Chat Live With Ralph (DSO)!

Well, well, well, ladies and germs, howdy do. How is everyone today? It's your boy Raffalito coming to you live from— yeah, that's right, Texas, the Republic of Texas, North Dallas to be more specific, Plano area. If anybody is from here or near here, say howdy. Alright, we're going to give a little bit for everyone to file in here. Let's see who's going to join us this afternoon. You always have the fear that you're going to be the only dude on here. It has yet to happen, but you never know. And just confirming that yes, in fact, I am live. We're good to go. Cool. Let's give a little bit for folks to file in here. Can't speak today. Not off to a good start, Ralphie boy. Give me a comment here if you could, please. Let me know where you are joining us from. Always good to see where everybody's at in the world. We typically have people from all over the place that join these. From, uh, have we had anybody from Asia? Yeah, we have. Cool. I think pretty much everywhere. South Africa, Australia, all over the US. We have our first comment here from Justin on YouTube who says, "Love DBF." DBF is The Dead Bedroom Fix. Check this out, ladies and germs. All right. Oh man, I can't see. Well, bam! Huh? Look at that, huh? It's a graphic and I just did a lot of work to put all this together, so hope you ladies appreciate this. The Dead Bedroom Fix is what Mr. Justin is referring to. It's a book I wrote. Years ago, and I came out with a second edition in 2020. Is there a third edition coming out? Hmm, maybe. Stay tuned, folks. But anywho, there's a picture of the book. You can learn more at deadbedroomfix.com, which will route you to our other site. What other site, Ralph? What are you talking about? Well, I'll tell ya. We have a relatively new site out there called Help for Men, helpformen.com. We want this to be a resource for just what it sounds like, All things for dudes that are like, I need some help. If you're a dude who's married and it ain't going too well, and you would really like to improve it, you really don't want a divorce. You kind of see it going that way, but you'd really like to do all you can to save it. Or you're divorcing and you're really having a hard time coping with it, and you're having a hard time, you know, figuring out what to do, where to go next, and all this other fun stuff. You're already divorced, dating again, got that whole new wonderful world. Um, we have guys, you know, dead bedrooms from the book that I wrote years ago, The Dead Bedroom Fix, and everything in between. And when I say guys, I'm referring to a private group that we have, a private group, private group for me. This is going to be an interesting one today. I'm just fumbling with all my words today. A private group for men only called— pardon me while I find the graphic here— well, bam, uh, the HFM Brotherhood. The Help for Men Brotherhood, private group that has lots of cool benefits. Yes, there is a cost involved. It comes out to be, if you pay on a monthly basis, it's less than a dollar a day, folks. It's like the cost of, you know, less than the cost of one of these. And what do you get for that? Access to myself and all the other coaches on the team. And when I say access, I mean in the form of private discussion forums on Discord, on Facebook, private groups. No one can see that you're a part of it. Don't worry. Um, and we've had tens of thousands of discussions started on there amongst our members with the coaches, myself. In addition to that, if that's not enough interaction for you, we actually get together live via Zoom, myself and the other coaches. Each of us host meetings about once a week, so it comes out to be about 2 to 4 meetings a week live. Meetings last anywhere from like an hour, 2 hours, and then, um, Those are face-to-face, if you will. We get to interact, ask questions, get on audio and talk to each other, and we talk about lots of cool stuff in those meetings. A lot of work is done in those meetings. And if you miss a meeting, no biggie. We record them all and you can listen to them right from your phone. We make it so that we can take the audio feed from our meeting archive and shoot it right to your phone's podcast app. Along with, by the way, I didn't mention you get all my books for free, and then another book written by one of our coaches, Austin, in PDF format. And all my books also come in audiobook format, which you can also listen to from your phone. What else do we have? Um, we have coaching that's available to the general public through those coaches that I mentioned. Anybody off the street can go to help4men.com, order coaching. If you're a member of our group, it's like half off. In addition to that, we get together in person for conferences. Conferences and meetups. We get together once a year in the States. We'd like to increase the frequency of those, but we're— we've already had 4 annual meetings. We will have the 5th one coming up. It's in Charleston, South Carolina. How cool is that? And, um, Justin is asking if that replaced the Dead Bedroom Fraternity. You're mixing up a couple of words there. Did that replace the DSO Fraternity, which stands for Dad Starting Over? Yes, we renamed the, um, all of our business, if you will, coaching, the private groups, the books, um, coming soon, uh, we're going to redo the video courses. All of those will be sold under the Help for Men umbrella. Uh, Help for Men is kind of the hub of everything. Dad Starting Over is still around. Obviously you're watching this on the Dad Starting Over channel, right? YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, wherever. Um, Dad Starting Over is now part of the Help for Men network and we are looking for other, uh, influencers or content creators, probably a better word, who want to come into the fold and And the more you help grow our group, the more we will reward you monetarily. You get to split some of the fees, the member fees. We will split those with you 50/50. So coming soon, we're gonna have a little partner signup for anybody who wants to help promote our group, make a few bucks on the side, join our group, all that fun stuff. So enough of that. Let's go back to, shall we? Let's go back to the Help for Men logo. Help for Men. We have Mr. Volume 8 Studios from YouTube, is from Puerto Rico. Hola, Volume 8 Studios, or should I say, how do you say volume in Español? Volumocho. Volumo? My mother's from Spain, you'd think I would know this. I don't. I don't speak Spanish. I can read it okay enough to maybe fool people, but And I know enough to be dangerous in terms of people around me are talking, I can pick up enough to know in general what they're saying, but I miss a lot of it. So if you're gonna ask me, "Hey Ralph, you speak Spanish?" No, I don't. And my wife is German, and no, I don't speak German either. I have a, my wife and I have a 3, she's my second wife by the way, in case you're wondering, have a 3-year-old child together. That 3-year-old child is bilingual. She speaks German and English fluently. She has one up on me. How sad is that? I guess I better start learning something, huh? Maybe German, so I can speak to my wife and daughter so they don't talk behind my back. And the wife speaks English too, in case that wasn't obvious. Um, what else, guys? So welcome everyone, welcome, welcome. I'm doing this vertically. Hey, you guys, uh, so far we have Justin and Volume 8 Studios, um, who, uh, joining on YouTube. Just curious, are you seeing this on the YouTube Shorts? Supposedly if you do a vertical like this, it shows up in Shorts feed. So we may have more folks that see me if you're on the Shorts feed and you're scanning through and you see my dumb bald head on doing a live and you're clicking in and joining us. Hey, welcome! Let me know, I would love to know. So this is just another way of reaching the masses. Uh, YouTube, you know, keeps sending out things saying please go live vertically, please, please. They're trying to grow that, I guess, you know, to compete with the, uh, TikToks and Facebooks and all other stuff. So here we are, I am simulcasting this, if you will, on YouTube, Facebook Where else? Twitter. We don't have much in the way of folks joining us so far. I'm going to refresh the screen, make sure everything is cool. Do, do, do. Pardon