. I am not a psychologist. I am not a medical mental health practitioner of any way, shape, or form. I am a loudmouth, know-it-all bald man with a microphone, apparently one of many on the internet. And, uh, but I've talked to a lot of guys over the years. I've done this for well over a decade now.— and I say this, I mean putting out content under the Dad Starting Over name in addition to now the Help for Men name, talking to a lot of men. I get a lot of emails on a daily basis, messages on Facebook and everywhere, YouTube, everywhere else. And, uh, you start to see patterns in people for sure. And a big pattern that I see amongst a lot of men that I talk to is number one, that they are usually pretty anxious dudes. That's a term I throw out a lot. Anxious in terms of the way they attach to partners, they're always pursuing and going after they're always worried about the relationship. What does this mean? What does that mean? Is she gonna— is she going to leave me? Is she going to abandon me? That's, that's a common sentiment amongst a lot of guys that I attract to my material. And also a lot of men are married to very anxious women. And it's not just in terms of their attachment style that these women are needy in that way. Often, no, they have a lot of, like I say, generalized anxiety around everything in life. And that really doesn't come to a head until they have kids, unfortunately. Usually it's, yeah, she's a little anxious, a little worried about things. And then they have a kid and the guy's like, oh wow, or multiple kids. And he may notice that she's self-medicating. You know, we have this stereotype of women, you know, chugging bottles of wine every night just because, to calm their nerves, as they say. Women taking little happy pills, what's some happy pills like Xanax and Valium and all these other things just to cope with life. And these stereotypes didn't just fall from the sky. It's a thing. Women tend to— oh, women tend to be more anxious than men. Or more specifically, the most anxious people out there, when you, you know, try to measure anxiety in people and diagnose anxiety in people, the most anxious tend to be women. Again, that's not taking anything away from or insulting men who have issues with anxiety. I tend to be kind of an anxious guy myself in a lot of ways. But the most anxious tend to be women. And, uh, there is a lot of things in life can happen that will stress you. And if you're a person with a lot of anxiety, you don't take those things too well. And as far as, you know, if we could rank things in life that really stress you the hell out, make you anxious, kids are right up there, aren't they? And, um, it would seem that the ladies thank you Mother Nature, uh, tend to have an innate sense of, uh, nurturer and protector to the child, much more so than the man. Not for every case, there are a lot of shithead mothers out there who abandon their children and so forth. We're talking about the average gal, average couple, and she's the one that's worried about, well, really everything to do with the kid's life. She stays up at night worrying about something that the man sees as, eh, no biggie. She doesn't have the, eh, no biggie mechanism within her head, the average gal out there. She really worries about a lot, to the point of, for some, it's very unhealthy, and it intrudes on all aspects of their life. And we have some ladies that their anxiety and stress manifests itself physically in some very unhealthy ways. It's very common for me to hear things such as, my wife suffers from irritable bowel syndrome, my wife suffers from fibromyalgia, my wife suffers from fill in the blank with a lot of autoimmune issues. All of these things are exacerbated exacerbated by a lot of anxiety and stress that the woman feels, and she just gets worse and worse and worse. And sometimes, again, like I say, they self-medicate with wine and, uh, non-pharmaceutical type drugs, or even pharmaceutical drugs, which causes a whole host of issues. One of which, from an admittedly very selfish male point of view, we watch these women and their libido goes way down to nothing. Sometimes it's induced by the anxiety alone. Sometimes that's induced by the pharmaceuticals that they take to battle the anxiety. And then we in turn feel a real separation from her, emotional, physical distance, and we're sitting back and watching this person spiral out of control, so to speak. And it's not good. What often happens is when we're— anxiety-prone wife going off the rails, husband's worried, he sees her just, this isn't good. And what can I do to help you, wife? I see you're spiraling out of control. And often what happens in these situations is the Anxiety, high anxiety. Wife says, I'm just way overwhelmed by everything in my life, please take things off my plate. And the husband, since he's Mr. Anxious, does, oh, things I can fix, I will do anything and everything to remedy this situation. You just sit— sometimes it gets this serious, guys. A lot of women hearing this will say, yeah, right. No, no, this happens. You, wife, just sit on that couch and do nothing. I will prepare every meal, I will put the kids to bed, I will do every chore there is imaginable, even if sometimes the wife is like a stay-at-home mother. That's how her anxiety— sitting back and watching her fall apart fills the man with anxiety. But he's like typical man mode, goes into fix-it mode, and he goes too far, and he does anything and everything to alleviate her stress. And he's like, now can we come closer together as a couple? Because he's anxious again, he's always pursuing and trying to fix the relationship. And she's like, it Still not doing it for me. I still have no connection to you, mister. I'm still at baseline, the foundationally very, very anxious, and doesn't go well. So a lot of