Chat LIVE With Ralph (DSO)

All right, let's see if that works. Sorry guys, a little snafu there. A little impromptu live with yours truly, Ralphie Boy, aka DSO. From— most of you know me from Dad Starting Over, and, uh, some of you probably know me from an organization you can see above my bald head there. It's a point with my head. Uh, Help for Men. You can learn more at helpformen.com. I've been creating content under the Dad Starting Over name for years and years. We started the Help for Men organization here not too long ago as kind of our all-encompassing business that we do. We have articles, we have videos, we have a private organization or support community rather that we call the HFM, Help for Men Brotherhood, and it's just for men. And we get together all day every day in private discussion forums and live Zoom meetings, and we get together in person. We have coaching, we have courses, some free, some you pay for, all my books at no additional charge. There's a lot of cool stuff involved in the HFM Brotherhood. Now let me bring up that, um, link here. There you go, helpformen.com/join, if you want to join the Brotherhood and learn more about it. Really cool stuff. I implore every guy who is watching this to check out that group, check out the join page. I think you would like it a great deal. It's It's really the missing thing for a lot of you guys on your journey to self-improvement, figuring out a lot of this stuff that we talk about. You may have seen me talk about on that Starting Over and Help for Men channels. Uh, welcome everyone. Let me see, these guys are still filing in here. Always good to see folks, especially with these impromptu unplanned lives. Sorry guys, but it's been a busy week. My son is graduating, my oldest son is graduating high school. This week. So we've gone to a baccalaureate and done this, done that. I'm trying to, oh, scramble to get a bunch of work stuff done. I'm, uh, vacation is coming up, so I'm doing a bunch of videos to kind of load the hopper as far as YouTube and Facebook and everybody is concerned, so I can take a serious 2 weeks off from everything here at the 1st of June. So been a busy boy, and I have a couple of lives coming up that are scheduled that are, uh I guess you could say collaborations with others. So, uh, guys, check it out. You will see me chatting with Michelle Langley. I don't know if you guys saw the video that I did, video interview with Michelle Langley. She's the author of Women's Infidelity, Women's Infidelity Part 1 and 2. Can't talk today. And, um, the video interview I did for her, with her, for the Help for Men channel was very popular, did really well, good numbers. Well, we're going to chat live and we'll be able to take questions. So if you saw that one and you have some questions you would like to ask of Michelle Langley, be sure to tune in for that one. I believe that one is next Saturday— or Friday, excuse me, a week from today. And then 2 weeks from today, I'm doing one with Dr. Psych Mom herself, Dr. Samantha Rodman-White. And I haven't done one of those in a long time. We always work well together when we collaborate. It's just been a while, been months since we've done one. So A lot of people requesting that, so be on the lookout for that. So the next two Fridays I will be live for sure, and maybe do a couple more in between before those two. So keep an eye out, guys. I see a couple of you have given me a like. Yeah, if you could all stop for a moment, stop what you're doing, click on your little phone or your, your keyboard there, your mouse on your computer, and give me a like on this live stream. What that does is it tells YouTube and it tells Facebook like this guy's doing all right, this stuff's interesting, and it's worthy of sharing with others. And so other people get to see this, and my viewership grows, and my audience grows. That would be awesome if you could do that. Pause for a moment, just give me a like, give me a subscribe, give me a follow, give me a share. All that helps a great deal. Thank you so very much. Uh, the essence of these lives is basically me sitting here, not just blabbing away to you guys, which it kind of ends up that way, doesn't it, every time. But what starts it is guys asking me questions. Um, you've seen my material, probably videos that popped up, my beautiful bald head. Maybe you like stuff that I say, maybe you don't. Either way, hey, let's hear it. Let me know what you think. Um, uh, give me a question, share a story, anything you would like me to comment on. Please do not be shy. While we wait on those comments to come in, oh, one icebreaker that I always use is, uh, where are you guys from? Where are you watching me from? I always love to see where everybody in the world is. We always have guys from the UK, we've had guys in Norway, Australia, all over the US, Canada, everywhere in between. You know what we don't have often are guys from South America. I just have not tapped into the old South American market for whatever reason. Uh, but anywho, where are you from? Let me know in the comments and I'll see it here on my screen no matter where you're commenting from. Um, helpformen.com/join is the link to learn more about our private community we call the Brotherhood. I also have some other links I want to share with you here. Some people don't know that we have a lot of free stuff available. Free, meaning it doesn't cost you anything. It means you get a lot for nothing. We want to help as many dudes as we can, and hopefully you guys, some of you will end up in our Brotherhood group. But we have— this has ended up being a very, very popular thing. Excuse me, it's called the Dead Bedroom Fix course. So some of you may know of my popular book called The Dead Bedroom Fix. That's the most popular thing I've ever done, is that book. That gets most people to me, believe it or not. As the name implies, it's all about sexless marriage, and it's a book for men about some things that you can do to fix your situation. And I created a free course, basically follows the outline of the book, and you can learn more at deadbedroomfixcourse.com. Dead bedroom fix course dot com. Check it out. And by the way, you get an added bonus. Not only do you get like 9 videos of me talking all about the dead bedroom stuff from my perspective. But I also give you a free ebook, a PDF copy of the book