me. Click, click, click. Yeah, it looks like we're good. Not many folks joining us so far today. Welcome. If you could do me a favor, for those few of you that are joining me today, if you could give this a like or a share or however it works wherever you're watching this, man, I would appreciate it. That'd be awesome. Okay, do me a big fat favor. Thank you so much. Uh, would anybody, uh, like to ask anything? Justin, Volume 8, if you guys are still with us, um, ask away. Anything, a story you would like to share with the group. Eventually, yes, I will probably cut this into clips and post for the world to see. No, I will not call you out and, you know, first name if you have like your first name or last name on your account name. I'm not going to call you out and say, "John Doe asks whatever." Somebody may say, "Hey, John, I know him." You know what I'm saying. So, anywho, please do not be shy, guys. This is for you. Come and say, "Hey, hello." HelpForMen.com is our new website. All kinds of cool stuff on there. Please check it out. What, um, anything here that may prompt some conversation? Um, here recently I posted a tweet. About, um, something I've noticed amongst people that contact me. I get mostly men that contact me, with the occasional gal, lady. In addition to that, people that I've known in my personal life and friend network and professionally over the years, and a trend that I have seen— this does not mean this is universal by any stretch of the imagination, okay— but what I've seen is, uh, Somebody is noticing their partner of so many years drifting away from them. Intimacy usually is the first thing to go, and intimacy can be defined as anything physical, emotional, stuff that keeps them, you know, closely, close together as a romantic couple. And they will notice, we don't hug and kiss as much anymore, we don't hold hands like we used to, so-and-so doesn't randomly compliment me and twirl me around the room and kiss me and hug me and tackle me like they used to in the kitchen. And, you know, certainly not having sex nearly as much, if at all, anymore. And what's going on? It could be a myriad of things, but from what I have seen, my personal experience, take it for what it's worth, obviously I'm biased in my perspective in who I attract to me, even in my friend group, right? With that being said, a trend I see is the women are far less apt to say, it may be something with me, and it may be something with me that is causing him, my partner, to be less attracted to me at a very visceral, basic level. Could be looks. Could be behavior. Could be that the person, you know, has been very, very negative. Super anxious. Super— something that just takes the other partner out of the romance mode. Sometimes that's it. And it seems that the men that I speak to— let's qualify it— the men that I speak to— I don't speak to every dude in the world. That may surprise you. They are very quick to go, what did I do? How do I fix it? This sucks. Wife has checked out. Oh shit, maybe there's, you know, some visceral reason why she doesn't like me too much anymore. Something physically wrong with me. A lot of men go there. Something I did. Is it because I lost my job 6 months ago? It took me forever to get a new one. Is that it? And on and on and on and on. Well, a lot of the women that are, again, attracted to me and my material— I shouldn't say attracted, you know what I mean— that come to me, my material, watch my stuff, react to it, comment on it, and then in turn reach out to me via message. Hey Ralph, I'm noticing my spouse seems to be very distant from me. I have checked their phone, I have done this and this, blah blah blah blah blah. They start rattling off outside reasons such as, you know, maybe it's the porn he's watching. Maybe it's that secretary at work that makes, you know, eyes at him. I've noticed maybe there's something more there that I'm not aware of. And on and on and on. Outside stuff seems to be what a lot of these ladies default to. And they seem to have a very difficult time when I go, you know, sorry, Candace,. But it may be, maybe he's just not attracted to you anymore. Is there something that has happened? Here we go, going to hurt some feelings here, but let's be honest here. Men or women both, this applies. Has, have you physically changed a lot in recent memory? Gained a lot of weight is the most obvious one. There's something happened to illness or something otherwise which has caused you to be objectively less attractive than what you were before. Somebody who was very, very ill and was unable to move, can't bathe themselves very well, whatever it may be, objectively is kind of like, "Gooey." And then maybe like, "Hey, what the heck? What's up with person not touching me anymore?" From what I've seen, again, just my audience, it seems the men are the first to say, "Well, it's because I'm a gross, fat, unbathed slob, that's why." And the women, on the other hand, are like, "I don't get it." And I'm over there like, "What do you mean you don't get it?" What do you guys think? Do you see that in your world as well? Now, a lot of— I posted this and a lot of women came back and totally, you know, I'm not discounting their perspective at all, but their perspective is one of what they've always seen themselves as being very self-deprecating, always trying to look the best, always doubting their looks. "Oh my gosh, I'm getting older. No one will like me anymore," et cetera, et cetera. So to hear somebody like me say, A lot of women aren't the first to point to themselves as the cause of less obvious attraction from their spouse. Made those women sit up and take notice and go, "How dare you? Not what I see at all." Okay, cool. Just what I see. Why do I see that dynamic so much? Well, people that are attracted to my material tend to be anxious dudes. Anxious dudes with the old anxious attachment. They're chasing after the wife. They're trying to pursue the wife. They're consistently trying to win favor of the wife, trying to always do things to keep the relationship bond tight between he and the wife. They don't like that distance. And when they feel that something distancing, even if it's like a healthy distance, independence, she has her hobby, I have my, even when they have that, the men are like, ah, I tend to attract those because of the book I wrote, The Dead Bedroom Fix. Let me put that up here so people can see, because of this book that I wrote. Hell, it's right in the title, Fix. You know, we say men tend to be fixers. Well, when it comes to the relationship and the relationship dynamic and trying to keep you two together, anxious dudes are super fixers in that way. They really apply that fixing mentality to the relationship in a big, big, big way. So I write this book going, hey, sexless marriage, right? Here's a potential fix. Here's the dead bedroom fix. And these men take notice and they bought thousands and thousands and thousands of copies of this. Thank you very much, men, by the way. And then they come follow me on social media, join my group, and on and on. So if that man is with a gal, that gal tends to be, not always, tends to be the polar opposite in some ways. In the polar opposite, in the attachment style way, temperament, whatever you want to call it, is they're very avoidant in nature. Gah, get away from me. I don't think so. So those ladies, it could be argued, are less apt to apply the same kind of criteria to keeping the relationship together. He's not doing anything anymore, it can't be me, you know, kind of attitude. Blanket statement, here we go, gonna piss people off. Avoidant people, from what I've seen, there's degrees to it. Let's say super avoidant people, we all know them. Men tend to be more so than women, but obviously that's not always the case. Men or women, both super avoidant, tend not to be the best romantic partners at all because to be a good romantic partner long-term requires work. And to do the work on the relationship means you gotta be a little anxious a little bit about the relationship. You gotta be a little bit like this. I'm, I'm preoccupied a bit with the health of the relationship. I'm a good steward of the relationship. I'm willing to put in work to maintain the relationship machine. Little bit, not to unhealthy degrees, but you have to