you guys listening to this saying, yes, yes, that's me, that's my situation— she needs professional help. And often what precedes her getting real legitimate help is the big come-to-Jesus moment, so to speak, where you sit her down and say, wifey, This is not sustainable. What you are doing is very not healthy, and there is nothing I as your spouse can do to fix this, nor should there be. I'm not your therapist. I'm not your parent. I am your spouse. I'm your partner to go through life with. But to put all this on my shoulders is not fair. So we need to figure out ways to get you better, and I'm here to be by your side through the whole thing. But I can't do this alone, and I can see you have no interest in fixing this situation. And I'm worried about you. I'm worried about us because again, this can't continue. Not sustainable. Which usually results in, "What are you saying? You're going to leave me? You're going to divorce me?" The husband says, "If that's what it comes to, that's what it comes to, yes." It's an ultimatum. But guys, ultimatums work. There's an extreme example of this is your partner's an addict. If you don't stop drinking alcohol, drugs, whatever it is, I'm going to leave you. A lot of addicts will say that was the moment where I turned things around. I'm about to lose my life and my family over this shit. I better stop. Same kind of thing. So in the comments, anybody want to share? We're kind of quiet today. Can any man relate to this? Very, very high anxiety partner, and you see it's breaking your marriage and your life down. And what are you doing about it? What can you do about it? Are you doing anything about it? We'd love to hear from you in the comments. And then I put a tweet that says, no amount of chores or other methods of fixing your wife will overcome her anxiety disorder. She needs professional help. And I say, no, this doesn't apply to all of you, but it does apply to a lot of you out there. Um, a lot of people like to say that, uh, it's our society today, the societal expectations on women, which exacerbates this anxiety and makes it worse and worse than it's ever been before, such as women, you should have a career. If you don't, you're a loser. Woman, you should be a great mother. If not, you're a horrible person. You should be able to care for your home. You should be able to be a great wife. You need to be all these things and perfect at all of them. That's what women— ironically, that's what their very anxious take on all of this is. While us men sit back and go— us not as anxious men, I should say— we just sit back and say, why would you interpret all of this stimuli around you as that? I just look at that and go, eh, silly. They don't say it silly. They just, again, they take it all in. It's a plate. I've said this before in other videos, um, for men— let's stick with men right now— think of our plate, our mental plate, as being like the plate you get at the picnic. Pardon me, the plate you get at the picnic, or the cafeteria-style tray, whatever it is, you know, where they have the little, the raised sections to keep each little food in its own compartment. So the main entree goes here in the middle, off to the side is the salad, and the fruit, and the little dessert, and they don't touch each other. That's very descriptive of the, uh, male mind. Like, this is our work, this is fun, this is wife, this is kids, and they don't really touch each other necessarily. But we're able to very much compartmentalize— is the word I'm looking for. But it would seem that for women, take that same tray of food and just pile shit all on top of each other until eventually it gets so high that it all falls apart and it's a big giant mess. That's what we see with a lot of women in our lives. They just keep bringing it on and keep bringing it on. We recognize that, we keep trying to take stuff off and keep trying to take stuff off, and it doesn't work because more and more stuff keeps piling on top of it. And, um, it seems that the solution— sticking with the tray of food— is, uh, just to not bring it on to begin with. And that's what they need help with. Um, oh, there's Eli! Eli is a member of our HFM Brotherhood. Learn more at helpfromn.com/join. Hello, Eli from California! Hey, welcome! Bienvenidos. Um, and then Fight for a Better Now says, when they ask for help, then offer assistance. Sure. Um, but it's okay to also be proactive. I see you're not doing it well, wife. What can I do to help you out? Let me take this off your plate, blah blah blah, whatever. But if you see like, wow, this is becoming a habitual, uh, toxic, dysfunctional thing that this person cannot function, they need help. Eli says, and during that time when you're telling the wife this isn't going to work, she starts to say, I don't know if I can give you more than what she's— than what she's giving. You— she wouldn't say she. You got your quotes mixed up there, Eli. She would say, I don't know if I can give you more than what I'm giving you now, is what she's saying. And she has no more to give at her moment. You know, that is a very common sentiment amongst avoidant types. It's common for men in our world who are anxious with the avoidant wife to say, "Wife, I need more than what we got going on here. This ain't no good." And the wife kind of rolls her eyes and says, "I don't know if I can be what you need, dude. Like, I don't have it in me to do all that. You're asking me for the hugs, the kisses, the sex, the love and the romance and the connection. I don't think I have all the tools in my toolbox to give you what it is that you need. And then sometimes they will take that next step forward and say, why don't you go get it elsewhere, dude? Not good, not nice, but she's being right. She, or she's being truthful. She doesn't have those tools in her