The Dead Bedroom Fix, along with it. You get to learn all about my thoughts on the Dead Bedroom Fix, and maybe you'll see some of yours. I see why this is so popular. This really clicks with me, if you're like a lot of guys out there. So please check it out, deadbedroomfixcourse.com. We have yet another free course for you guys out there. As far as topics go, um, really popular topics that I've been talking about over the years. Number one, sexless marriage. Every dude wants to talk about that because it's so damn common, unfortunately. The second most common thing— and these are both, if you'll notice, very emotion-laden topics— the second most popular thing is, uh, cheating wives, unfortunately. And the two kind of go hand in hand all the time. Sexless marriages and infidelity often go hand in hand, unfortunately. But I have a course you can learn more at mywifecheated.com, a little mini course, if you will. It's only 3 videos. Mywifecheated.com, check it out. And it's all about, so your wife cheated on you, let's talk about it. And, um, that's pretty popular as well. But the Dead Bedroom Fix course is, uh, our most popular by a long shot. The next thing that everybody, uh, seems to like is this thing called Dear DSO. Go to deardso.com if you want to submit a question or story to me, and then I create a video out of it. And there is an even— there is even an option on the form little checkbox and you can put in your email address if you want me— if you want to chat with me one-on-one and we can record our chat. They won't see you, but they will hear you in the chat, kind of like a radio call-in show. And we call that Dear DSO. And I have several of those chats up on YouTube. In fact, one just posted today that's really good. You guys may want to check it out. One moment, instead of me blabbing about it, let me find the, uh, the link here. Shall I? One moment, please. Anybody know that song? It's like the quintessential hold music song. It's called The Girl from Ipanema. Yes, I'm old and boring. All right, here we go. Here's the link. Um, that is the link to today's video that just posted on YouTube, my latest one as of today. What is today? Friday, May 16th, as we are— if you're watching this on the recording. Um, the title is 30 Years in a Dead Bedroom and Then She Finally Told Me Why, a live chat with Michael. That's a good one, guys, so check that out. Uh, there's the link there in the chat on YouTube as well as the comments on Facebook. Check it out. Um, I missed a comment. We got— oh, we got Ben from Chesapeake Bay. Ben is a member of the Help for Men Brotherhood. Hello, Ben! Welcome from Chesapeake Bay. Is that where you're— is you're visiting there? Is that where you're from? I'm confused, I can't remember. Uh, let's see. All right, um, anything else, ladies and germs? Please do not be shy. Oh, got a nice audience. The audience is building up here. Who knew? An impromptu, unscheduled live and we got more people than average. Hey, all you guys that have just joined us, if you could do me a favor, click on like. Like this live stream, that tells everybody that I'm worthy of growing the channel and more and more people see it. That helps me out a great deal if you like it. So thank you so very much, all you 4 people who have liked me so far. Uh, I do appreciate it. Thank you. Um, anything else that is going on, ladies and germs, in your world, please don't be shy, let me know. Let me see if there's anything else here for me to talk about. Um, yes, there's one big thing I've been big, big thing coming up next year in 2026. There it is, brofest2026.com. Go to brofest2026.com. Bro Fest is the douchey name that we— I admit it— the douchey name that we give to our, uh, I guess you could say annual conference in the States for our Brotherhood members. But here's the thing, Bro Fest 2026 is open to everyone. There is a fee for, uh, joining us. Uh, check it out, learn more at brofest2026.com. But we want you guys to see what the Brotherhood's all about and come meet some really awesome speakers, uh, special guests such as Dr. Robert Glover, author of No More Mr. Nice Guy. He will be joining us for the whole weekend. It's a Friday, full day Friday-Saturday thing. Most of us show up on Thursday night and hang out together, and then we get started first thing Friday morning. But he will be with us the whole weekend. As well as Lauren the Dadvocate. Do you guys know Lauren, the gal who puts out the funny videos, you know, talking about— oh, what are some of the things that she loves to talk about? Some of her funnier things include the, uh, uh, dad shaming videos. She put, you know, picks those apart. Those are always good. And then she talks— she's basically, as her name and her brand name implies, the Dadvocate. She's an advocate for dads out there, divorced dads in particular, talking about custody issues, because she saw her husband going through that with the children from his first marriage. And she puts out excellent material and has reached millions and millions of people. So we are really privileged to have Miss Lauren the Dadvocate joining us for BroFest 2026 as well. So if you ever want to meet her in person, ask her some questions, hang out, get a picture taken, there you go. Same with Dr. Glover, same with me. For whatever reason you want to meet me, hey, I'll be there as well, as well, as well as other guys on the Help for Men team, our coaches and everybody else. Uh, we will be there watching presentations, workshops, hanging out together. It really is the highlight of the year for us. We just finished, uh, BroFest 2025. We were in Charleston, South Carolina, and it was a big hit. We kept this one this year in 2025, we kept it, um, small this year just to see what it was like. It filled up in no time, and it was our highest priced BroFest ever, filled up in no time. Smaller affair, so we may mix and have like a large smaller-priced conference with a bunch of people, an event space type of thing, you know, a traditional conference. And then we may add on to that in addition, like a, um, a retreat kind of thing, which is basically what BroFest 2025 was this year. So keep an eye out, we may have some updates on future meetups that you guys can join us on. So check it out, brofest2026.com. Um, what else we got going on here, ladies and germs? I think that's about it as far as my little linkies