Dad Starting Over is live!

Dave. First time ever live, you, on YouTube using this vertical orientation on the phone here. First time for everything. How cool! Just waiting for folks to join here so I don't sit here and talk to myself. From what I understand, this shows up on the Shorts feed as well. So, if you're flipping through the Shorts, like many of us do, you'll come upon this live. So let's see what happens. Welcome everyone. I'm gonna give us a little bit, see if anyone shows. If not, I'll jump on over to TikTok. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Oh, there's different filters. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no filter it is. All right. Hey, we got somebody joining us. All right, whoever that is. I'm a minute into this and you're the first one. Not necessarily a good start. I normally do these as a simulcast, if you will, on Facebook, YouTube, and X or Twitter. And we're usually good for like, you know, 1,000+ people. So to be just on YouTube on the Shorts or whatever you call this vertical thingy and just have one Jason, apparently, that's— this doesn't bode well. Jason, how you doing? Good to see you here. I don't know if you are a follower of mine at all, if you have any idea who the hell I am. If so, well, cool. Thank you for following. Appreciate it. Got my glasses so I can— wow, that's— man, my eyes are bad. I can't see at all. Oof. So I can see the phone here. Oh, Jason says yes, he's a follower. Well, very good. So glad to meet you, Jason. Thank you for following. Appreciate it a great deal. While I have you here, Jason, are you also a follower of the Help for Men channel? If not, do me a favor. Go on over to Help for Men on YouTube. You will see my interview, which has gotten A little bit of legs, a little bit of popularity so far. Okay, so that's good. Yes, but for those that aren't, we have one other person on the live here with us so far. Help for Men, check it out. Did an interview with Dr. Orion Taraban, which has gone pretty well. All right, now the folks are filing in. Yay, finally. Welcome everyone. For those that do not know, are not a follower of mine, for lack of a better term. Well, we just had a bunch of people and they all just left. That's not good. But anyway, for those that happen upon this, my name is Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer. Go by the moniker of DSO, stands for Dad Starting Over. You may have seen a lot of my little videos on here, on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, whatever. Check out dadstartingover.com or our new main website, which is help4men.com. Check out help4men.com. And if you're a man, do me a favor and check out our private group for men only. It's a support group. We have guys, hundreds of guys from all over the world. The US is our number one market. Number two, believe it or not, is Australia. We have a lot of Australians in our group at helpformen.com. And our group is called the HFM— stands for Help for Men— the HFM Brotherhood. We have private discussion forums. We have live Zoom meetings. We record all the Zoom meetings. We have a podcast just for our members. I have 4 books that I have written. All 4 books are available in audiobook format as well as PDF format for free, no extra charge to our members. In addition to one of our other guys on our team, Austin, he wrote a book. It's also for free to our members. So a lot of good member content. And the, the meetings are all recorded live. You can listen to those, the podcasts. Altogether we have like over 800 hours, 800 hours of content, audio content for men Men love audio content. They love the podcast. They love the audiobooks. So if you're an audio guy, you like to go on road trips, mow your lawn, whatever, listening to audio, the HFM Brotherhood, you'll be right at home. In addition to the discussions and live meetings and all that good stuff, we also have what we call coaching on our website. If you want to talk— if you want to think about it as mentorship, talking to guys that have been there, done that, gone through divorce, the dead bedroom thing, starting over after divorce, having a hard time cracking into the world of dating, maybe you've never been in a long-term relationship, don't have a lot of guys in your circle, that's what our group, the HFM Brotherhood, is for. help4men.com, check it out. You can also check out all my books there on the website, help4men.com. Courses are coming here soon, probably later this week we will launch some courses. We have them there, we're just reformatting them, excuse me, for the Help for Men website. They were formerly on the Dad Starting Over site in case you saw them over there. And again, for those of us just joining, check out Help for Men. It's a YouTube channel, website, all kinds of good stuff in addition to the Dad Starting Over world. Put out a lot of videos on YouTube. Give me a subscribe if you could please, like, share, all that good stuff. The Dad Starting Over YouTube channel is updated every single day, actually technically multiple times a day, multiple shorts as well as one or more live long horizontal landscape type videos, whatever you want to call it. And so check it out. I do a lot