have some of that in you to make it work. Super avoidant person does not have that at all. Good luck telling them, we're gonna need to do this, we're gonna need to do that. They're gonna be like, oh God, can we just stop already? And you will often hear from them, if it doesn't come naturally, if I'm not head over heels, falling in love, slobbering sex slave like I was in the early stage of the relationship, the honeymoon phase, then this ain't gonna work. That's often the sentiment from that crowd. Setting yourself up for failure, folks. So, hey, my husband, my wife is a dyed-in-the-wool, super avoidant person. I'm like, good freaking luck. Is it fixable? Absolutely, it's fixable. But the work to get there, oof, oof. And you, Mr. or Miss Anxious, got to be super patient and dial your anxieties down while you're sitting back watching this person ever so slowly come around and then regress some, maybe for like a month, and then they come back, then they regress for a week, then they're in their old self again. And then, and in the meantime, you're starting to become more secure, hopefully, and stripping away a lot of your anxieties. And what happens often for those As I've said a million times, what happens often for those anxious people is that they go, what the hell am I doing with this person again? Because they're more secure. Secure people don't hang out with avoidant types. Sorry, folks. That was a long blabbing speech, but one I give quite often. Can't give it enough, it seems. Let's go back to the old Help for Men, shall we? HelpForMen.com. Check it out, guys. I was going to say guys and gals. Not gals. It's not for you. You can check it out if you want. The material, the private group on there, all that stuff. It's not for you ladies. You're welcome to share it, like it, do whatever to spread the word, but please keep in mind it's not for you. Where is everybody from? We got just a couple of guys who said where they're from. We got Justin and we got Volume 8 Studios. We got Tulsa, Oklahoma and Puerto Rico in the house. Where else is everyone from? Please don't be shy. Let me know. I always find it interesting. And give me a like, por favor. Give me a share. Would greatly appreciate it. That would mean an awful lot to me. And if you are interested in joining our group, you got some questions for me, maybe you're interested in becoming like a partner to help, uh, uh, um, spread the word for the Help for Men, the private group, all that fun stuff, you can always email me if you like. If you like versus getting on here, ralph.b@ help4men.com. I'm gonna put it in the comments there. Ralph.B. help4men.com. There you go. Check her out, ladies and germs, or not check her out. Shoot me an email. We got Nathan from North Carolina. Cool. Welcome, Nathan. But we're jumping all over the place. We got Tulsa, Oklahoma. We got Puerto Rico and we got North Carolina. And I'm in Texas, so not too far from you, Justin. Anyone else? Please don't be shy. Every now and then my screen on Facebook freezes. I hope it's not freezing for you guys. When I refresh, it looks good, so I'm going to assume all is good. Let me, uh, check this out. Let me make sure I'm muted so the world doesn't hear my sounds. Yeah, we look good. Cool. All right. Anything anybody else cares to share? I do not enjoy it. You know, I've scrolled through some live stuff and I see some lives on there and it's a lot of people just blabbing to themselves. And I'm not Mr. Blabber Guy. I'm not the best salesman in the world. Let's just put it that way. Never have been. It's not my wheelhouse. Let other people do that. Every now and then, if I have to, like with these things I can promote, but to talk endlessly about myself and stuff. I know some men love to talk about themselves. Eh, not so much. I joke that me, I am my own favorite subject. That's kind of a tongue-in-cheek. I'm not. Um, as I've mentioned on here before, it's taken me like 800, now we're up to 1,000-some videos I think I've posted on YouTube. A lot of those are clips from longer videos, but anyway. Took me a lot, a lot of videos to get to the point where I'm comfortable talking on screen, so to speak. So to take the next leap and just talk and blab away at myself for an hour, no, kind of douchey. Anything else? Oh, here we go. Mr. Nathan says, hey Ralph. Well, hey Nathan. What's the method to go from avoidant attachment to secure? I'm, Nathan says, the avoidant and my wife is the anxious. Interesting. I don't normally attract men with this dynamic. So welcome, Nathan. Thank you. Let me adjust myself here. Oh yeah. All right. What's the method? I don't think there's necessarily the method. If there's a way to encapsulate, summarize, if you will, the method, if there is such a thing, is basically, uh, go to the source. An avoidant person is typically one that's like, uh, I can't be vulnerable, I can't be open, my independence trumps all. As soon as I feel myself enmeshed with somebody in some way, as soon as I feel that that person is dependent on me in some way, gah, ugh. I'm not really— that ain't for me. I'm just put myself in a cabin in the woods with my dog somewhere and I'm cool, right? Sounds like a very masculine thing. Like I said, there's a lot of women like that too, but that's an extreme example. That's one flavor of it, but that's what we see often. Nathan, does that describe you, my friend? Well, again, go to the source. Why is that? Where'd that come from? Something happened in your childhood, and not like a major event, a series of dozens of hundreds of little things over your childhood. Something taught you to be this way, basically. Something taught you that, um, being otherwise is going to be detrimental to you and your safety, your sanity, whatever it may be. You have to put up walls. You have to guard yourself. You need to figure out what caused that, uh, come to terms with it. Therapy. Talk to people about it, and slowly but surely let your guard down and let people in and realize you're safe to do so. It's okay. Now, the negative is, since you're avoidant in that way, you're going to, as I've mentioned millions of times, attract, um, your anxious types, and they're really going to test you. Your anxious types are just kind of Hanging on you all the time. What are you doing? Where are you going? What are you thinking about? It sounds like a very feminine thing, right? Because again, most of the anxious types are, uh, are the gals in our life. What are you going? What are you doing? Why were you 10 minutes late? What, what does that look on your face mean? Is this something I said? Um, does this make me look fat? Uh, The other day somebody said this to me and it really hurt my feelings. Is it true? And on and on and on to the point where you're just like, I'm gonna go away for a while. Um, I'll be back. Where are you going? I don't know, but not here. Um, if it sounds like I'm speaking from experience, that was the dynamic that I saw quite a bit, um, in my childhood. My dad— this is my mom, dad, by the way— My dad wasn't a full-fledged avoidant person. He was open with his feelings somewhat. He was loving. He was Mr. Hug and Kiss. He was all those things, but he had a point where he reached his tipping point of, I think I'm done here. Or not done, I need a break here. That's probably more apt. And would take off. And I often joke, I've been writing for years about this dynamic I saw growing up. Dad would leave and be gone for like 4 hours. Where? Hardware store for 4 hours. I went with him sometimes, and it wasn't just hardware store. It was go here, go there, go there, go there, go there. And it was all nonsense, just hanging out, escaping from home, being by himself away from the anxious Mrs., basically. Does that sound like you, Mr. Nathan? Just curious. Am I— am I— are you nodding while I'm saying this, or you're like, that's not really me? Um, so get to the origin of it. Get to the point where you feel safe via therapy, something similar to— probably need to talk to somebody about it. And what they'll do is be like, well, Nathan, tell me about mom and dad. What happened? What's going on, buddy? Blah, blah, blah. And then you'll, you know, you'll talk some things through and they'll be like, well, timeout right there. What makes you think that? And, uh, wife, how does that