Dear DSO: "I Married Young... And We're Already In A Dead Bedroom"

Alright, we got another Dear DSO entry that came into the website at dadstartingover.com/dear-dso. Fill out the form and I will answer here in video format. This one comes from Martin. The subject line is, "Help on what to do as a young married man with a dead bedroom." Martin says, "Hey DSO." Well, hey Martin. "I am 21 years old. My wife and I have been married for a little over 2 years." We were school sweethearts, had an intimate life both inside and outside the bedroom. That is, until we got married. Once married, I may get lucky one, maybe two times a month. She has told me before in conversation about the lack of sex, quote— and this is very telling, this is good— it's like wanting to read a book and then getting assigned the book in school to read, and then you don't want to read it anymore. He says, this is a gut puncher. I have read your book, have been using the prescription you recommend for the past 3 to 4 months, but to no avail. I love her and do not want divorce to even be an option, but I cannot see myself going 40+ years in a marriage where there is little to no intimacy in the bedroom. Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. Well, Martin, the first thing that comes to mind when reading your story is you're 21 years of age and you've been married for 2 years now. I'm pausing for dramatic effect here, my man. You got married at 19 years of age. What in the Sam hell are you thinking, dude? Now, for a lot of people that I talk to that get married really early, it's usually some kind of religious social component here, uh, you know, Mormons or something like that. So I don't want to offend if that is in fact what's going on here, but it doesn't negate the fact that that is not good grounds for the start of a happy relationship. Number one, you have like no relationship experience. You're a teenager. Your brain is not fully developed. For those that don't know, it seems the science seems to show us that your brain finally reaches the fully developed stage around the age of 25. You've got a ways to go still, and you married this woman 2 years ago when you were a teenager, 19 years of age. Holy shit. I'm sorry, I keep harping on this, but that's like not, not good, dude. To be in a relationship long-term with somebody, especially a monogamous traditional relationship with somebody takes some skill, it takes some know-how, takes some tools in your old emotional toolbox. And these are things that you acquire over years after just living life, getting to know and have relationships— platonic, romantic, whatever it may be— with lots of different people. You haven't done that. You hitched your wagon to one gal that you fell in love with, presumably in high school, and you guys are playing the part of adults, basically almost playing house here if you want to look at it. And, um, you've discovered like, oh, This one shuts down sexually as soon as we say I do. That is not as common as what people think. A lot of men frame it that way, but then when you ask them and you, you know, go into detail about the story, it's not literally when, you know, they leave the church and things stop. Usually it's after living together for a while and kids and all the other stuff. But when you ask the men, they say, as soon as we got married. But in your case, it sounds like as soon as you got married. You need a lot more detail here, you know, need to talk one-on-one, hash this out and see what's really going on here. But just looking at the facts that you give us here, dude, you guys are still so young and you're already in a dead bedroom relationship. And it sounds like for the past 2 years you have been since the age of 19. Again, pausing again for dramatic effect here, dude, what are you doing? This is the prime of your life. You're wasting it on one human being who in basically no uncertain terms has told you with a— you know, I got to give it to her, this is a really good analogy— she wants the thing. Now that she's got the thing, eh, she don't want anymore. Or in her terms, as soon as somebody said, here's your assignment, here's your husband, now do your wifely duty and go at it, make babies and all this stuff. Suddenly she's like, and now suddenly all the excitement's gone. Now that the excitement's gone, now that we're out of the dating phase, the honeymoon phase, all that stuff, yeah, I just don't feel it anymore. Sorry, don't want it. And that's where you, Mr. Young Man, go, oh shit, well, that's not good because we're supposed to be going at it like rabbits. Number one, we're really, really young, and number two, we just basically connected. We're at the early honeymoon stage of our relationship. These are two things that are supposed to work in our favor as far as sexual intimacy is concerned. And by the way, Matt— Martin, excuse me— it's only downhill from there. Every counselor, anyone will tell you the same thing. The early stage is your most hypersexual, and then it peters as you go from there. And life introduces stressors