of lives as well. So if you're new to this, welcome. Thank you for joining us. What I normally do on these lives, we normally have a lot bigger audience. What we're dealing with here today is open it up for questions. If anybody has any questions, comments, stories, anything at all you want to, for whatever reason you value my opinion on the matter, Please feel free to chime in. That's what I'm here for. I'm here for you fellas and gals for that matter. I have a lot more ladies seeing my material since it's getting out there. We've had some videos getting to the millions and millions of views and have a lot of ladies that say they enjoy or appreciate the male perspective on a lot of this relationship-oriented talk. And so they reach out to me and I've actually done some one-on-one sessions with some gals. Coaching, if you will, to talk about stuff. And you know what, guys? A lot of their issues are just like ours. Kind of interesting. Anything at all, folks? Jason, anyone, please don't be shy. That's why I'm here. If you don't have any questions, I'll call it. Don't run me off. But thank you all for joining here today. I appreciate it. I think what else is— oh, I know what else I can promote here. The Dead Bedroom Fix, the third edition, mind you, the third edition of The Dead Bedroom Fix. If you go to help4men.com, go to Dead Bedroom Fix, the book on there, click on the link for Amazon, that'll take you right to it. For this week and this week only, uh, it'll— you can get the Kindle version of The Dead Bedroom Fix, third edition. You can get that version of that book for 99 cents for this week and this week only. Kindle version, 99 cents of The Dead Dead Bedroom Fix. For those that don't know, Dead Bedroom Fix is my number one best-selling book by far. I've written 3 other books in addition to that one, and all the sales of all of them combined do not equal, not even close, the sales of The Dead Bedroom Fix. I first released in 2017. Excuse me, I'm dealing with a cold. And, um, just came out with the third edition of it. Second edition was 2020, and here the third edition in 2024. 2024. Just came out with it last month, July of 2024, and, um, really excited about it, especially the Audible version. No discount on the Audible version, sorry, just a 99-cent promo price this week for the Kindle version. But on the Audible version, there's extra content on there that you will not get in the print editions. Oh, thank you for whoever liked. If you could give me another like for you guys joining, I would greatly appreciate it. But check it out, The Dead Bedroom Fix, Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and we're running a promo this week, 99 cents for the Kindle version of The Dead Bedroom Fix on Amazon. Jason asked a question. He says, "You say after divorce, wait a year to date. Does that timeframe move for you if the marriage had been dead for a while already?" Well, yes. Well, sorry, I misspoke. No, I'm gonna say from the moment you say, you sign the paperwork, we are divorced. A lot of reasons for that. Um, the concept, the process of divorce and everything that goes with it is traumatic. I'm going to say for 100% of us, it has an emotional impact on us for sure. Um, for the men I talk to who are usually kind of the anxious type of guys, it has a special type of impact on us. It makes you question a lot of things about yourself. Who am I? What's my worth? What's my value? Yada yada, masculinity, all that good stuff. And guys start going to the rabbit hole of buying material like mine— thank you, by the way— watching YouTube videos, podcasts, all that good stuff, right? And then they don't realize it until, shit, years later after the fact that immediately after divorce, you know what, you're kind of nutty, you're kind of crazy, you're not firing on all cylinders. You're dealing with a breakup, You're dealing with, what does this mean for my life? You're dealing with, who am I? What am I? Yes, I know you guys have been like maybe even separated or split for a while and you've basically been living under the same roof but not together yet. It's still, there's a component of, or there's something about rather, we are officially divorced. That's a different set of holy poop, if you know what I mean. What I'm trying to say is in a long-winded way, Immediately after that process, you're out in the quote single world. You're not a catch. You're not— you're like, you're not functioning properly. You're not firing on all cylinders. And the, the person— say you're John— this immediate post-divorce John that you're putting out to the world, you're going to attract to you also broken individuals. Using that term broken, it's not really fair, but it's best one I come up with. And your two brokenness is going to come together and you're just going to fall in love. And by the way, you might do this several times and it's the best thing ever. Oh, the world, universe, God has blessed me with this person, everything is great. And then it's just going to blow up in your face and you're going to realize they're a psycho and you're going to realize that they got more red flags than a Chinese parade. And then you're going to realize so do you, and you