Ralph Brewer addresses whether a dead bedroom differs from a sexless marriage, explaining that what matters is mutual satisfaction between partners. He uses 2-3 sexual encounters weekly as his personal benchmark but notes expectations shift with age and individual variation is large. Mismatched libidos often require either adjusting expectations or finding ways to boost intimacy without shame.
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Hello everyone, DSO here from dadstartingover.com and we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website. If you would like to submit your own question or story or whatever you want to call it to myself and you'd like to see me respond to it here, then submit your story to dadstartingover.com/dear-dso. And if it's a good one, I'll record a video like the one you're watching right now. Uh, today's entry comes from a guy calling himself Little Dog. And the subject line is, "Dead bedroom versus sexless marriage." Before we get started, why on earth would this guy reach out to me and ask about sexless marriages and dead bedrooms and all that other stuff? If you don't know, I've written on a variety of different topics over the years. Last couple of years, been doing a lot of videos. You may have seen me on here. But years ago, I wrote a book. I've written like 4 books actually, but one of those books really took off. And the book was on the subject of sexless marriages and what men can do to possibly help their situation. And that book was called The Dead Bedroom Fix. And this message from Little Dog is one of many that I get on a daily basis from readers. So check out that book if that interests you. Apparently it interests a lot of people because it's sold a lot of copies. Thank you, by the way. But anywho, dead bedroom versus sexless marriage, he says, is a dead bedroom the same as a sexless marriage? And by sexless marriage, I mean no sex for years or decades. And say at 50, do different rules apply than compared to at 30? I think what he means, 50 years of age, should we expect something different than 30 years of age? Okay, so a couple of different things there. One is this is a matter of semantics, right? Am I in a dead bedroom? Because we still do it. Blank, you know, fill in the blank, X number of times per week, month, whatever. Does that count as sexless? Sexless being like zero sex? Again, it's just semantics. Who gives a shit, dude? It's, you know, basically the barometer for our— do we have a healthy sex life in this marriage is we go to both people and say, do you think you have a healthy sex life? Both people may say once a month, is perfectly okay with us. Guy may be older, which you allude to here, and his libido's down, or he's never had a high libido, and his wife could be the same way, and they're perfectly happy together. And when you ask them, "Do you have a dead bedroom situation?" they'd probably both shrug their shoulders and go, "Hmm, haven't really thought about it. We're fine with the way things are." So, it's a relative thing. Whatever you think, dude. Me, if I said 2 to 3 times a week, is the bare minimum for me to feel like we are interconnected and things are healthy. And, you know, I'm a high libido dude, as they say, and that's what's normal for me. If it dips below that, I'm going to say something's up here. I don't like it. Let's remedy this. But that's me. It'll be different from this guy over here who says it has to be 5 days a week versus this guy over here says 5 times a month is fine. Whatever it is that you are happy with. Who, in other words, who cares what I or others think is a, quote, dead bedroom, a sexless marriage? Normal? Weird? It's up to you, dude. And her, your partner, presumably your female partner. And then, um, he's asking, um, and let's say at 50, do different rules apply for when you were 30? Again, rules for who? It's not like there's a giant, you know, governing body or a committee out there for dead bedrooms where you all go to them and say, here's a situation, folks, and they all rule on it. You know, again, it's whatever you think, dude. Now, with that being said, biologically, of course there's some impact with age, right? Um, I'm going to be a, um, you know, let's look at the extremes. A 19-year-old, horny as hell, active, testosterone through the roof, all you think about, you know, 24/7 is girls, girls, girls, is going to be different than— let's look at the other extreme— 78-year-old dude whose testosterone is, I would presume, much lower. Everything hurts. He's got the, you know, the weight of the world on his shoulders. He's worried about his kids and grandkids, and it's just a different world altogether. And, you know, biologically, mentally, everything else is just different from 19 to 78. And so the course is going to be gradations in between. So presumably 40-year-old guy would have less libido and less desire than 19-year-old. Maybe not. Uh, 50-year-old, 60, 70, and so forth. But with that being said, um, I know plenty of 50, 60, 70-some-year-olds, like guys in my DSO fraternity group. It's a private group we have for men only, dsofraternity.com, and, uh, pretty high libido guys. And they're really going crazy because they're matched up with a person who they love more than anything in the world who matches him in age roughly. And she, her body and brain are not following the same script. They've kind of shut down sexually. So, oof, that's rough. And maybe that's kind of what you're getting out here. Maybe you feel that your libido is pretty high and you're like, maybe I should look at things differently because I'm older. I'm 50 now versus when I was 30. Maybe I should give more leeway to my partner or not. You know, I'm not going to be one of those people that are like, you need to knock your libido down, mister, to match that of your partner. That's one avenue. If you decide that's what you want to do, cool, whatever. Or you could have the avenue of the St. Kata for me. Need to go on and do something else. I'm also not going to shame you for that. Whatever floats your boat, dude. So kind of a simple, But as you can see, complicated question. But thank you so much, Little Dog, and thank you for writing in to Dad Starting Over. Have a good one.
