Dear DSO: "I Still Need MORE From My Wife!"

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. All right, folks, we have another Dear DSO entry on the website, and you can submit your own story. To dadstartingover.com/dear-dso. And if it's a good story, I will respond here in video format. This one comes from Daniel, and the subject line is Not Enough. Daniel says, I have put work in on my relationship. The things got a lot better, a lot more activity in the bedroom, but I feel that my wife is not following me because she really wants that. She is just pleasing me and I don't like that. It is like she is not comfortable in her, in her own skin. She is too much shy about everything. Not sure if I am asking too much, but it's what I feel. It seems that I'll never feel that's enough. Should we at some point feel that we reach the goal? Good question, Daniel, and it's one that I hear quite often from men. For those that don't know and wondering why a guy with a business called Dad Starting Over is getting such messages, I wrote a book years ago and the book got pretty popular and the book was called The Dead Bedroom Fix. I wrote about a lot of different topics, but the number one topic that I've ever written on was the topic of sex and marriage. And so I wrote a book about my thoughts on the topic and what men can do to improve that situation. And it really struck a nerve. And it struck a nerve with guys like Daniel here. Daniel, this is a little bit more complicated situation than what you may think. I hear this quite a bit from guys, and that is they'll say, Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer, I read your book, I put some things into practice. Lo and behold, we're having more sex. Sometimes these guys go from like one mediocre session a week to three a week. So like a 300% increase, you know, holy crap. But then the guys say, still not happy. Like, why not? And they say what you said here, Daniel. They say, I don't feel like she's really into it. In other words, I'm not feeling true spontaneous desire for my wife. She is responding to me, and I feel like she's just kind of going through the motions. I don't have this over-the-top horn dog woman that I want. I want the woman to, you know, tear off my clothes, be screaming so the neighbors are complaining. For some of these guys, they don't have much in the way of relationship experience, so they'll say, "I wanna see, I wanna get what I see like in these adult movies that I see on the internet." Or some of the guys do have a lot of relationship experience and they will say, "I wanna see what I saw from this woman early in the relationship during the honeymoon phase, before we had kids and got married and everything else." They will say, "This woman was very hypersexual." and she was very spontaneous with her libido. And I would like to see that back again. What I see is a wife who is, okay, let's go, you know, they'll go upstairs and then while they're doing the deed, she sure seems to enjoy it. But I'll be damned if I didn't bring it up, if I didn't instigate, if I didn't pursue, I think this woman would just be fine not doing anything ever, ever again. So guys, multifaceted thing here. It could be that that's just who she is now. You know, people go through changes in life. She was a hypersexual child-free woman in the past, and now she could be this, I'm hyper stressed out mother, all I think about is kids. The only time I ever feel sexy is that one time a year when we're, you know, on vacation away from the children and I have, you know, 6 margaritas in me type of thing. Pretty common. Or she could be the type of woman that is genuinely aroused, but this is just the flavor of arousal that she has right now at this point in her life. It also could be, I talk to a lot of men who are very, very anxious in nature. Some of them have things such as ADHD. Some exhibit what psychologists call really anxious attachment in the way they attach to their romantic partners. And really nothing is ever good enough for these guys. The woman could just say, you know, I love you, I'm not cheating on you, there's nothing going on here, I'm just very tired, you have to trust me, here, check my phone, check whatever you want. And the guy's like, don't believe it. I think this woman is obviously cheating on me, otherwise she wouldn't want to have sex with me 3 days a week like she used to before the kids. It's like, dude, you're just not getting it. People go through chapters and changes in their life. What you're seeing is this new chapter here. Either you're going to have to accept it and realize you're getting more action than, dare I say, 90% of married men out there. I mean, come on, dude. Or you have to realize that this will never be exactly what I need in a relationship. Time to move on to somebody else. It sounds terrible, but really, it's not fair to your wife, the one who seems to be trying and doing what she can to stay attached to her horn dog husband. And you're like, not good enough. I can see, you know, that this isn't genuine here, and I want genuine, damn it. Well, what do you expect? You can't just flip a switch and say, be genuine. Genuine is genuine. Now, what, what really hurts a lot of men is that they will see their, their wife be really genuine in a new relationship setting. I've mentioned before in plenty of other videos how surprised I was since I've done this, since I wrote the book and everything else, hearing from all these people that have these kind of alternative type of relationships, polyamorous and swinging and all this other stuff. And they will try this world out and they will you know, much to the chagrin of the husband. He will be like, wow, my wife really came alive sexually when we introduced new human beings into the equation. This hurts me even worse than what I was hurting before. You know, the, um, sexual activity goes up quite a bit, but it's, you know, at the expense of hurting his feelings because he's watching wife with a new man or woman, and she's really turning into the old horn dog that she used to be. And he's like, well, there you go. It's just all me. I don't bring that out of her. And I tell that guy, I say, it may be you in part, but probably more so that it's just new. And dude, you can't beat new. And we're rewinding the hands of time. You were new guy all those years ago. And when you are new guy, that's when you see the optimum holy crap horn dog woman that we all want. Case we made, we are wired as a people, as a species, for what's known as serial monogamy. You pair bond with a person, you fall in love, you have a hypersexual state, which Mother Nature has imprinted in us for what reason? Make babies. And we do so. We have a kid, 1, 2, 3, whatever it may be. And then we just naturally kind of drift apart. Why? Because we're supposed to disconnect and go do it again with other women. I know I say we're supposed to. That's— I'm not saying it's the right thing to do. I'm not saying this is a good thing for you, for her, for society, for the children, whatever. I'm just saying it seems to be that this is the programming that Mother Nature has imprinted with us— in us, rather. And we have to put in work to overcome said programming. And the result, though, of that work usually doesn't approach the hypersexual spontaneous nature that we had in the early new stage of the relationship. I'm sorry. So Daniel, if you absolutely positively need that new state of the relationship again, you know the solution. It's time for a new one. And a lot of people have come to that same conclusion. Serial monogamy, pretty common thing. So Daniel, some people will hear your story and say, dude, you need to grow up. You need to realize that you have it better than most. This is as good as it gets. Suck it up. Or you can accept it as a challenge. Have fun with it. Don't take it so seriously. Don't take it so, woe is me, this is awful, gloom and doom. How about, you know, looking at it from a different angle? Like, I got stuff to work with here. I'm getting action. The building blocks of a sexy relationship is there. How do I kick it up a notch? And I alluded to it before, maybe it's get away, get away from the kids, vacation, have fun, go to a sexy club together, go dancing. If she's, you know, open sexually, which it sounds like she's— you say she's very shy about stuff. Maybe you need to work on bringing her out of that shell. Sexy outfits, go to strip clubs together, sex clubs. You know, some people do that and go way out there type of stuff, but she's probably not ready for that. But if you do it in the right way and it's an adventure and it's playful for both of you and nothing is expected, it can be a very, very good thing. So there's lots of things to do. Don't throw in the towel just yet, and don't be so gloom and doom about this. All right, Daniel, best of luck to you.