make you feel when he says that? See, Nathan, not the greatest thing in the world. That's something you need to work on. And I had one gal who'd reached out to me not too long ago who had, um, a super duper alpha male. I mean, I'm not going to say what his profession was, but it was pretty much the archetype for super duper alpha male, whatever guy wants to be type of dude, right? And he just did not have a romantic bone in his body. He was— he went from A to Z. He went from sitting on the couch to do nothing to let's do it. And nothing in between. And to push for stuff in between made him do the old eye roll, like, okay, are you kidding me? Like, all the way from hold hands, you know, put your arm around her when you're sitting next to her. Like, that stuff was just foreign to him. But when she met him, she was very much attracted to his uber masculine, Type A, alpha male, for lack of a better term, kind of behavior. Super manly. She liked that. And then what comes with it? A whole lot of avoidant tendencies. She's like, I don't like that. And she said they, they went to therapy and the therapist was like, dude, you got to work on that stuff, like the hand-holding. When she snuggles up next to you on the couch, don't just sit there with your arms to your side like you'd rather be anywhere else. Put the arm around her, you know, those type of things. And she said, to his credit, he put in the effort. She said they'd be walking next to each other and you can see him instantly— or not instantly, you can see him eventually go like Oh yeah, that's right, handhold. And he would reach over mechanically, grab hand and walk. And she's like, this is nice, but it's mechanical. It's like holding hands with a robot. There's no feeling there. There's no lovingness there. Then they would sit next to each other on the couch and he'd be like, oh yeah, and put his arm around her shoulder. And she said again, it was like, like an alien or somebody who was going through the motions of pretending. And here she is doing the old thing that a lot of people do, a lot of anxious types do, which is it doesn't mean anything if you don't mean it. Will you come with me to this, this, and this, and this, and this? Fine. And then you go with them and you just sit there like, oh God, I hate every moment of this. Like, it's not the same because you don't feel like— you don't want to be here. It's obvious you don't want to be here. You don't want to do this thing. You're like, well, if you're waiting for me to want to do this thing and want to be here, don't hold your breath. It's not going to happen. It's a very typical dynamic. So for her, and I, I pretty much, uh, uh, Uh, Per did what her therapist told her, same thing, which was, it's gonna take a lot of time, sweetie. Mr. Robot alpha male tough dude over there just ain't gonna become Prince Charming overnight. It's gonna, you know, the walk with the awkward hand-holding, yeah, do that about 100 more times. You know, the put the arm around when you're on the couch thing, again, repetition, repetition, rewarding, talk it through. It's going to take some time. So Nathan says this sounds pretty, uh, pretty accurate, and I make the cabin in the woods seem like a solid plan. That's a very guy thing to escape and be, you know, just on my own. I probably— a lot of men have some avoidant tendencies within us. I'm probably what you would call that disorganized. I'm a good mixture of both. I can bounce, I can wear both hats, because probably because I saw both hats as a kid. And, um, it depends on which way the wind's blowing, you know, if I'm kind of feeling anxiety today or feeling like I just want to run away to the cabin in the woods. So I can relate, but you're gonna need to get some help with it. There's no one method. I'm not gonna tell you, yeah, do 20 push-ups and you'll be all set. They don't work that way. Um, Mr. James from Facebook says, I'm having trouble dealing with the pain of knowing that my wife will never be like she was in the first several years of our relationship. Parentheses, good libido, etc. Even if I do the work and get some better results, just knowing that she doesn't have real genuine desire anymore makes me feel like I've lost my wife. She's not really her anymore. Any tips on getting over this? I've become very depressed over it. All kinds of questions here, James. I'm sorry you're going through this, buddy, and I think a lot of men can relate to you. Somewhat. Yeah, this occurs on degrees here. Um, you're making a lot of platitude-type statements. Uh, she doesn't have real genuine desire for me anymore. Says who? Says her? I mean, if she did tell you that flat out, like, I— dude, I did— it's not happening and it's never gonna happen. I can't get much more blunt than that. I— some women and men alike are that mean about this kind of thing? Or is it that you just don't— like, like you say, you're— the energy from the first few years of the relationship ain't there? Well, of course not. That's called a long-term relationship. And, um, and if you're one of those people like, well, it does for me, I've been with my woman for 40 years and we get it on every day, you're not the norm, okay? There's also people that are, you know, 7'6" and can slam dunk a basketball without jumping. Not the norm. You're the 7-foot-6 dude who, you know, can easily dunk a basketball. Most of us cannot. Most of us, no matter how many times we train and work on stuff, will barely be able to graze the rim and touch the rim, let alone go, you know, 6 inches over and slam dunk it. You get the analogy. So are you saying then that— yeah, I guess you paint a picture for us here. What allows you to speak in such platitudes here? I'm not denying what you're saying. Maybe you guys have had the big talk. Maybe she's just taken it off the table. It's been a period of years and nothing you seem to do seems to move the needle, so to speak. Maybe help flesh it out, as I always say, a little bit more here, Mr. James. What do you say? Um, and then in the— it's interesting, you are exhibiting some of what they call, and this isn't necessarily fair to start throwing around labels, but there is some of what we see in the anxious guy tendencies within just your little few sentences here. Um, if you do the work and you get better results. So let's define what some of that work may be. Wife, damn it, let's get the energy back in this relationship. I'm presuming a lot here, uh, you could be older folks, I don't know. Let's just say you got some little kids, but got child care set up for the kiddos. Grandma, aunts, uncles, whoever are going to be watching them. It's just you and me for the weekend. We're going to Puerto Rico, like one of our guys here joining us today is from. And we're going to just have fun on the beach and drink piña coladas and just relax and enjoy each other's company. Go maybe go do some dancing, go out to eat. No expectations for any nookie. You don't tell her that, but you're thinking that, like, if it happens, that happens great. If not, okay, at least we enjoy each other's company, have fun. And then you go do something like that, and lo and behold, oh wow, We went on a 2-day trip and we had fun 4 times. We haven't had fun 4 times in a weekend in I don't know how long. And then you come back home and you're like, and back to mom mode we go. She's stressed, she's not wearing any cute little sundress like she was in Puerto Rico, and all she can talk about is the stress of this, stress of work, stress of house, stress of kid, how gross she's getting, how fat she is, how da da da da da. So now I have to play the part of the captain of the ship and kind of steer her back to romance mode. No, dear, you're beautiful. No, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you— is any of that ringing a bell? And are you depressed over the fact that it now takes work, all that stuff I mentioned, to get a rise out of your gal for what used to be so simple in the early stage? Because in the early stage, if you're like most guys, it's like, hey honey, I'm home, and wham bam, thank you ma'am, here we go, this is fun, woohoo, I feel like a king. Now it's set up the trip to Puerto Rico, spend the thousands of dollars, yada yada, blah blah blah, you know. The drill. And that depresses you to hear that. Would