toolbox, dude. And it's, you know, we can piss and moan about it all we want, but I think with a lot of hindsight, we look back on our relationship with these gals and we say, you know what, she's right. She's never had these tools. In our toolbox. Maybe somewhat at the very early stage of the relationship, the honeymoon stage where we fell in love with each other, but that's not quote real, is it? That's when we're at our best. That's when we're high on the love chemicals, all that dopamine and serotonin. I'm no expert on all that, you know, all those brain chemicals that we get flooded with that Mother Nature says, here you go, so that we feel really good and we bond with that person and make babies with them. When that dissipates, we're left with the quote real them. And the real them is like, I don't— all that shit's gone, dude, and I don't have it anymore. Um, very, very common. Fight for a Better Now says, since we're in the season, uh, holiday season, uh, what recommend— recommendations would you have for dealing with troublesome in-laws? Dum dum dum. Um, how are they troublesome, I guess, is the question. Are they troublesome in terms of— are they really, uh, overused term, toxic in nature? Like, if you wouldn't want anything to do with these people because they are bad news, or they're just kind of annoying, you know? So maybe, uh, go into a little bit more detail on that. Um, I am all— I'm all in on this whole concept of, um, just because— I mean, let's be honest, when we're talking about it's family, it means that someone in our bloodline came out of the body of somebody else in this shared bloodline. A horrible way of describing it, but you know what I mean. The only commonality we have as human beings is the shared DNA code because we share a grandma or something like that. That's it. And therefore, we feel forced to spend all these big holiday moments with these people who, if it wasn't for the fact that we have a grandma in common, I would never in a million years ever be anywhere near them. They're really toxic, awful, terrible people, right? That's for some of you, that's the case. Then don't be with them anymore. Oh, but I feel I have to. Well, that's on you, dude. You don't have to. Life is short, man. If you're with some people and every time you go, you get heart palpitations and stress and you just want to, you know, shoot yourself because this person is just god-awful, or people are god-awful and terrible, then don't be around them anymore. And yeah, but they're my wife's family. Okay, you can say, "I'm not going to be around those people anymore," if they're in fact that bad. But if they're just annoying people or whatever, then what, suck it up and just deal with it? Who cares? You know, people annoy you. It's just what you do. But if they're so bad and so toxic and so detrimental to the relationship and to your mental health and everything, stay the eff away is what I say. And from what I have seen, that doesn't seem to be the predominant thought amongst a lot of people. A lot of people are like, Gotta, gotta hang out with Uncle So-and-so even though he's a raging alcoholic and abusive and everything else. Eh, he has family. No, you don't have to hang around a person like that. Never quite got that. Um, what else we got going on here, folks? We talked about the anxiety thing. HelpForMen.com/join is the men's group. We have a special deal. Scroll in the comments here in the chat if you're watching on YouTube. Uh, special code BLACKFRIDAY, all one word, all caps, all one word, all caps. Put that in and you'll get 40% off the lifetime membership. Pay once and you're done. How about that? Sound good? Um, what else we got going on here? Um, continuing with this thought of the anxious wife, Another thing that we have noticed is a lot of men that I talk to are very, almost engineers. So we have these men that are very anxious that are trying to figure out how to fix a relationship, and they kind of have a very engineering mind. Some of these men are in fact on the autism spectrum or neurodivergent in different ways, and they think very analytically. And they, the phrase often used is they look at their fellow human beings as kind of like lab rats. They sit back and watch how they react to certain things and do certain things, and they change their— they take notes and they change their behavior accordingly. This is why things such as, uh, oh, pickup artistry and that red pill world and so forth are very attractive to a lot of those guys, because that's kind of how it looks at their, their fellow humans, the women. It's kind of like lab rats to manipulate. And so they sit back and watch their, their wife. They're trying to figure things out, and they say, you know what, the only time I get a glimpse of the old her, the wife I fell in love with. Let's be honest. In other words, some semblance of the honeymoon stage. The only time I see that is if I get her out of the house, away from the kids, as some kind of overnight thing, which for a lot of people these days— thank you helicopter parenting, thank you all the anxiety that women feel to be the best spouse, or pardon me, before I slip there, the best parent ever. Not best spouse, best parent ever. So they have all this pressure, which means they want to hang around their kids like 24/7 if possible. They would go to school with them if they could. So to pull that woman out of the house and the environment and say, you and I are going to go spend a weekend away together as a couple, or whatever it is, that's Good freaking luck with a lot of women. But for those that accomplish that anniversary thing, what birthday thing, whatever it is, we're going to go overnight hotel, go dancing, go to a concert, something out of town, they will say, holy shit, there's my wife, she's back. She was smiling, she