should have said Let's just pause this romance thing for a while and just focus on other things like getting your shit in line, getting your life in order. Your kiddos. A lot of you are divorced with kids. Those kids are going through it, man. I know, I hear over and over again, my kids are resilient, they don't seem to be bothered by that at all. Yes, they are. You just shook the foundation under their feet. They need a lot of attention. They need possibly therapy with somebody outside of yourself. Most likely somebody to talk to, a third party, about what does this mean about mom and dad? Do they not love each other anymore? What's going on? What does this mean for me? Kids are also somewhat narcissistic, for lack of a better term. They think about what does this mean for me? What does this mean for my life? What does this mean for stuff? Am I not going to get stuff anymore? Where do I put my things in school and school bag and yada yada? And you have to worry about all that, not worry about I'm going to go on a date with some pretty new gal, set that aside for a while, dude. At least a year. It's not gonna kill you. The women aren't going anywhere. And I'm telling you, no matter how level-headed you think you are right now, immediately post-divorce, give it 12 months and then look back on yourself one year ago and you're gonna be like, yeah, I wasn't ready. No, mm-mm. 100 out of 100 guys say that. And even if by some stroke of luck they happen to find a really good, decent human being to go through life with in that 12-month period, they will even admit with that woman by their side, I should have waited before I met this gal. She's great, I love her to death, but there's things, there's aspects of our relationship, there's a lot of drama that we didn't need to have, there's a lot of complications, yada yada, that would have been resolved with time and working on myself. That's what a lot of people say. All right, Jason says, "Yes, focus on the kids and working on himself for sure. Just curious." Very good. I hear it. I blabbed for a while there because it's kind of a— not a rehearsed thing, but I've said that more than a few hundred times. It's a very, very common thing. Guys ready to move on, especially guys that have been in a dead bedroom relationship, which means sexless marriage for a while. Let's say like 10 years of nothing. Not unheard of, by the way, for those that are like, what? Yeah, unfortunately not unheard of. Not common, but not unheard of. And, uh, you know, he's now a single guy. He doesn't have the worry of his vows and his morals weighing him down saying, don't do it, dude. Now he's free to do it. Society says, go at it, tiger, have at it. And he's like, woohoo! And he gets on the dating apps and yada yada, and then all hell breaks loose. Because maybe he has a little bit of looks and charm about him. He is actually able to snag a woman or 2 or 4 or 10 or whatever, and crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. Not because all women are crazy, but because he himself is nuts and he's attracting nuts. Just the way it goes, dude. Human nature. But thank you for that, Jason. Appreciate it. And thank you guys for the likes, and thank you for watching, whoever's watching today. Anything else before we wrap her up today? Any other questions? HelpForMen.com, please check out the website. Dad Starting Over, please subscribe here to this channel that you're watching this on. Give me a like, give me a share. I do post on the Dad Starting Over channel every day. It's— consider myself like a content creator with the main purpose of eventually driving people over to my books, courses, and our membership group for men only. And all that can be found at help4men.com. We released that brand earlier this year as a way of being a more inclusive, broader brand to appeal to the masses. And so far so good. We're getting more attention to that than we ever did on the Dad Starting Over world, you know, from people like searching through Google and finding all my content and so forth. Help for Men has a much broader reach than the brand of Dad Starting Over. Dad Starting Over is pretty kind of limiting, you know. I'm not a dad. Does this pertain to me? I'm not starting over. Well, Help for Men kind of covers all our bases. And here recently I did an interview with New York Magazine. That's kind of cool. I got a call from a reality show person. Nothing's going to come of that, so don't worry. It wasn't what they were looking for. But how interesting. I'm talking to casting agents and then New York Magazine, and who knows where this could go. So thank you all for following, liking, sharing. Means a lot to me. Means, means a lot. This is my passion, is helping other dudes and helping other dudes from around the world, guys that have been through what I've gone through and whatever else life throws at them. And that's why I've assembled a team with myself. I have 6 other guys on the team, Help for Men team, and then hundreds more as members of our group, all working together to help each other out. So check it out at help4men.com. If there is nothing else, ladies and germs, I'm gonna call it quits here. But I thank you all for joining