it surprise you that there are people in this world who are not depressed by that fact? There are people in this world who— that's like, well, duh, that's the way life is. Um, I love my wife to death. Uh, the fact that we've gone from the average of doing it 30 times a month to down to 12 a month is Yeah, that's fine. Down to 6 a month? Eh, whatever. I mean, James, people like this exist. So am I saying what you're feeling is wrong? Again, presuming a lot, assuming a lot. I don't know. Just fill in the blanks here. All I have to go is, you know, a couple sentences here. Um, lost my train of thought. So with some people, that's cool. With you. Not so cool. Are you a bad person for feeling that way? No, that's— you're just wired to want that connection at a more visceral, heightened level for an extended period of time. Maybe, James, the writing is on the wall and you're trying to shoehorn yourself— you're square peg, round hole. I, James M, am the square peg. Here's the round hole of long-term monogamy with one person. No matter how— you can take a mallet and, you know, shove it in there. You're gonna have a lot of broken pieces of whatever, and eventually you're gonna get the hint of maybe I need to stop whacking, and maybe I need to find a square hole that I fit into. Maybe, James, the easiest solution for you and other guys like you is on to Plan B. Horrible of me to say, I know, but if you're genuinely not happy and you're not a terrible person for thinking, I would like an increase in, in romance, activity, spice, whatever, in the relationship. And if your partner unilaterally says, not with me you ain't, then go over here. What I find is a lot of men are like, I can't. Sure you can. And they will come back with, no, I can't, because kids, because my religion, because yada yada yada. And really what it boils down to is your codependency, your unhealthy attachment to a person who doesn't like you anymore, putting up with a lot of horseshit in life that, you know, because you think you're going to win some grand prize when you get to the afterlife. Who knows? I'm not trying to insult anybody, but I've heard it a lot. And that probably bleeds over into other parts of your life, your professional life, your life with friends and everything else, putting up with a lot of horseshit because you think you're supposed to and you think you have no other choice in life. And often in these kind of situations, what it takes is the other person, the person who's, you know, Miss Avoidant, who's just like, eh, I don't want to, or Mr. Avoidant, whatever, they eventually go and leave. Often— not often, that's not right— sometimes with somebody else, for somebody else, believe it or not. I know, as crazy as that may sound, not unheard of. And you guys go your separate ways and you realize Oh, phew, so much better now. And so do they. Because why? You weren't meant to be together. I don't know what to tell you, dude. Again, I'm assuming a lot here. Who knows? Maybe I'm way off base, but I would certainly love the opportunity to chat with you one-on-one. HelpForMen.com/coaching. Or James, buddy, I've seen your name off and on many times. Have you joined our men's group yet? And if so, why the heck not? Pretty dirt cheap to join a support group for that little money. I mean, there's other groups that cost hundreds of dollars. I've been told by I don't know how many people, dude, what are you doing? You need to add, you know, like a number in front of that membership fee with all the crap you're spending on everybody. It's like, yeah, but I want to make this as available as much to the general public as possible. I'm not trying to get filthy stinking rich off of this. I'm just trying to help some people. Yeah, put some money in my pocket to keep the lights on, literally lights on in here and everything else that you're seeing here. But I'd like to reach a lot more Jameses out there and help you out. And to James, I think the group would be ideal for you. Give it a shot for a month or two. If you don't like it, you just quit. But I think this type of stuff you're asking— what if you got, you know, feedback from a thousand different guys, or thousands, hundreds of different guys at once from all over the world? That's what the group's about. When you get on a live meeting and you chat with myself, one of the other coaches, one-on-one, and you put a plan together— that's what the group's all about, dude. Give it a shot. MrGuitarGod365, welcome back, says, James, probably hearing quote, I don't think about it when bringing up sex talk at all. Kind of in the same boat. Yeah. My wife is in her mid-30s, no libido, even if she will do it obviously just for me. Oh, so she's— it's pity or whatever. She has no interest and it takes work even to get this. So I totally feel this way as well. It's not practical to have to get away every weekend, but yeah, I totally feel the same. Um, this is— I, I believe Guitar God, excuse me if we've talked about this before, I— your name has come up several times. I speak and spoken to so many people that it's tough. It's, it's impossible for me to keep all these stories straight and everything else. But have you read the book The Dead Bedroom Fix? Number one. Yes. You've implemented it. You've given it months. Yada, yada, yada. Chapter 7 is the quintessential chapter in the whole damn book. Spoiler alert: Chapter 7 is titled something about, uh, uh, it didn't work. Meaning you can try everything through Chapter 1 through 6 in the book, all these ideas. Not going to bullshit you, it may not work, but you should have a grand epiphany by then, which is, I'm a pretty good dude, I'm a good-hearted human being. I'm a loving person. I'm— all I'm doing is trying to do work to keep us together, and this other person says buzz off repeatedly, no matter what I do, no matter what kind of help I get, no matter how much of an olive branch I reach, you know, extend, no matter how much, how much I, you know, Mr. Anxious Guy, try to get us into counseling and da da da da da, it's just not moving the needle at all, and it's been months and months and months. The easiest solution. Occam's razor. Sometimes the simplest solution is the correct one. You made a big oopsie, and this person has basically pushed you away for years and years and years, dumped you, if you will, years ago. Whether it's their biological problem which has caused the split, whether it's just emotionally that is disconnected from you, whether there's somebody else in the picture, who knows what, right? So many of you just keep holding on and holding on and just beating your head against the wall. And from my perspective, and people like me outside, we're all like, what are you doing? I don't get it. So Guitar God, maybe help share with us where you're at in all this. What are you thinking? What have you tried? What has worked? What's not worked? Do you want to continue being in this relationship? If so, why? Do you still like— here's the thing that a lot of people are bothered by. "Do you still like your wife?" I will often ask men. And they're taken aback. "Eh, what?" "Do you like her as a human being? You find her interesting, you love her to death, she's in essence one of, if not your best pal in the whole world, your lover, you're all these things. Do you like the person?" And when I get that big dead silence for like 30 seconds, I'm like, "Dude, that's not good. You don't like the woman." You've had all these issues. She's basically pushed you away for years and years, kind of dumped you. Let's, you know, sometimes it's like over a decade ago, sometimes through a very big acute event, something terrible happened and the wife's like, I don't want anything to do with you. I hate you, blah, blah, blah. And they've never recovered from that. But usually it's a lot of small little micro events over a period of years and then they eventually, you know, fizzle out. And it's like the man's like, we haven't touched each other in 3 years. This is broken. And I listen to their story. I'm like, yeah, you've been kind of dumped, dude. You can do a lot of work to bring you back together, which a lot of men already have by the time they talk to me. Or you can look at the writing on the wall. I'm speaking in circles. I'm talking again and again saying the same