go here. Let me bring up— let me get rid of that. Let me hide that one there. There's my name again. Um, hello for those of me— those of you, not me— those of you joining me late here today. Um, Ralph Brewer, founder of Dad Starting Over, as well as an organization called Help for Men. You can learn more at help4men.com and our private community called the Brotherhood, uh, at help4men.com/join if you want to jump right to the join page or go to the menu and homepage of Help for Men. You can see all kinds of stuff about the Brotherhood there, uh, private community just for men. Uh, here's an aside. I have, uh, my Dad Starting Over page on Facebook is pretty popular. It's got over 200,000 people that follow, and I can post anything. And we got a lot of angry dudes and a lot of angry women that, um, uh, respond, comment to material that I post on there. And a lot of people share some really personal stuff in the comments. And I don't want to dissuade comments because that helps my material reach a bunch of people. The Facebooks of the world really like it when people interact and comment and like and share and everything else, so that's a good thing. But I just want to warn you people, the Dad Starting Over page on Facebook that everyone can see is a page. I always use this as an example, so excuse me if you've heard it a few million times. Big companies— Walmart, Nike, McDonald's, Adidas, Ford, Honda, whatever. They all have pages, and you can go on all their Facebook pages and leave comments on their pictures, you know, hey, your truck sucks, or your car sucks, or your shoes suck, whatever it may be. But understand that everyone in the world can see what you are saying in those comments. Same goes for the Dad Starting Over page on Facebook. When you get on there and talk about the detailed sex life of you and your wife, everybody can see that. All your friends, strangers, everybody, family, your wife included. And, um, I see some stuff that just really makes the hair stand up back here. I'm like, I don't think these guys understand how this whole Facebook thing works. It is not a private group. If you want private chat that nobody on the planet Earth can see what it is that you're saying other than other guys in the private chat, if you will, the private group, what you want is This guy, help4men.com/join. You want to join the brotherhood? We have private forums that no one in the world can see that you're in. No one in the world can see what you're saying. We utilize a private Facebook group on Facebook. No one can see that you even join the private Facebook group. It is that private. And we also utilize Discord. So if you guys are familiar with Discord, we have an active Discord community. And then we get together on live Zoom meetings that only members can attend. So no ladies there to see. Um, you know, we haven't had yet— we haven't had people accidentally bump into like family members in there yet. As we grow, I'm sure that's going to happen. We have people that purposely bring in family members, like, can I bring in my brother, my uncle, whatever? Yes. And they do, and that's, that's cool. But, um, yeah, just a warning, guys, be careful what you, uh, put out there because guess what? Everybody can see it. We got Mr. We Fly from YouTube saying, what are we talking about today? Much of your content has been beneficial to my personal goals as well as my marriage. Well, We Fly, I usually don't have any kind of, uh, plan when I do these. Usually the, the commenters take care of that. They ask a question and we just roll from there and we just go. Um, the only time I really usually have a formal plan is when we have a guest on and on these lives, which I do the next two Fridays. So a week from today and then a week from next Friday, I will have guests Michelle Langley as well as Dr. Psych Mom as guests here live taking questions from you folks. So today, I tell you what, We Fly, what do you want to talk about? Maybe you want to talk about how my content has been beneficial to your personal goals as well as your marriage, which by the way, thank you so much, man. I appreciate that. You made my day with that comment. That means a lot to me. That's, um, you know, when you do this work so much and you become slave to like social media algorithms. You become a slave to, I gotta keep pumping out content, I gotta keep putting stuff on YouTube and the Facebook, I gotta answer these 20 emails I got. Oh look, 9 people have sent me a message directly on Facebook and another 2 on X or Twitter and another 4 on Instagram. I gotta answer all these before the end of the day. When you get caught up in the logistics working in the business. This is a very common entrepreneurial thing. You lose sight of like big picture stuff, and it's comments like yours, WeFly, that kind of bring me down to earth after I'm getting lost in the weeds of, you know, all the dull detail horseshit. And why I'm doing this is to help dudes. You know, for those of you who don't know my story, 12 years ago I went through a really nasty divorce which came as a surprise and involved infidelity, all kinds of nastiness. And it really threw me for a loop, and it really caused me to question a lot in my life. Who am I? What am I? What's it mean to be a man? Am I a man? Am I less than a man? Um, what have I become? How did I get to this point in life? And all kinds of awful stuff. And, um, it, it resulted in me, um, starting a website slash blog, if you will, called Dad Starting Over. And that blossomed into what you see today, eventually starting the Help for Men organization. So, and realizing that we are here to help men, can't lose sight of that. And it's easy to do when you get caught up in all the nonsense. As I said, we got Useful— that's always tough for me to say, buddy. I'm never going to be able to say this with one shot. I don't know if it's just me and my fumbly mumbly mouth, but Useful Thoughts, man, that's a tough one. Useful Thoughts from YouTube says, so my ex-girlfriend is pregnant. On the one hand, I'm happy not to be part of the family anymore. On the other hand, it is tempting to be jealous not being the father and finally having a kid. Well, I'm welcome to being a human being. I find myself saying this a lot to guys. Ralph Brewer, it really sucks that, uh, you know, my ex, uh, cheated on me, left, and now she's with some rich