me today. There are no other questions, and hope you have a wonderful week. Make it a good one. I'm doing this on a Monday, so you got the rest of the week to make it a good one. And don't just sit back and wait for all the good stuff to wash over you and carry away, you know, like a proverbial wave of positivity, and it doesn't work that way. Go make it happen. All right, guys, thank you all so very much. Now I have to figure out how the hell to exit this. Oh, probably the X on the top of the screen. Oh, hold on, hold on. It's always right when I'm about to hit the button. Pardon me, cough, cold. What the Sith is this? What the Sith? I believe we have met before, have we not, on a live Um, if not, somebody else is using that name. Um, he says— so what the Sith says— let me get rid of this message on my phone. Um, what about if your wife has an anxiety disorder? Uh, what you mean? Like, what about your wife has an anxiety disorder? And like, what if your wife has MS? What if your wife has cancer? What if you navigate your way around it? Is it going to be more difficult to be in a romantic relationship with somebody who has an anxiety disorder? Oh, shit, yes, dude. Yeah. Has it driven you nuts so far? What the Sith? Is she getting help for it? Is she getting help in the form of possible, you know, medication, other agents? Is she in therapy for this? How has it impacted you? Do share, you know, help flesh this out, as I often say, so we can potentially help you more. Mm, pardon me, guys. Um, yes, she's difficult. Yes, she drives me nuts. And yes, she's taking meds. Patience, my friend. But here's the thing, and I'm not saying this to be an asshole. I'm not saying this as a sexist thing or whatever, although women do have a higher predisposition to things such as anxiety and depression. I always find it funny when men kind of fight back at that. No, no, men have anxiety too and suicidal and everything else. I said, guys, I know, but this isn't a race you want to win. This isn't the victim Olympics. Scientifically, through tests, psychology and so forth, we know that women on average tend to have higher levels of anxiety and depression than men do. Personality-wise, if you want to look at it this way, which doesn't sound nice, but also it's a scientific fact. Thing. We have the personality traits, and there's a personality traits— no, trait known as neuroticism, which is a propensity for negative thought, to oversimplify it. And women tend to be— let me rephrase that— the people that are the most neurotic, that rank the highest in trait neuroticism, tend to be women. So not surprising to have somebody say, my wife has an anxiety disorder. Well, Get in line, dude. There's a lot of them. And a lot of women unfortunately treat themselves via alcohol. You know, the old bottle of wine a night. That's usually in response to anxiety. Mother's Little Helper, remember that song from the Rolling Stones? This goes way back. This is a thing. So yeah, it can be a difficult thing. But here's the thing, and going back to I don't want to sound like an asshole, you don't have to be along for the ride. If it becomes debilitating, If it becomes such a detriment to your life, your mental health, if her anxiety causes everyone around her to walk on eggshells and everyone has to morph and change their life to accommodate her and her anxiety to an unhealthy level— we can't do this, I can't do that. You know, I've had some guys like, um, I had, I had a guy say that he wanted to take a class or a night course to get certified. His boss said, I want you to get certified in this and this, and then I can promote you and make you this manager, VP of something or whatever, because you'll be certified, some IT thing, right? And he's like, honey, I'm gonna go to this course and do this. And she's like, you're gonna leave me with the kids? It was like one night a week or something like that, right? For 3 hours, 3 or 4 hours if I remember. This is years ago. So one night a week extra with the kiddos alone sent her anxiety spiraling into overdrive. And he couldn't deal with his anxiety, couldn't deal with her anxiety. It was just then, it's this anxiety shitstorm. And then he's like, he had to go back to the boss and say, "I can't do this. My marriage will not survive this." Boss didn't take it well. And he was not seen the same at his career anymore. Now he's guy married to crazy woman that won't let him take one night class a week. And so it could be argued that is one in a series of things that made that scenario with that wife, with her anxiety in that marriage, unsustainable. And he is not a bad guy for saying, "I don't think I can do this anymore. This is— you're stopping me from growing as a human being. You're stopping me from enjoying life. You're not getting the proper help with this. I've told you again and again." And eventually it becomes like a codependent thing, you know, where her disorder is what bonds you together, and that's not good. And what the Sith says, "If he didn't have kids, he would have left long ago." You know, the other— there I went off on a tangent of if it's detrimental to your mental health and everything else, leave. There's also the other