was lighter on her feet, she was giggling, she was touchy and flirty, and there was the woman I fell in love with. Everything I love about her It re-energized me and I was so happy to see her. I'm like, yay. And then we return home, these guys will say, and the new her, Wife 2.0, is back and the smile is gone. She puts the, you know, comfortable clothes back on. Let's say she was, you know, dancing, wearing the cocktail dress and looking pretty and everything, and then she comes home and pajamas. And grumpiness and anger and barking orders. And she is just a miserable creature when she is at home with the kiddos. And then he's like, these men will say, let's take this experiment further. Hey, 3 weeks from now there's this music festival out of town, let's go. And they go and she's back again. And it would seem that he has to remove her, remove her for an extended period of time. Overnight stay at hotel. That's the only way he sees the old her again. And a lot of these guys go, is there a way I can accomplish this without having to spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to take this woman out of town and do the hotel and do everything else? This is getting a little pricey. And frankly, it's not realistic. We won't have another opportunity for that. Let's say like another 4 or 5 months or something like that. In the meantime, are you saying I gotta deal with all this? Horrible, grumpy, miserable attitude for the next 4 or 5 months until we get out of town again. This is ridiculous. And guys, some people are just flat out wired that way. Some people are very anxious in that way. Making no assumptions here that there's a root cause, anxiety and so forth, that causes what you're experiencing there with your wife. Some people are just not wired for the parenthood thing in terms of maintaining their— I was gonna say sanity, that's not the right term— maintaining a good positive outlook on life, a low anxiety positive outlook on life is not possible with parenthood for some people. Sounds terrible, but there are a lot, a lot of men listening to this right now that can relate to that. Their wife was completely different after having children, and he discovered that her makeup is such that when, when kids come into the picture, everything shuts down, anxiety goes through the roof. The only way to see a good mental— let's be honest— mentally healthy version of her is when I remove her from said situation. So to me, that would represent some not so good coping skills when it comes to the stress of having kids and so forth. I've talked about this before. This really comes to a head And men are really kind of— it puts it right in the man's face when— and this is a relatively rare circumstance, but it happens, especially in today's day and age— that for some reason they flip roles and husband becomes stay-at-home father and wife goes to work. Maybe she got some career opportunity. Maybe she was like a part-time and he was full-time, and then she got her big degree or whatever it is, and she got this big career opportunity. They have to move out of state. She's making 5 times more than what he used to. So, and it's difficult for him to find a job. And they do the math and they say, you know what, why doesn't she work and he stay home and take care of the kiddos? We'll still be out way ahead money-wise compared to what we were before. If he goes to work, we'll just have to end up paying for childcare and everything else, and there goes his paycheck. So just stay home. And makes sense on paper. And then they do. And what some of these men discover is they really flourish on the act of being the stay-at-home caregiver to their children and maintaining the home and so forth. They will treat it almost like they're a drill sergeant, like it's, you know, they're bossing little kids around and everything's regimented. At 7 AM we do this, and 8 AM and 10 AM. And what a lot of these men do is they kind of like to rub it in the face of the wife that I was done with all of this work by 11 AM every day. I don't know what the big deal is. I even got to go to the gym. And took the kids with me. It was great. Went to the park. The house is clean from top to bottom. Food is ready. Welcome home, wife. What is the big deal about being a stay-at-home parent? And this isn't necessarily to rub it in the face and say men are better at this. No, there are plenty of men that would not react in that way. There are plenty of men out there, myself included, who would go absolutely nuts being a stay-at-home father. That sounds very nerve-wracking to me, and it is for a lot of women. Their anxiety, their, their mental makeup, whatever, is such that it really drives them nuts to be sitting in a home with 3 screaming kids all day long. Most people can probably relate to that. And some people are wired where it doesn't bother them at all, very low anxiety and so forth. It's not necessarily a gendered thing. It is more of a high, moderate anxiety, low anxiety. You can see the difference there. So some of us are just not wired, and you don't know until you have children just exactly how you're wired when it comes to having kiddos. Some of us, our anxiety goes through the roof and it's, it's no bueno. And so, Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer, what's the remedy to this? Professional help, I would say. If we see that anxiety getting to the point where it interferes with your life, interferes with you two as a couple, intimacy— not necessarily the old in and out in the bedroom, the all forms of intimacy go bye-bye because children, not good. It's not sustainable, guys. Your marriage will break down. Probably if you, again, hindsight 20/20, look back at wife and her family, you probably saw the same with her mom and dad. Am I right? And that's where they learn all of