thing, but what more can you do? Well, Walid from YouTube says, how are you? I'm from France. Can you tell me about your content? Well, Walid, The best place to start would be help4men.com. I've been putting out content under the name of Dads Starting Over for years. I've written books under the name DSO, which stands for Dads Starting Over, for years. We had a private group, used to be called the DSO Fraternity, and now it is called the HFM Brotherhood under the Help for Men banner. I ask— pardon me, I suggest check out help4men.com, Dads Starting Over across all the different social media channels. You'll be looking at videos from now until Christmas, so you'll never run out of stuff to watch. Guitar God says, yeah, I've read the book many times, he says. Emotional intimacy, etc., all that seems normal. Okay. The only thing that worked at all was threatening to leave. Not good. Yes, I do like her and I love her. Good. I miss her when she's gone. Also good. We get along perfectly fine otherwise. Think again. I know I'm not calling you an— I'm not calling you a, uh, The next— sorry, I was distracted by the next, uh, um, question. I'm gonna put that one for now, but it's so glaringly like a left turn that I have to laugh. Back to you, Guitar God. Um, we get along fine otherwise. That's the, the quintessential line you hear from so many people. Everything's great. Men and women both do this, by the way. Everything is great except for the whole sex thing. No, it's not. With just, I mean, very little digging, you eventually go, aha, that's not so great, is it? Aha, that's not so great, is it? Oftentimes that you're just so— the phrase I often used is you're so caught up in the machine. Marriage, a long-term relationship, especially one with kids, especially one with of multiple, multiple kids becomes a machine. It's just something that just engulfs you, and you're caught in the machinations of the machine, you know, the gears of the machine, if you will, and you just lose any outside perspective. And oftentimes it comes from— friends are usually too chicken shit to say anything about it. Somebody outside, outside of your world— myself, somebody like me, somebody usually pay for your time to go 'Yeah, that ain't good.' And you're like, 'Oh really?' 'Yeah, not good at all. This and this happened. That's— oh shit, that's really horrible.' You're just too caught up in the machine to see it. And dude, I'm not poking, I'm not making fun, whatever. I was that dude for years and years. It was about 10 years of being caught in the machine for me, which was kids and marriage and everything else. And it just, it went by like that. Like in no time I went from the old me to this guy I don't even recognize. I've lost all energy. I've lost all anything. I've lost connection to my wife. And if you had asked that dude back then, how was everything? Sex life? I'd been like, does anybody have a good sex life when they're married? How about your connection with the wife? Oh yeah, we're best buddies. Everything's fine. So everything's fine except for— oh yeah, yeah, now that we had the big kaboom, there was infidelity, there was divorce, there was all this other stuff, and I was left going, I don't know which way is up. And when the smoke cleared, I went, what the eff was I thinking? I wasn't thinking, I was just caught in the machine. And it took a big holy shit moment to wake my butt up to where I said, yeah, it wasn't good, it wasn't good at all. And there was so much, uh, baggage that both of us brought to the relationship. Baggage on her part that I just dutifully ignored, brushed aside. It's like, that doesn't mean anything. Oh yeah, it does. Um, Guitar God, um, he says, surprise, I'm not sure I mentioned this, but kids changed it all. LOL, I know you're shocked. What, what do kids do? Um, They're not in themselves horrible little creatures, but they're stressful. If you're a parent who is prone to anxiety, stress, depression, it seems that the old children are the perfect thing to bring all those out. It's just like, everything's going fine, everything's fine, It's like, I notice you have in your DNA some tendencies toward anxiety, depression, and being stressed out and everything else, right? Yeah. And you've been able to keep all that dormant for a while now. For the most part, it sprouts up every now and then. Oh yeah, well, watch this. And you throw the grenade of kids and kaboom, it all comes out. And the spouse, the other spouse is just like, what the, who's this person? You know, if a lot of guys can relate to this, there's good reason why. Women have a tendency towards anxiety, depression, and negative thought more so than men do. To. Just one of our little biological quirks as human beings. Why? Oh, we can point to, you know, hormonal makeup and so forth. They're much more estrogen sensitive than we are, etc., etc. If I gave you a, you know, syringe full of estrogen, super physiological level, for the next couple of months, you probably relate to her mindset a lot more. So you'd start crying at different things, you'd be overstressed, you'd start ruminating to an unhealthy degree, and so on and so forth. But anywho, so somebody threw the grenade in the room. Some people handle that just fine. They're just like, it's tough, it's stressful, but my makeup is such that I'm able to deal with it and I, I just, I handle it and my connection to my spouse does not waver. Interesting, isn't it? Some people are lucky that way and it sounds like your spouse may not have been. Um, so what do you do about that? Well, from what I've seen, It takes somebody or somebodies, multiple somebodies outside of your world, outside of your marriage to go, honey, you need some help. Whether that's a female family member, female friend, therapist, somebody at work, honey, you need some help in the form of, uh, oh, that's not good. What you're talking about with you and your husband. Oh no, no. Nope, that happened to my aunt so-and-so and now they're divorced. No, here's what we're going to do. We're going to get you away from the kids and let me watch them, and I'll, I'll, um, you and your husband go away. You know, that kind of active extended network, family, whatever, that we all used to have much more commonly than what we have now. It seems like all of us these days pick up and move across country for some career opportunity, and we leave all that extended family and friend network behind, and we start over somewhere else, and it'll be fine. And then Oh shit, we're stressed out, lost job, and now what? Hear that one a lot. Um, but it takes some outside help. Another example of the, um, it takes outside help that I often quote, and my wife and I did a little chat about this at the last, uh, annual gathering that we had for our men's group. We call our annual gatherings in the States BroFest, just as a purposely douchey tongue-in-cheek kind of thing. Yeah, BroFest. And, um, she and I got up there. And for those that don't know, my wife is a medical doctor. In addition to that, she is not American. She's from Germany. German. She's half Indian, German-born doctor. And, uh, she's pretty well versed in the world of hormonal treatments, and specifically for women. She's done a lot of research on that because she is 43 years of age now. The old perimenopause is coming, and she wants to be proactive and hit the ground running and avoid a lot of the stuff that happens, uh, bad stuff that happens when the old hormones get dialed down. And one of the bad things that happens is the, the libido, sex drive, your overall feeling of youthfulness, health, and everything that goes with it. So we have all these men listening to my wife going, Ralph, how did you, how did you, how did you get your wife to think this way about the hormonal replacement therapy and being proactive and staying connected to you? And I say, you know, dude, I would love to say it's all me and how awesome I am. And no, uh, of the grand pie that makes up reasons why my wife is proactive about her health and wanting to maintain our connection, the teeniest, tiniest sliver is maybe because my husband's awesome. I'm just being awesome. I'm just being honest, guys. Probably the big part of it is culture. Her mother has been on hormonal replacement therapy for years. She's in her late 70s