guy and she doesn't have to work and she doesn't have all this and that, and I feel like a loser because the new guy is, is wealthy, or he suddenly came into some money or something, and you You have one guy who's like, uh, the guy she left me with was kind of a loser, but he was a hard worker and ended up selling a business and made a ton of money. And now my wife's like— or my ex-wife's like, 'Tehee, look at me now.' And I'm like, you know, eventually you do get to the point in life where you go, 'Good for her.' You know, it's nice that some luck, uh, falls on somebody every now and then. We hear so many horror stories and people going through terribleness and everything else, um, so it's good that that happens to her. Yeah, even to the person who cheated on me and helped, you know, tried to ruin my life, it seems, and caused a lot of chaos. What good is it to say, I hope she gets hers, I hope karma— everyone always gives me that horseshit— I hope karma ends up getting her in the end? And as they just sit and they don't move on with their lives, they're just pensively waiting for karma to take over and destroy the life of the person that hurt them. Same kind of thing with this Mr. UT, because I'm not going to try and say that every time. Um, hey, your girlfriend's pregnant. Uh, I assume that's a positive thing for her. It's not always, dude. You sometimes— it's like, oh shit, what did I do? And oops, baby. And oh Christ, this doesn't go along with my life plan of school, work, and everything else. Now everything has to stop and blah blah blah. And the father's a complete loser, whatever it may be, you know, who knows. But, uh, I think it's perfectly normal for you to feel mixed feelings on that. Good for you having a kid, but, uh, man, that could have been me. We could have started a family together and all that good stuff. That's— what kind of weirdo would you have to be to not have those kind of feelings? I think people who tell you they don't are lying to you. Um, welcome to being a human, a thoughtful human, a good human. Yeah, pluses and minuses, the yin and yang of life. Such is life, my friend. And, um, if it's meant to be that you will find somebody and have kiddos and everything else, listen to me, if it's meant to be, um, it'll happen. You know, it'll happen on the right timeline or not. And, uh, I guess big picture question: what if it doesn't happen, my friend? What if you never do meet Mrs. Right? You never do have a kiddo? Does that mean life is for nothing? I'm always surprised— surprised is not the right word— I'm always, um, a little taken aback when I'm talking to a guy and he will basically tell me a lot of stuff that you typically hear from the ladies, which is, um, If, uh, if I don't procreate, what's, what's my purpose on this planet anyway? Um, it's always shocking to me because I guess I was always raised in a way of, um, I guess, uh, my, my avoidant side of me— I recognize, you know, using the vernacular of attachment stuff, um, I do very much have an anxious side to me for sure, and I do have an avoidant side to me as well, which I think a lot of guys do, which is kind of like I like my independence. I like to be left alone. I like to work on my craft, my work. I want to just leave me be, let me do my thing. And, um, so single life, you know, assuming all of that is in place, doesn't sound like that bad of a thing to me. But at the same time, also like a partnership. I was like, somebody to wake up with, I like somebody go through life with. I love romance. I'm a schmoozy, lovey kind of guy. I'm not afraid to say that. I like puppies, I like babies, I like all that cute stuff. So I'm not Mr. Alpha Male wannabe dude, right? Never fired a machine gun. I don't drive a big gas-guzzling pickup truck, and, uh, that's me. But, um, so it always surprises me to hear guys kind of going in that direction. But hey, each to their own, you know, not here to shame or anything. Um, I don't think anything happens if does not take action. I'm not sure what that means, UT. I don't think anything happens if it does not take him Um, oh yeah, uh, yo, I get what you're saying. Okay, so yeah, you did— you do need to be, uh, um, proactive in things. Yeah, exactly. So if you're the type of guy that's like, damn it, I want to find Mrs. Right, I want to get married, and I want to start a family, well, you better do things right. You better be a combination of romantic and pragmatic about it. You better put yourself out there and start dating people. You better start meeting a bunch of people. You better start networking. Um, better start getting to it. To sit back and just say Mrs. Right will just fall in my lap one day, you know, I think a lot of us were trained to think that that's kind of how it works. Uh, we've heard a lot of our grandparents and great-grandparents talking about, uh, I met your grandma at the candy store when we were 12 years old, and right then and there I knew she's going to be my wife, and we've been together for the last 1,000 years, you know, all that stuff. And it sounds awesome, romantic, and but We don't hear that much anymore, do we? I wonder why that is. Um, oh, probably the vast catalog of potential mates in the online dating world has something to do with it. I was talking to somebody the other day how with, uh, the online dating world environment is such that it's like we have, um, a big catalog of potential mates, like a literal giant, like, picture like the old-timey phone books, you know, with a little thin paper. You just keep flipping pages and pages, doesn't seem to ever end. That's kind of what a lot of people how they look at the, the dating world. Like, uh, and then they stop at one, like, this one seems really good, good head on his or her shoulders, good looking, sexy, we click in that way, we click in a lot of ways, this is amazing. But they're like, uh, I don't want to commit, I don't know, uh, why? Well, because look at all the book I have left to go, the absolute perfect mate might be in here somewhere. And they just keep flipping through the pages, flipping through the pages. And I think that's a big reason why a lot of us do not, um, uh, commit. Commitment-phobic, fear of missing the one, fear that there's something better around the corner. Um, that's for a lot of men on the internet, angry men on the internet, they claim that is a very uniquely