this stuff. So this is where the old professional help comes into play here. And Bearded Kilt Racing, Mr. Justin, welcome. Also a member and part of our team at help4men.com. Member of the HFM Brotherhood. Check it out, help4men.com/join. Um, yeah, you don't have to hang around those people. So Justin knows well the old toxic parent or, uh, toxic family members thing. Yeah, you don't have to hang out with them. I think it's kind of a, uh, oh, I remember, uh, my ex had a huge family, um, Catholic family, so they all had like, you know, 5 kids at minimum per family. Her mother was one of 12, and I don't— can't remember how many. Her dad was one of 7, I believe. My ex was one of 5. So you go to a family gathering of some kind, it's just like they have to rent out a building to, you know, house everybody. And, uh, just be— just by sheer number, of course you're gonna have a lot of dysfunction in there. So this little pockets of dysfunction— we don't hang around that uncle, that aunt, that sister, the rest are fine. So you avoid those people, you don't have to hang around them. So By virtue of numbers, I was able to navigate my way around the toxic people. But, you know, I can imagine those in more average smaller families, it's just like, I just have Uncle Bob and that's it. There's like, oof, makes it tougher. Um, yeah, just because Justin says, just because they're blood doesn't mean a lot. It doesn't have to mean anything really if they're, um, you know, horrible people to be around, toxic for your life. Um, let's see what else we got here, folks. Another topic that I talk about, um, again, doing this for so long, you start to categorize people and you start to see trends. The anxious guy is probably the majority of men that I talk to, but there's also a subset of men that I talk to who are probably more of what you would call in today's vernacular the alpha male type, hyper-masculine, the type of guy you look up to, usually extroverted in nature. Usually the guy who commands a room. You know, we know those guys, right? And what I have seen in my world— this isn't representative of the world at large, but in my little world, the men that come to me and so forth— if he's one of those guys that has marital problems, intimacy is low, and you look and talk to these guys because we have the Zoom meetings one-on-one with these guys, and you're looking at him and you're listening to him, you're like, I don't get it, because on paper, so to speak, the guy's got it all. He's like very charming, handsome, uh, extroverted, very low anxiety type of dude, usually these guys. But man, they have trouble being alone, I've noticed. Not all of them, but a big chunk of them. To the point where they tend to overlap relationships. Meaning, I'm with this wife, let's say 15 years, something happens in the relationship, the intimacy connection between them is nothing. They don't even say good morning, you know, whatever. Either you— these men are usually not the type to, let's go to counseling, let's work on this, what's wrong, wife? You know, they're not anxious in that way. They're not pursuing, and they're not preoccupied with the health of the relationship. They'll just replace her, and they usually do so in terms of affairs. So they usually have a string of gals that they've been flirting with all these years. They never take it over the line, but they have one that they like in particular, and they take it over the line, and voilà, new girlfriend. Dump wife overlapping with new girlfriend. Wife goes bye-bye. Hey, a new girlfriend. Then they continue with that relationship, and then that one fizzles, and they do the same thing. And these guys do that often. And these are the type of guys that tell me like, well, wife number 3. And you're like, well, hold on, 3 wives? And you got this one already lined up? And relatively common, um, not unheard of, I should say, in my world. It's so interesting, um, you know, if there's a commonality in people that talk to me, it's just, I have relationship problems, Ralph. And, uh, sure enough whether it's Mr. Charming, quote, alpha male type dude who doesn't seem to— can't seem to be alone, versus Mr. Anxious, who's fighting like hell to hang on to his wife who obviously wants nothing to do with him for the past 20 years. The commonality again is they all come from some type of not-so-nice chaotic backgrounds. And sure enough, when you tell me about mom and dad, what you will hear will often mirror what we're seeing now in the present. And I had a therapist tell me years ago when I went through my divorce 12 years ago, she was saying, it's kind of interesting, isn't it? And it's kind of scary just how it seems how powerless we are to preventing, you know, history from repeating itself. And the analogy I often use is when you take your hand off the wheel in life, in car, and you let go and just let the car go where it may For those of us from somewhat dysfunctional, chaotic backgrounds, the car goes off the road and into a tree and you die. Some of us, we have a built-in cruise control. You know, we just let our hand off the wheel and the car just takes us where it's supposed to take us, like a modern-day Tesla, right? And, um, but that ain't a lot of us. And we have to constantly make course corrections. We have to keep our hand off the wheel. We have to accelerate, decelerate, hit the, hit the brake, hit the gas when appropriate. We always have to be on alert and always making these changes, and it can be exhausting. But those are the cards that we've been dealt, most of you watching this. That's why you're watching my material. And so we have to just, in essence, resign ourselves to, that's who I am, dude. I gotta work on this consistently. I gotta flex those boundaries. I have to know when to say no. I have to do the uncomfortable. Maybe