now, still on it. Um, she's a medical doctor, so she's well-versed in it. She's not one of those that just hears hormonal replacement therapy and immediately thinks cancer and runs for the hills. And she's smarter than that. She's more educated than that. She knows the ins and outs of it. She knows there's far more positives as a result of it than there are negatives. Um, in addition to that, she has surrounded herself— we talked about culture of her childhood and background and family, but she also has her culture of her immediate social group. So she's surrounded by nurses, other doctors, and everybody else who's also well-versed in it. And she has these nurses who— I don't know if you know the nurse world, I've talked about it before. How to say this? They're probably more, um, as a group— you hate to apply generalities to people— but probably more sexually open. Maybe just more open, general, but that also lends itself to be more sexually open. And so they are the type to, as a group, when they're in a room together, just go Libido's going down. Libido is going down. I better take a shot of this and this. I better go talk to my doctor about it. And they're all like, yeah, me too. Where are you going? I'm going to talk about— and they all talk about pellet implants and shots and how they've lost so much weight and their belly went down and they can't keep their hands off their husband. And they all talk to each other like, this sounds great. And my wife is exposed to that on a regular basis. So you can see it's all these things working in concert with each other as a wife who's more apt to say, Hey, help! I better go actively go get help. I better be proactive about all this. And I'm over there going, cool, love it. But it seems she's in the minority when it comes to this, uh, because I think a lot of women don't have that around them. A lot of women have the, uh, culture, social, whatever, peer group around them that basically says You don't have to change a damn thing. If he and whoever doesn't love you the way you are, F him. You certainly don't have to start injecting things and going to counseling and doing this, yada, yada, to work together. No, you shouldn't have to do any of that. That's not a healthy mindset, man or woman. And I'm not being sexist. If a man came into me and said, I don't have to do nothing, man. I work 60 hours a week. I hear that all the time. I go, "Yeah, you do. You need to put the beers down. You need to hit the gym because your wife's going to the gym. You need to work on romancing your wife and become better connected. You can't just go to work, take your work boots off, put your feet up, and expect your wife to jump your bones and serve you a stiff drink." That doesn't exist in the world hardly at all anymore for anybody. Us men had our fun. That's over. It takes more than that now, dude. Long-winded way of me saying, uh, it's gonna take work, and she has to be the type to want to put in that work and that effort on her part. And you have to do the work like what was outlined in the book. You can only do so much, dude. What do you expect, a magical spell to come over her and suddenly she's gonna be like, oh, now I suddenly recognize Guitar God's awesomeness, I'm gonna change things? No, something needs to push that button, and it's probably— it's from what you can see, it's not going to be you. It's all there is to it. Um, he says, I'm anxious and depressed. Of course kids made it worse. Should I just do better at hiding that? Maybe the anxiety has turned her off. That, my friend, is a very anxious take on your part. Maybe I should stop being me. Maybe I should hide things because it's turning her off because Mommy's not giving me the sex anymore. You have wrapped a lot of your mental health wrapped, uh, is that another word? You, you've laid a lot of the weight of your own personal mental health and well-being and emotional well-being on the shoulders of this one woman. She doesn't give me nookie, so I'm anxious and depressed. While your overall sentiment should be, my wife just doesn't want to give me nookie anymore. What's up with you, wife? That's kind of weird because obviously Guitar God 365. I'm a cool dude here. Look at all this shit I do and da da da da da. You don't want to do that anymore? Huh, that sucks. Well, are you wife willing to work on this? You see all the shit I'm doing? No? Oh, well then maybe we should do something else, like go our separate ways. Hate to say that, but obviously something's disconnected here. And sounds like you got kind of an issue here. I hate to be real brazen about it. And by the way, what I just said in 10 seconds, that's like a multi-month, if not year, kind of effort to bring you together. But eventually you're going to come to the healthy version of the talk. What do you say to your wife? Um, it is during that talk that some are surprised. And, you know, I'm trying to remember, was that you that said, uh, the only connection you had— oh, the only thing that worked was threatening to leave. You know, I've had some guys that repeatedly go through that threaten to leave, uh, what is it called, uh, hysterical bonding phase, like 6 times in a row. They're like, this is great. It's like, no, that's not great. That's— dude, no, that's, that's very unhealthy. You know, like, I'm gonna leave you, I'm gonna go get me a girlfriend, I'm cheating on you. Okay, I love you again. Yay. And then it dissipates again, and then he's like, oh shit, time to ramp up the awfulness again. Here, I'm about to pack my bag, I'm leaving. No, no, I love you again. Yay. And then, you know, for years they do this. It's like, dude, No, writing's on the wall. This is a very unhealthy dynamic that you have between the two of you. And, um, that old hysterical bonding phase, that's a very real human tendency, very real, uh, human characteristic. Uh, there's, there's a threat to our bond as two mates, especially after kids. Uh, what can I— it's like a subconscious thing. This isn't like a conscious thought process, but it's like the body goes into overdrive. What can I do to keep my partner around. I know, you know, do things in the bedroom. Um, men and women both kind of do this, and it's not healthy. So ultimately, Guitar God, what is it you want? What do you want, dude? Can you realistically get there with wifey if you went to her and said, this just ain't working, um, obviously we're very mismatched. I love you, wife. Here's a version of the healthy talk: I love you, wife, I really do, otherwise I wouldn't be with I love you. Otherwise I wouldn't have married you. But you have to admit, wife, that the physical dynamic that we have between the two of us is very unhealthy. And it's got to the point where I'm very anxious and almost depressed about this. Because it's— to be rejected repeatedly by the woman you love is really hurtful. So as you can see, I'm not just talking out my ass. I've tried things. I did this and this. I got my ass in shape. I've been more attentive. I've, you know, I'm not slacking at all around the home. I'm doing all these things. Now I'm basically feeling like a plow horse doing all this shit just to try to get a bit of a crumb of attention from my wife. And I finally realized, what am I doing? Something's broken here. So what do you think, wife? Are you willing to kind of work together to figure out what's broken here? And I don't mean jump into bed right now. No, we're not there yet. It takes a lot to get to that point. We're not even close to being there yet. So I'm taking that off the table. But are you willing to kind of come together and figure out what the F's going on here? If not, I love you, but sorry, this ain't gonna work for me. If you are willing to work, I'm willing to— I'm willing to get dirty. Again, okay, maybe that's the wrong term. I'm willing to, uh, put in— put in the effort, put in the time, as long as I see you also putting in the time and effort into this and not just calling it in. You know, this ain't gonna be easy. Are you willing to get to it, you and me? Huh? What do you say? You know, that kind of energy. And she may say, go fuck yourself. Or she may do the— what a lot of men fear, and a lot of men get, is the old shoulder slump going, yeah, I've thought a lot about this too, and I'm sorry, I love you, but