pathway, which is, well, you feel you're stuck, right? Can't go anywhere. Why not make the best out of it? Why not go into overdrive and really lead her through this? I know, easier said than done. Sometimes a lot of these folks that are depressed and anxious just say, "F you, leave me alone. I want to sit and—" flip away my phone for hours and hours. And no, I can't do this. No, I can't bathe. No, I can't do it. You know, it's awful, right? It can be awful. And but exhaust every avenue possible, what the Sith, to get this fixed. As in, I'm going to strong-arm her, strong-arm her and force her to go get help with therapist. Sometimes, buddy, it takes the ultimatum. You know, ultimatums are looked down upon by people for whatever reason, because they're mean. Ultimatums work. What do you think, like a— oh, what do you call it, where you get a bunch of people together to talk to an addict to get them to come off of their drug addiction? The word is escaping me. But the drug addict comes home— intervention. That's it. So the drug addict comes home and he's surrounded by all these loved ones, all this family saying, "Have a seat, John, we need to talk." And one at a time, each person says basically their own little version of the ultimatum. "I can't deal with this anymore, John. You've stolen money from me, you've done this, you've done that, and I've bailed you out of jail. I'm not doing it anymore." Next person, same thing. Again and again, "I'm not doing this more, I'm not doing this anymore." The blunt message is basically, If you don't stop this behavior and this addiction of yours, we are all out of your life, and you can't bully us with your addiction anymore. We love you, we're worried about you, that's why we're doing this intervention. So you need some, like, minor league version of that, which is— this is where a lot of guys don't like to go, simply because she may call your bluff. I don't think I can do this anymore. You need to get help, or else you're about to lose your family. You're about to lose your husband and kids, not full-time, you know, you're only gonna see your kids half the time or whatever, because I'm about to go bye-bye. And any court in the world would see you're not a fit mother, potentially. And you need to get help and you haven't been. And this isn't working. Sometimes what the Sith, that is the thing that makes them go, oh shoot, he's being serious. Oh boy. 'What did you say about counseling? I guess we could go if you want to.' And that may get the ball rolling. Even then, ain't gonna be easy. You gotta be so super patient with her, and it's gonna be like a roller coaster up and down. Ain't gonna be easy, dude. But exhaust all of those possibilities. Or if you're saying, 'I would never ever leave no matter what you say, Ralph,' then I don't know what to tell you. You have to have that in your back pocket or else there's no hope. This goes for any kind of situation in life, business, financial, emotional, whatever it is, you have to be able to walk away. Sometimes that is the key to getting shit done. It's, you know, tough love, if you will. You got a teenager or, no, a 20-some-year-old at home who won't get off his ass and he won't go get a job? You cannot live here anymore. Mom and Dad are tired of footing the bill for a guy who doesn't put in any effort. Beat it. Go surf couches with your friends. Have fun. And oftentimes those kids come back years later and say, that's what I needed. That was exactly what I needed. I know I said I hated you. I know we didn't talk for 2 years straight, but thank you. That got me going. Sometimes that's what it takes with the Sith. All right, guys, anything else? Here I go. I'm about to hit this close button and somebody's gonna come on here and go, well, what about— so if there's anything else, I'll give you guys a minute. HelpForMen.com. What the Sis is, appreciate you. Thank you very much. Have a good one. Uh, if there's nothing else, guys, I'll be signing off. HelpForMen.com. Please, um, subscribe. Dad Starting Over YouTube channel, the Help For Men YouTube channel. Help For Men is being reserved just for, uh, interviews with important people talking about issues that relate to men. Um, we already had Dr. O'Reilly on there. He was our guest number one. That, that is— that video is doing well, and the Clips from that video are doing well, so check it out. The Help for Men and Dad Starting Over. Dad Starting Over is super, super active, pumping out content on a daily basis across all the social media channels— YouTube, Facebook. Facebook is very, very active for Dad Starting Over. If you're not on there already, check out Facebook, search for Dad Starting Over. Like I say, I put out probably like, shoot, 20 pieces of content every day on Dad Starting Over on Facebook. So check it out and follow me on X or Twitter, Dad Starting Over Help for Men. We're everywhere, folks. TikTok. TikTok was really big there for a while. It's kind of died down, but still active on there every single day. So you get— you can't escape this beautiful baldness here even if you tried. So, all right, guys, thank you all so very much for joining me today. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.