this guy doesn't have to do all those things and maintain a healthy relationship, but I do. It's very analogous to somebody who's an addict. I can't be around drinkers, partiers, whatever it may be. Sure, this guy can hang around them and he won't become a raging addict, but that ain't me. Some people are like, if I have one, I need 15. That's just how I'm wired. Addictive compulsive kind of personality. So they recognize that in themselves and they eliminate those temptations, if you will. Same kind of thing with us guys. We have to recognize who we are, what cards we've been dealt, and play our life accordingly if having a healthy life and not hurting people in the process is important to us. All right, a lot of blobbing there. Do we have any questions at all, guys? These aren't necessarily for me to sit here and pontificate and blab on and on. Hundreds of videos just for that purpose. This is for me to sit and answer any questions you may have or, or or extrapolate to further talk about some of the topics that you bring to the table. Mr. Adams says, I have The Dead Bedroom Fix, both second and third edition. Well, thank you. I'm working on it now with other things. I have a confirmed case of nice guy syndrome. And for those that wonder, you don't have to get subsequent, or you don't have to get past editions. Like if you have the new third edition of the book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, which came out July of this year, Check it out on Amazon. You don't have to buy the second edition. Everything is covered in the third. So they, they re— the second replaces the first and the third replaces the second, so forth. It's not like all new stuff that wasn't covered, or how should I— no, there is new stuff in it. Um, whatever's in edition number 2 is also in edition number 3, plus more, is what I'm trying to say. So thank you, Adam, I appreciate that. Confirm nice guy syndrome is another way, for those that don't know, of saying, um codependent tendencies within us. I did a chat with Dr. Robert Glover. If you're watching this, Adam, you are on Facebook. If you go to the videos on the Dad Starting Over page, go to the videos tab and look for the hour-long chat I did with Dr. Robert Glover on his men's group. We talked all about the book The Dad Bedroom Fix. We talked about the nice guy stuff and how the two blend together. So check that out if you haven't done so already. Um, and Justin, Bearded Kilt Racing, he says, uh, you are the sum of your 5 closest friends. Uh, pick a good group to be the sum of. Yeah, so, uh, and Help for Men can help with that. Very good, sir. Help4men.com/join. Uh, we have guys in the group that say, I've met lifelong friends in that group, guys that have really helped me through a lot of ups and downs, and they share a lot of interests. And we have guys You may be surprised that you join and you have guys right around the corner that belong to the group. Kind of interesting. Get together in person. HelpForMen.com/join. I'm going to put it back in the, in the, in the chat here, in the comments. Yep. Looks good. So check that out. HelpForMen.com/join. Check out the lifetime option and use coupon code BLACKFRIDAY. All one word, all caps. BLACKFRIDAY. All one word, all caps.. And if you scroll through the comments here, or in the chat if you're watching on YouTube, I also link to a couple of free courses that we have available now. MyWifeCheated.com and DeadBedroomFixCourse.com. Both absolutely free, no strings attached. Check them out. Just our way of giving back to you guys. Any, anything else, ladies and gentlemen? Oh, at what point should you ask your wife to maybe talk to a professional if needed? That's going to vary person to person, my man. Um, you know, if you have to ask that question, I would say maybe it's time, don't you think? You know, if it's even come up as a possibility, if it's in your mind as a possibility. What does professional help look like? We're not talking about committing her, you know, send her to the nuthouse or whatever, to a padded room. Um, it just means you could, you know, maybe soften the blow somewhat 'How about you and I go talk to somebody, wife?' If she's a very avoidant person, that's like the worst thing in the world to think about— sitting down and exposing yourself and emptying in front of a complete stranger. It's literally the last thing they want to do, so you have to drag them. You know, sometimes it's, 'I will leave you unless we do this.' That maybe gets the ball rolling a little bit, but even then they're just going to be eye-rolling and cynical. 'This is horseshit' through the whole thing. That's a form of help versus, "You need to go talk to somebody one-on-one." That's a form of help. Group therapy, we have a guy in our group who belongs to a very specific cultural religious group and they have a system of, I guess you could say, mentors within the group. So with him, he would say, "Let's go speak to one of our mentors in our church and our community." As that's to them, that's getting help. So if you have something like that, um, good question. Uh, anything else, ladies and germs? I mentioned the, um, 40% off for the lifetime for our group, the HFM Brotherhood, helpformen.com. But, uh, if you are a veteran, there's a— if you go to helpformen.com/join, you'll see a button that'll take you to a specific page just for veterans. You guys get 40% off all the plans all the time. There's no special discount or anything. You have to provide proof that you are in fact a military veteran, active or retired, or however it works. Um, you can take a picture of your documentation and upload it to our system. And we have Jason on our team who is a 20-some-odd-year, uh, U.S. Army veteran, and he has a system where he can go in and check, uh, your ID to make sure it's