woman thing, that the woman is always looking to trade up, the woman's always looking for a better deal, etc., etc. I hear the same thing from dudes, my friends. I do all the time. Especially, um, post-divorce men dating. They'll be with some gal and they'll be describing her, and I'll say, that sounds awesome, good for you, dude. Yeah, but blah blah blah. And I'll say, well, so what does that mean? Yeah, she asked what we were, if we were boyfriend and girlfriend, if we could commit, and I told her I don't know. It's like, well, dude, it's not— it's not a nice thing to, um, keep that woman on the hook if you're not sure if she's the one or not. If she's wanting to settle down with somebody and everything else, maybe you should let her go. Maybe she let her go to find somebody that's a better match for her instead of a guy who's just kind of playing the field. Which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with. If you want to be, you know, um, a bachelor for the, you know, extended period of time for the foreseeable future, then be that. But you gotta, you know, date more intentionally, I guess you could say. When you sit down with somebody, you say, this is who and what I am, and I'm not varying from that. And it may be your intention is I want to find Mrs. Right, and it may be my intention is just to enjoy myself and have fun and never settle down again, and I'm never going to cohabitate, marry, or anything like that. If that's the case, then, um, um, uh, um, that's the case, but you got to put it out there. Mr. UT says the average women do not want to date average men and vice versa. Yeah, I don't know. Um, you know, when you look at as much as that is propagated out there, and I've said it as well too, that it seems like when you sit down and talk to women, and I have done so, um, for those that don't know, my wife is a a medical doctor. She's a surgeon, a pediatric surgeon. So she cuts up little kids and saves their lives and stuff. Pretty big brainy profession. She's very much a go-getter type person, and I respect the hell out of what she does. I admire her a great deal, what she does. And I have, you know, been to some of her, oh, company gatherings and friend gatherings, and she introduces me to some of her friends, and It sounds very stereotypical in our relationship talk world amongst men, but there is something to the stereotype of the, uh, professional woman in like her early mid-30s who hasn't found Mr. Right yet, or they had one and it slipped through her fingers, he didn't want to commit to her, so now here she is on the dating market. And what do they all say? I'm having a really difficult time finding Mr. Right. Well, what is it that you're looking for, miss? A lot of my wife's, uh, colleagues are also doctors or high-end something something, you know, and they will rattle off just a laundry list of stuff that I'm like, good luck, sister. That's, um, that's tough. And, uh, that's not necessarily a hypergamous streak in the woman saying that, well, you know, For those that don't know, there's a term called hypergamy, which is often spouted by a lot of, again, angry dudes on the internet. Um, how to best explain it? It's the observation that cross-culturally, women tend to mate across or up their little social hierarchy. In other words, those, those doctors, female doctors and stuff that I know, um, they're like, I'm not about to marry some school teacher. Who makes, you know, $50 grand a year or something like that. Well, why not? Is it a money thing? And they will tell you, no, not necessarily. It's like a lifestyle thing. It's a shared, uh, oh, uh, mentality thing. Like, we just wouldn't be a good match in that way. And what I've seen is that a lot of them kind of start lowering their standards a bit when it comes to that and come back to reality. And but a lot of them though end up with kind of their, their peer And, uh, it is the thought out there that men aren't wired the same, that men will in fact go down and pair up with somebody that's below them on the old social hierarchy, if you will. But we look at the data and we go, who do the male doctors and who do the male executives and who do the male whatever connect with? They tend to connect with also somebody at their level. It's interesting, isn't it? And, um, You know, the male doctor will go with some other woman who's also a professional and so forth. Not always, probably more so in the women's thing, but these days it seems like everyone wants to match up with kind of their peer. And for those gals that are, uh, high up there in the executives and whatever, and the 30-somethings, what they're finding is it's tough to find a peer. Why? Because all of them hooked up with women like a decade plus ago and they're still with them. They're not on the market anymore. Well, shit. So it's tough. Um, Useful Thought UT says, I was— oops— UT says, I, uh, I was in a relationship with two doctors, a veterinarian and a stroke unit doctor. Guess which one was the nicer relationship? Probably the vet, I would guess. Um, as the, as the husband to a, uh, a surgeon, I will tell you that their world is nuts, and it takes a certain type of personality to be able to pull that off and maintain your sanity, maintain relationships with others, maintain your health and everything else. It's an extremely stressful job, which does not bode well for a lot of relationships. My wife has arranged something within her job where she, she's on call a lot, unfortunately, but she also gets a lot of time off. So she gets a week off every month in addition to vacation. We've arranged it so she gets a lot of time off, and that keeps her sane. And, uh, she's, much to her credit, very good about balancing the two worlds. A lot of people are not. A lot of men and women— there's a lot of divorce in that world, a lot of cheating in that world, lots of not so good stuff in that world. Just a lot of stress and people working in close proximity to each other, life and death situations. And oof, it's a tough world. So it doesn't surprise me if you were the one to say that working with the stroke unit doctor was not so pleasant. But you don't want to lump everybody in the same category, do you? It's not necessarily fair, but doesn't surprise me. Other, um, kind of stressful, uh, professions that lead to a lot of marital strife, if you will, uh, the military. I