no, I've been thinking about this for a while. It's not gonna work. And the man's like, Holy shit, I didn't see that coming. I thought she would grovel and cry and everything else, but sometimes the woman's like, I'm glad you brought that up because no, I don't want to be with you anymore. And you can make this as amicable as you want. I don't know, dude, from where I sit, what's the alternative? Well, porn? Yay. Cheat? Uh, good luck. Sex workers? Oof. I mean, all those things exist for a reason. You're not alone, brother. So what you gonna do about it? Hmm. Here's a good— Mysterio from YouTube says, I wonder which couples are getting divorced more stats-wise, married, uh, with kids or without? I don't know. That's a very good question. I can't believe I never thought about not researching that. How about somebody Google that for us? I'm not gonna be out much longer. It's already, it's already been an hour. I don't know. Good question. Um, from what I've seen from my writing in general, uh, the more kids a couple has, the less apt they are to divorce. The more there is, you can stack stuff in the I need you because pile. I need you because money. I need you because raising kids. I need you because you're my caregiver. I need you because As cold and horrible as that sounds, at a realistic level, the more you stack up in the 'I need you because' the less apt you are to separate as a couple because logistically you can't. Again, as cold as that sounds, um, which is evidence for maybe in today's modern-day marriage where a lot of women are gainfully employed, they don't need their husband for money. If they divorce, she may end up paying husband for child support, alimony. And we have a guy in our group going through this right now. His wife is a physician and they're going through a divorce. Um, it may— that may show that those relationships that get together and maintain over many years are more sincere. They're, they're, uh, they're not— they're deeper relationships based on feelings and based on compatibility versus based on I need you because and I need you because. So if you strip away a lot of the need and you're still together as a couple, congrats, you found a very good match for you. You found your quote-unquote soulmate, if you believe in that sort of thing. But if you're together because I got 6 kids, I can't leave, She got a cancer diagnosis last year and she needs me. But if it wasn't for that, I'd be out of here. If it wasn't for the kids, I'd be gone. If it wasn't for— if it wasn't for— not a good foundation for a relationship, is it? But that's foundation for a lot of people, as sad as that may be. Um, Dallin from YouTube says, I appreciate this live. And I appreciate you, Dallin, for watching it. Thank you so much. That means a lot to me. Thank you very much. Uh, yeah, trying this new vertical thing on YouTube. Apparently if you do this, it shows up on the, on the YouTube Shorts feed. So if you guys that are cycling through the YouTube Shorts, you know, the quick little video clips that are vertical, you may see occasionally one that's like, Ralph's live, something. The people will then click on that, watch the live, and voilà. I'm not certain how many— does it tell me how many people are on here? No, it does not. But anyway, thank you all so very much for joining me this afternoon, this Tuesday afternoon. HelpForMen.com, as the little thingy down there says. Appreciate it a great deal if you could check that out. That'd mean a lot to me. If you could like this, if you could share this, you're watching this on the Dad Starting Over channel. If you could give that Dad Starting Over a like and a share, subscribe, however it works, wherever you're watching this, I would really, really appreciate that. If you're a dude and you are stuck in a marriage that you're not getting as much as you would like. I wrote a book about it and it's done pretty well. Second version of that book came out in 2020, about 4 years ago. There may be a third version coming up. Don't know. Teaser, teaser. But anyway, you can check out the 2020 version, second edition. Dead Bedroom Fix is the title of the book. You can find it wherever books are sold. Amazon, Barnes Noble, Apple Books, audiobook on Audible. Apple Books, all those different versions out there. I just— I don't know how many different retailers have it out there. I've put it wherever I can find a retailer, I stuck her in there. Um, or you can go to deadbedroomfix.com and it'll show you a bunch of choices there for retailers, as well as a download directly from my website in PDF format. Cut out the middleman, just get the PDF, and then it's just an electronic file. You don't have an actual book, it's not on your reader, whatever, whatever floats your boat. I got a solution for you. And we got several other books including Divorce Panic— pardon me, Divorce Panic. Uh, Real Talk is a book that's starting to go up a little bit in sales. Real Talk: No Bullshit Life Advice for Young Men is the subtitle. Uh, that book is for, as the subtitle implies, for young men. Um, can't tell you how many guys read The Dead Bedroom Fix, for example, and said, uh, where was this shit when I was a kid? I wish there was a book like this for kids. And I went, no, Well, you know, it took me a while, years of hearing that, where I went, why don't I write something that's aimed at the young men? This Dead Bedroom Fix is aimed at married men, long-term relationships. How about a book for young men? And I wrote it, and apparently people like it. I had a really nice, um, review from a gal who was a mother and said the book brought her to tears because it made her more empathetic to the plight of her young man and, and realized what he's going through. And she was so glad that there was a book she give to her sons and say, here you go, advice from a dude who's been there and done that. Because what a lot of us young— not young— a lot of us guys didn't have growing up was an older man putting the arm around your shoulder saying, don't do that, dude. You don't want to do that. No, don't go down there. No, no, you're making a mistake. Turn, go the other way, dude. A lot of us didn't have that, especially when it came to the old girls and relationships and all that other stuff. Well, that's what that book is, Real Talk, No Bullshit Life Advice for Young Men, Divorce Panic and the Dead Bedroom Fix. And there's a really short read, uh, that's in ebook format only. It's called Red Flags. For all you guys that are like, I'm looking for Mrs. Right, that's the book for you called Red Flags, stuff to look out for, really quick read. And, um, but once again, if you could, uh, pardon me here, um, go to help4men.com. That's your kind of your hub for everything. And check out the— the logos here crack me up— uh, the HFM Brotherhood. That's our private group for men only. Check that out if you're a dude and you want to work with myself one-on-one, with other coaches on the team, as well as hundreds and hundreds of men from around the world all just trying to get better and work on the stuff that we talked about today with Guitar God and with the Justin, and, or who else? Who else got on? Nathan, thank you Nathan. And James, can't forget James, a regular. Uh, join us, love to have you. Oh, and I didn't answer Sobiondo, Sobiondo from YouTube. Uh, yeah, you don't know how many of this is, how much of this is just somebody busting your balls, how much of this is like genuine question. Sabiendo el más que sabe. Do steroids make you bald? You know, there— it depends on the anabolic steroid, but there are some that are DHT derivatives. This shows you I kind of know some of this a little bit, that are DHT derivatives that will in fact cause in some men the hair to fall out. So yeah, in some, yeah. And the next follow-up question: do they make your pee-pee smaller? No. They do make your testicles shrink because you don't need them, your testes, as much, so they atrophy. That's just a whole left turn in the conversation, isn't it? But I couldn't let our friend Sobiando go here. I had to answer him. So, hey, you never know. It's always a fun ride here in the DSO Help for Men world. All right, guys, thank you all once again. Appreciate all of you, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your Tuesday. Toodaloo.