legit. And if so, we approve you and you're good to go. So check it out, help4men.com/join. And if you're a veteran, you get in cheap. Another thing that I posted here recently, the scenario I hear often, or I see in my comments quite a bit, is people saying, I want a mate for life. I'm trying to settle down. I don't like jumping around. Men and women both say this. This isn't necessarily a woman thing. I know that's probably where a lot of guys' brains are going right now. I'm tired of jumping around. I'm tired of dating. It's exhausting. It's not who I am. I don't like sleeping around and doing all this other stuff. I want one partner for life. And it doesn't seem anybody else wants that same scenario. And a person will come up and say, I do. That's what I want. Hello. And invariably it seems the reaction to that is not you. You're not what I had in mind when it comes to lifelong partner here. I want somebody with these qualities and you ain't got it, mister or miss, so no. That seems to be a really common trope amongst a lot of frustrated men in the dating world. I'm looking for a woman, I'm looking for a woman. A woman says, I'm looking for a man, and he goes, hey, over here. And the woman says, you ain't it, buddy. That's a very nice guy take on the whole thing. Adam says, "Ha, that's a very nice guy thing." A lot of men have this whole, "I possess all these great holistically good qualities as a human being, and I get turned away because women are only looking for something shallow, something not so nice." Is that necessarily false? No. And a lot of women say the same thing. Men are only interested in bimbos, women that put out easily. Because it's so readily available to them, they can jump from woman to woman with no commitment. I want commitment as a woman, and therefore I have a difficult time finding a mate. Is that false? No, there's some truth to that too. It's very difficult, but sure as shit, when two people get together and say, I want commitment, so do I, they don't match. Interesting how that works. So people are pretty picky these days when it comes to partners. The follow-up to this is, is that a bad thing. One camp says, yes, this is the next fall of Rome. A bunch of people out chasing hedonistic pleasure. They're basing their relationships on desire and desire alone. This is the— this is how societies crumble. This is not— this doesn't bode well for us as a planet. That's how far some of these people take this. While others say, well, good, this just means that we're having when people do come together and they do commit to each other, we know that in fact they are a great match with each other on a shallow level, on a deeper level, on all those levels. I tend to agree with the latter there, with one caveat. That means that, uh, what are the— what's the rate of success of people finding each other when they're holistically matched in that way? They're matched on the shallow side of things, they're matched on the more— on the deeper intellectual emotional side of things as well as the sexual, physical. To wrap all that in one person and find them and be a good match to you, what are the chances? It's relatively low. That is not a demonization of that scenario, it's just reality. This also points to our past success as a strictly monogamous species, if you will. When we look back on the good old days and they used to stick around forever and ever, they weren't necessarily matched at the desire level, were they? They were matched more on the need level, which is why it worked so well. But now we have folks that don't need each other all that much. Thank you, a lot of, uh, oh, emancipation and, and, uh, uh, women doing so much better in the workforce. And they look and say, I don't really need a guy to function day to day. So somebody has to check a lot of boxes for me to commit to them. And they look out and they go, but that's only like 0.2% of you. That's the catch. What do you guys think about all that? Um, Gilberto the Architect 316 Martinez, that's quite the name there. Gilberto, Gilberto Martinez. Um, if you and your wife are willing to work at it, he says, you can actually both change to become better partners for each other. Uh, continue, uh, continuing or coming— pardon me, I can't read eyes bad. Coming up on our 25th anniversary, and I can confirm we are both happier. Well, excellent. I love it. Congrats to you guys. 25th, that's huge. And the fact that you're both thriving, that's— pat yourself on the back, dude. That's awesome. You and the wife both. But, uh, you both working at it, that's the key, isn't it? And we have a lot of guys listening to that saying Yes, there's hope. Yeah, but dude, a lot of you are married to women that just will not work at it at all, period. You have to come to terms with that. We're not all Gilberto and his wife, unfortunately. Uh, some of you are. It, it, regardless, work at it. It's just what I'm trying to say. It may work, but it may not. And, uh, that's where a lot of the more anxious guys can't wrap their head around is this may not work. And man, they will keep it up for 20, 30, 40 years, and they'll go to the grave going, maybe now it'll work, uh, when the writing was on the wall at that time. This is the person you're married to, just doesn't give a shit, unfortunately. Um, Adam says, I read your book a couple of times. I'm actively avoiding the 5 mistakes. Learn more, dadbedroomfix.com. What he's talking about, uh, he says he was guilty of those before, especially having the talk, which is basically anxious emotional vomiting to your wife over and over again. Fix this, why fix it, fix it, why aren't we having sex, fix it. I was guilty of it before, now I'm trying to unwind all of that needy behavior with my wife. I see flickers of change, but I get the feeling this is gonna take a