was a military brat. My father was career military. Uh, Jason, one of our coaches in the, um, actually the head coach at Help for Men, is a retired career military man. And he will be the first to tell you, oh shit, yes, a lot of drama in the military marriage world. Oh yeah, also police officers. So it's a lot of those life and death, on the edge of danger, long hours working into the night, you know, get a call at 3 in the morning, you gotta get up and go type of thing. Doesn't bode well for a lot of marriages. We Fly says, so one of the things that I'm noticing about a lot of men is anger, anger about how women in general tend to be. Something that DSO helped with was mitigating those negative emotions. Yeah, you gotta— I see it too, dude, every day. Um, and some of it's kind of alarming and kind of scary, uh, but you try to empathize with dudes. And the fact is, is that I, I was for a brief period of time in that boat for sure. Um, and, uh, when I talk to guys that are in the middle of that or who have gone through that phase, that pissed off at the world, pissed off at women in particular phase of their life, For a lot of men, it boils down to, um, and I've said this many times before, that a lot of us have kind of a preconceived notion about what women are and what women are capable of. And I guess a little bit of a Pollyannaish, naive, hopeful mindset of they're different than that. Um, many of us, especially guys who are been bullied as kids, you know, didn't have the greatest childhood. You were bullied by whom? Probably guys. You know, who beat you up as a kid? Probably a guy. Who was it that treated you like shit as a kid? Probably a guy. You know, you're that nerdy kid who was picked on by the jocks and so forth. And so you have a, um, kind of a negative connotation when it comes to overtly, uh, masculine dudes. And so the, the converse, or the the flip side to those masculine evil men in your life are the women in your life. And so we hear a lot of guys that kind of gravitate towards the girls, and they, you know, they try to sell it as the women tend to be more empathetic, they tend to be better at the conversation, they're, they're more interesting people. All men want to talk about is sports and guns and whatever, you know. It's like, I like deeper people that are more soft and empathetic. And so they tend to build this case for a lot of the women are kind of holier than thou and putting them on what we call the proverbial pedestal of Oh, she's a woman. And you know what doesn't help is that you have a lot of sexual desire towards these women, and, and on and on. It just kind of builds this case of, holy shit, women are amazing, right? And then when they eventually get the luck of connecting with a woman— and, uh, it's, it's no, uh, it's no coincidence the type of woman that a lot of these guys connect with— and then they're hurt badly by the woman, and, uh, it just flips their worldview. You know, it's kind of like, um, seeing your parents drunk for the first time or something. It's scary, it's confusing, it's like it makes you feel uneasy. You feel like a little abandoned child, and it's just all these awful feelings all coming to the surface. And for men, often how it manifests itself is in the form of anger, lashing out. And the worst case scenario, we see guys who literally violently lash out at the world and do awful things to people. I won't go into details because I don't want to get this penalized or taken down. The social media is very sensitive about that, but we know what I'm talking about. Those guys that do that are, you know, when, uh, we look at those men that commit these awful crimes and so forth and we look at their background, we often see a very, um, guys who have very little luck with women, guys been hurt by women, guys been stepped on by women, incel-type dudes and so forth. A lot of neurodivergent guys and had a very difficult time with life. And, um, yeah, they get very, very angry. And then we see like a very minor league version of that in the comments of my videos and so forth. A lot of guys that are basically were hurt by woman, and it just rocked their world, and they just don't know how to process it. This was not how this was supposed to go. And what doesn't help is, like, for a lot of these guys, for example, those worst-case scenarios, those guys that are in, um, oh, family court trying to battle for money and trying to battle for the right to see their children, and they just day after day are just presented with the fact that, wow, the law, society in general, all seems to put her up on a pedestal as well. Just like ironically he did. And she's given the benefit of the doubt. People just naturally give her more money, more child time, more this, more that. She takes half my 401k. And then, um, all of the friends are still friends with the woman who cheated on him, and everyone just kind of looks the other way when she does terrible things. And it just really builds that case for her— women suck and the world's against me. And eventually you get through it and you realize that no, they're just fallible human beings like with everybody else. Like everybody else is. Um, they're capable of some pretty terrible, awful things, much like the men in our lives. And, um, it behooves us to have boundaries and understand, uh, what we will and will not put up with and, uh, what our values are, and just surround ourselves with those type of people and be able to cut it off and say, see you later, when those people treat us badly. That's the thing a lot of guys aren't capable of early on. We Fly says, for me, the anger came from a lack of understanding. It's not about agreeing or disagreeing, but understanding. Getting through this barrier is one of the key milestones to improving your relationships. Yeah, if you don't quite get where your partner— if you want to call them that— is coming from, see their perspective on things, it's pretty easy, um, pretty quick to demonize them, isn't it? They're different, they're not seeing it my way, goddamn them, to hell with them, and on and on. Especially when, you know, if we're talking about the women are from Venus, men are from Mars thing, how we're kind of wired differently when it comes to relationships, sexuality, and all the other good stuff. Um, to be presented with that right in our face by the opposite