of kids and jobs and life and disease and death and everything else. It all, you know, it goes down there. But you're saying, "No, it's already down there from the very beginning. Oh, and by the way, we're only 19 years of age." Nah, dude, it's no good. Sorry. You made a big oopsie. You know it. You're just too scared to part from her. 2 years of, you know, once or twice a month if you're lucky. Yeah, you're in a dead bedroom. It's dysfunctional. It's not healthy. And it sounds like you've gone to her hat in hand, as I say, you know, let's work on this. And she just came to you and said, eh, the fact is that now that I got you, I don't want you. You can, if you want, like a lot of men do, and kind of, uh, frame that as a test, if you will. Life, life, her specifically, or life in general is throwing a test at you. Now that I have you, I don't want you in that way. What do you do with that information? Uh, you've gone to my book and probably a lot of other material and content content out there to try and figure out the formula to get this woman reignited, and it ain't working, is it? No, because her deeply embedded programming, wherever that may come from, wherever that may originate from— childhood trauma, just the way she is, you know— none of this is inherently evil on her part or bad, just who she is, man. Um, maybe she's just not wired, especially at this young stage of her life, for a long-term monogamous relationship. She's probably supposed to be dating around and, you know, feeling out the dating scene, learning what relationships are about, what she likes and doesn't like. And, uh, she's been kind of thrust into this world of being an old married couple, and you guys started at the ripe old age of 19. And maybe she's having some very real doubts about it, like, ah, shit, what did I do? Maybe I need to experience life some more. And her body and brain is probably telling her that, yeah, you're not supposed to be hitched to one dude right now. What are you doing? Get out there, girl. See the world. Have fun. Get to know multiple men and see what life is all about. Right now you are hanging on for dear life, aren't you? You're Mr. Anxious. You probably are in the position of pursuing. Why don't you like me? Why don't you want me? And she's in the position of resisting, backing off like, dude, no. Now that I got you, I don't want you. You got to love yourself a little bit more. Um, and I say that because you've just been basically, in a way, kind of dumped, and you're not taking the hint. It's been 2 years now. Um, you need to do the adult thing. I'm basically talking still to a teenager here, you know, into brain development. Sorry, being insulting here, but it's the facts. But you need to be the adult here. Shake hands and say, "I think we both know we made a big oopsie here, don't we? Oh well. At least we caught it very, very early in, you know, in our life development. We can just smile and chuckle to ourselves and shake hands and say, uh, remain friends, but let's go our separate ways." From my perspective, that's what I see here. Now, there's going to be a lot of people that say, "No, no, this can be saved. My grandma and grandpa, they met when they were 16, married at 17. They were together for 90 years. Everything was wonderful, blah, blah, blah." That is not the norm, folks, especially in today's day and age. Chances are this isn't going to work. Not long-term, not in a good healthy way. Somebody has to play the part of the adult here and somebody needs to say, "This is no bueno. What are we going to do about this?" And if that resolution doesn't include work to bring you both closer together, then you need to go separate ways. And my man, I think a lot of us watching the story would be banging their heads against the table, just say, dude, run for your life, what are you doing? Not because they're picking on you. You know what those men are doing? They're talking to themselves. Uh, a lot of us men have been through this situation. Uh, not exactly, that's not fair, not exactly the situation. I didn't have a dead bedroom at an early, early age, but what I did was I committed at a very early age to one individual that the relationship threw up all kinds of red flags very early on that said, yeah, maybe you want to put this one aside and try again some— somewhere else. And I didn't, uh, simply because I didn't love myself very much, didn't have much confidence in myself. I didn't think there was much out there. It took decades later for me to go, oh, that was a mistake. So now I basically am yelling to my younger self, don't make that mistake, dude. You got way more red flags than even I got. You got the biggest one, which is physically there's no connection there. So trust me when I say there is somebody out there who you will have that connection with. Multiple somebodies, a lot of somebodies. You just have to realize that. All right, Martin, thank you so much for reaching out, buddy. I appreciate it a great deal. Uh, keep in touch and check out our group, the DSO Fraternity, dsofraternity.com.