while. As you mentioned in the book or somewhere else, I would almost consider my wife asexual. Ouch. This may be something to explore further. We could always chat one-on-one if you like, Adam. Go to help4men.com, or better yet, join our group, help4men.com/join, and talk to hundreds of other dudes about this. See what they think, see what their experience is. And if you want to book time with myself or others on the team as a member of our group, it's a heck of a lot cheaper if you do it that way. Just an idea. That's my way of— I'm not trying to brush you off. It's just my way of saying, Adam, these situations are complex. We're talking about human beings on our own are super complex. Now you've combined it with another human being. Your complexities come together and just make a shitstorm of complexities. So to say, um, I wonder why we're not having sex? Oh geez, it could be a whole bunch of issues. Um, oh, and Gilberto says that he and the wife who are coming up on their 25th anniversary— congrats again— um, deciding to work, uh, together Uh, you had some difficult conversations that were in part triggered by my books. But wonderful. Yay, I love it. To think that little old me and I'm writing, sitting down at a computer for hours and hours and writing a book could eventually help out somebody like Gilberto in part. I love it. Say no more. You just made my, made my day. And you both have the same goals. That's huge. Same goals. We both want this. It's just heartbreaking, Gilberto, for a lot of guys, um, when they really work on themselves and they work in the relationship and they're trying like hell, months if not years, and they get to the point of going, I don't even think this wife freaking likes me. And they go, wife, are you interested in working on us at all? And it's heartbreaking to get back a no, I don't want to work on anything ever. I just want to live. Leave me the fuck alone. He's like, goddamn, this doesn't have the same Obviously the same impact that it does on her, this dysfunctional relationship. She's cool with living with this forever and ever. Ouch. That's reality for a lot of guys, unfortunately. Unfortunately. I'm going to refresh here. See if there's something I'm missing. Anything else, ladies and germs? We're coming up on the hour already. It tends to go by pretty fast. Another post I recently made here, Twitter. Sometimes the depressed spouse is averse to getting any outside help, which we talked about, and they take advantage of the spouse's desire to badly want to fix the marital situation. So depressed woman, keeping with our, our, our audience here, there's gonna be women fighting back. If I make a clip of this, there's gonna be women coming back saying it can be flipped. I know, but I'm talking mostly to dudes here, so let's just chill out. But I put on here that sometimes the depressed spouse is averse to getting any outside help. And if they are with Mr. Anxious, for example, depressed wife with Mr. Anxious Dude, they will take advantage of that dude's anxiety and basically say, sure, go ahead and clean the whole house. Sure, go ahead and do this, spend this, do that, yada yada, take over this, take over that. Thank you for just letting me sit on the couch 24/7 and doing nothing. I appreciate it. And it does not work. It, um, somebody's suffering from severe anxiety and depression combined with, I don't want to get help, the idea of going to get help just makes me even more anxious and depressed. I know. And then here comes Mr. Anxious saying, what can I do to fix this? Oh, I can give him shit to do because there's always plenty to do in life, dude. Get out of my hair and go do these 20 things. And he goes, you got it. And like a good little soldier, he runs off to do it. It doesn't work, guys. Um, don't find yourself in those— that position as basically Mr. Enabler, enabling her, her, uh, depression, anxiety. Um, sometimes it takes some tough love saying no, we're not going to do that. I've done all I can. I can see it's not getting anywhere. We got to get to the bottom of this. Adam says, uh, thank you. Well, thank you, Adam. Anything else, guys, before we wrap her up here? I don't know when I'll be able to find time to do another one of these. This is a short week with the holiday here in the States, Thanksgiving, the Feast of Gluttony. Um, I have a— maybe able tomorrow, maybe not sure yet. Uh, I do have a meeting with our membership tomorrow, and, uh, for those that are watching this that are already members of our HFM Brotherhood I'm doing a meeting Tuesday, Wednesday, but not Thursday, not on Thanksgiving. So Tuesdays and Tuesday and Thursday at noon, I'm doing a meeting for our group. If you'd like to chat with me on Zoom face to face, so to speak, you can do so. Join the HFM Brotherhood, helpformen.com/join. That's helpformen.com/join. Go ahead and jump into the lifetime membership, one-time pay and you're done. Use coupon code BLACKFRIDAY, all caps, all one word, BLACKFRIDAY, and you'll get 40% off. Deadbedroomfixcourse.com, deadbedroomfixcourse.com, all one word, as well as mywifecheated.com. Those are two absolutely free courses to take, video courses. You can sit and listen to me blab on and on. I also give you a PDF copy of The Dead Bedroom Fix at no extra charge for taking either of those courses. And then we'll invite you to check out the HFM Brotherhood, our private group, our community for Men only. Check it out, ladies and germs. Just germs, not ladies. Sorry, habit. It's men only. All right. All right. Just making sure I'm not missing something here. Okay. Guys, I'll catch you on the next one. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. And, uh, yeah, that's it. Terrible ending. Uh, yeah, thanks guys, appreciate all of you. Thank you so very much, and catch you on the next one. A toodaloo!