sex is kind of unnerving. I just did a little video about that where I said, um, we have a lot of guys that are very progressive in nature, very, um, liberal thinkers, if you will. And, uh, no slight against them, that's their, you know, way of seeing the world and so forth. I'm not trying to get politics involved in this, but you have very egalitarian men who are like, you know, men and women are no different, this all this nonsense about men think this and women think that, bullshit. And then when the women in their lives tell them, no, no, there's some truth to that, here, I'm— I think this way 'What you're saying is bad.' The men are like, 'Well, this doesn't compute. I thought we were all the same, egalitarian. I'm Mr. Feminist here, what the hell?' And those guys get really nasty and ugly, and they go in the opposite direction. It's interesting to sit back and watch. Um, uh, Jack Lumen says that you say you dealt with bullies, but paradoxically, family of origin women were already pretty cruel, so I was repressed and wound up codependent like the men in the family. Sorry to hear that. Um, and then We Fly says, when I started understanding how my wife was viewing the world, whether I agreed to it or not, I was able to do better at navigating conflicts. Well, very good. I mean, that's empathy in a nutshell, isn't it? That goes with anything in life, whether you're trying, you know, friendship, professional, or romantic, or whatever. Try to see the other person's point of view. But when you're angry at the world, or women in particular, that's the last thing you want to do. I So many men are like, I do not give a shit what she wants. She hurt me. She being women in general. They hurt me. It's funny how when we get hurt by 1, 2, 5, hell, even 10 women in our lives, we tend to apply that to every woman in life. When the more difficult thing is, why do I keep surrounding myself with all these terrible women who hurt me? That's the more, uh, difficult yet, um, oh, truth-laden path, if you will. Hmm, well, anything else, ladies and germs? It is about 2 o'clock my time. Been on here for a little bit. Real quick, if I may, ladies and germs, I see a lot of you guys that are regulars in my, uh, little lives and commenting on my YouTube videos and so forth, which, by the way, thank you so very much. It really helps. And if you haven't already, can you give me a like on this live stream? That helps out a great deal. But anyway, what I don't see is a lot of you guys in my, uh, private support community for men. HelpForMen.com/join to go to the join page for the Brotherhood. That's our group, that what we call our support community for men. A lot of cool benefits of joining, uh, chatting with men around the clock from around the world about this kind of stuff. Private, nobody sees what you're talking about. You can join in live meetings and talk to me live face to face, so to speak, and or book time with me one-on-one and read all my books, all kinds of cool stuff. So check it out, the Brotherhood, helpformen.com/join. Pretty please. Um, so Mr. Jack, this is sad. Uh, Jack Jones from Facebook, you say you've been suffering from cancer. I am so sorry to hear that, dude. You're not asking the wife to wait on your hand and foot, but damn, no empathy at all. You know, it's, um, It's a— this is one that a lot of men experience. And what do they do? Just what I mentioned. They go, see, women all suck. They don't have as much empathy as we thought. No, she's a human and she's capable of shitty things. Um, you know, it's, it's a little unknown fact, and I'm not trying to throw shade and say men are worse, whatever, just to illustrate the point that we're both capable of this, right? Uh, if you go to any nurse, doctor, whatever that deals with adult patients and, uh, you say, tell me, what is a, uh, a common outcome for a woman who comes into, like, um, for long-term care, like for breast cancer or something, like some kind of cancer treatments or whatever? And those people will say, you know what we see a lot? The men leaving. Um, it's so much so that a lot of people are kind of warned ahead of time, like, sit down, this kind of thing leads to a lot of marital strife. We see a lot of marriages fall apart, blah blah blah, here's some counseling and so forth. It's similar to, we see, um, Bariatric surgery, where people lose a great deal of weight. That means the weight loss surgery like stomach stapling and that kind of stuff, or the lap band or whatever they call it, um, those surgeries that cause you to not be able to eat very much anymore so you lose weight fast, drastically. And, um, probably Ozempic, we're going to see, you know, with those drugs, those GLP antagonists, we're going to see, um, more of this coming out as well. But we see that leads to a lot of disintegration of marriages simply because one loses a ton of weight and said, what am I doing with this other person over here anymore? Look at all the attention I'm getting, and away they go. And we see on the flip side, um, spouse gets really sick and the other person goes, uh, I don't have to deal with all this shit. This seems like a lot of headache. This guy or gal is going to cause me a lot of time and misery. I was already pissed at him before, and now add on to this, and, uh, now, now I'm just like, I don't see any upside, and I'm gonna have to care for this person hand and foot. And we see the worst of these people come out. Anytime there's like a super stressful life situation, it brings the worst out in people, potentially. For really good people, what happens? We see the best of them come out, and they really put on their, their angel halo, so to speak, and get to work helping out their, their partner or whatever. And like, God bless those people. But a lot of people don't act that way. And Mr. Jack, you got with somebody who does not act that way when things go tough. And I bet you, Jack, if we sat down and went over the some specific points in the timeline of your relationship with your wife, you can probably point to other instances where you saw this coming, so to speak. Like, this— it wasn't like she was an angel and then all of a sudden, cancer diagnosis, but I'm gonna ignore you now. It's like, no, there were some things from her past, things from when she was with you and so forth that all point to homegirl's got some problems. Uh, Uh, you're only 47 years of age. Well, younger than me. Uh, if I get this cancer whipped, amazing how life changes your outlook. Absolutely, absolutely. And, um, you say you didn't know that. What did you— I, I blabbed a lot, so I'm not sure which of that blabbing you, you were shocked by. Um, and I'm sorry going through that. What, if I may ask, Mr. Jack, I don't know what you want to because you're You're, you're not, uh, anonymous here, so I don't know if you want to share the nature of your illness exactly, what your prognosis is, but I wish you all the best. Keep positive, which is tough when you got a partner that's kind of, you know, emotionally shitting on you basically and ignoring you. But, uh, lean on friends, community as much as you can. Listen to your doctors, do what they tell you, eat right, sleep right, all that good stuff. 'Also try to recognize your idea of empathy.' This is We Fly. 'Also try to recognize your idea of empathy may look different than others. I had the issue of assuming that if she had empathy, she would da da da, but that's usually not the case.' Sure, people have different ways of, um, uh, showing their love and showing their appreciation. And some, your more avoidant types, just, oof, they're just really tough. They're really bad at that. They don't show it at all. They're like, 'I'm leaving you alone and not bothering you. That's how, that's how you know I love you.' It's like, okay, great, thanks. I'm not shitting all over you and treating you like crap. This is how you know I love you. Well, wonderful. Um, and then we got, uh, Jack, you say melanoma. Oof. Yeah, spread to your liver. Oh, okay. So are they doing like— are they taking a chunk of your liver out and all that good stuff? Yeah, guys, get your, uh, skin checked and wear your sunscreen. Put your shirt on outside. That's something I had to learn. Um, I had a basal cell carcinoma skin cancer on my back. Um, it wasn't melanoma. Melanoma is the bad one. Basal cell is the one they just cut out and it's gone. So I had, uh, my wife is a doctor and she was looking over all my spots on my back and stuff. She goes, I don't like how some of these moles and stuff look, you probably should go get it looked at. I'm like, all right. So I went in and they're like, these are all normal, benign, everything's cool, everything's fine. And then the woman stopped at one, she goes, I don't like look at that one though. It was right like on the crease of my armpit in the back. And she's like, yeah, I'm going to numb this and cut it out and then send it in. So she numbed it and took literally like a razor and scooped, like scooped the chunk of my skin out. And then they sent that in, they said, yeah, it's basal cell. I was like, oh shit, what does that mean? All scared. She's like, no, no, don't worry about it, but you need to come in again. We got to cut out more around the area where that spot was. And, um, yeah, went back in, re-numbed it all over again and cut out more. Now I have a big fat, like, I don't know, probably like a half dollar size for you Americans, uh, scar on my back right where they cut that out. And but I learned my lesson. When I go to the beach, I'm wearing one of those long sleeve sun shirts, you know, so UV ray, whatever. I'm slathering stuff all over this bald head of mine. And, uh, you know, helps with the aging as well as the skin cancer prevention thing. So guys, take care of your skin. Um, where can I hear your backstory, says Jack. Well, I don't know, good question. It's all over the place. HelpForMen.com, you may find more information there. I've done videos galore about it. Uh, my backstory I've mentioned here briefly, just for those, you know, Jack and others. Divorced 12 years ago, infidelity, infidelity on the wife's part. Caused me to question a lot in life. Had to take care of 3 little kids for a little bit there. It was like majority of time with me, very stressful. And it caused me to seek out forms of coping and therapy, one of which was writing. So, uh, which led me to writing books, one of which really took off, sold a bunch, got a lot— got me a lot of attention. Caused me to then start up a men's group and do coaching and create courses, write other books. And the rest is history. And you can learn more at help4men.com or go to our Mr. Jack. We would love to have you go to the, um, brotherhood there, help4men.com/join. Support community just for men. Oh, all right. Anything else, guys? If not, I'm gonna hang her up. But I do appreciate all of you. I gotta go pick up my some from school here soon. My young boy— soon it's just gonna be me and the young boy left. Well, and my 4-year-old daughter, keep forgetting about her. But, uh, as far as from my first batch of kids, uh, soon just, uh, the oldest one is in college. She'll be graduating college next year. Holy shit, I feel old. Uh, for her bachelor's, I should say. She's gonna stick around and stay for her graduate and possible PhD, and then, um, My middle will be going into college, will be wrestling in college next year at a Division II school up near Cincinnati. And it'll be me and the 14-year-old. And, uh, so interesting times ahead. All right, well, if there's nothing else, ladies and germs, thank you all so very much for joining me today. Guys, I'm going to say it again for the— oh, I don't know, 10th time in this call— the brotherhood, if you're a dude have a little bit of difficult time. You would love to— man, it'd be cool if I could, uh, go to a big room full of people and sit down and talk about this kind of stuff. Room full of dudes and sit down, talk about this stuff on a daily basis and, you know, talk about relationships and coping with the crazy ex and coping with the wife and the kids and the finances and career and the, like, dude stuff, you know? Because nobody in my life talks about this kind of shit. They just want to talk about sports and whatever. Yeah, we have such a group, and it's not a room full of people, it's an auditorium full of people. It's called the Brotherhood. help4men.com/join. Check it out, help4men.com/join. We would love to have you get in on the discussion and maybe see you in person at next year's BroFest in Louisville. All right guys, thank you all so very much once again. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe, all that good stuff, and we will catch you on the next one. A toodaloo!