Dear DSO: "I'm Divorced and Ready to Get Back Out There. Or Am I...?"

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. Hello everyone, we have another Dear DSO entry on the website and you can submit your own question or story to dadstartingover.com/dear-dso, and if it's a good one, I will share it here for the whole world to see and listen to. If you're listening to this on the podcast, this one comes from Mr. In Between. Subject line is, a year is a long time. He says, 50-year-old man with married daughters, 26 and 24. I was diagnosed with depression and mild bipolar disorder, which explains my whole life, about 2 years ago. Also, therapy helped me finally pull the plug on a bad marriage with what you, Ralph Brewer, have described as a dead bedroom for the entire 28 years. Well, not completely dead. I mean, you got 2 kids out of it, but I know what you mean. Uh, we have been separated for 6 months. Incredibly amicable, but with no friends, getting around other humans is vital to my well-being. It sure is. I've chosen weekly karaoke, and I've always loved it, but it skews a bit young. And then he says, parentheses, I keep getting hit on by 25-year-olds. You poor thing. Uh, my goal out in the world right now is friendship. Very good. And maybe some mild flirting, but nothing serious or sexual, he says. Nor do I want a romantic relationship for probably a year after separation. That's just wise. That's my standard suggestion to a lot of men. So, two things, he says. Do you believe it would be okay to take a former work friend who is long-term divorced maybe attracted to a bit, he says, to karaoke with me as friends, to be able to spend some time with an unattached grown-up woman. And completely unrelated to her, he says, choosing celibacy is a thousand times better than having it chosen for me. But yesterday I found myself creating an account on a website for discreet sexual encounters because not getting laid is... not getting laid. What are your thoughts about this? So, Mr. In Between, so thing number 1 is, how about me taking this gal to karaoke? I think a lot of people listening to that would say, dude, what's the big deal? Take your friend to karaoke, what the hell? I think what you're saying is, with your hesitation here and sharing it with me and the world, is, um, Maybe you're saying you don't trust yourself. Maybe you are worried you will quote unquote catch feelings for this gal and you will jump headfirst into a relationship. It's only been 6 months of separation, still kind of early-ish. So maybe you're onto something with these hesitations. I'm assuming that that's the thought process going in your head. So maybe you do need to pump the brakes a little bit and not take your gal pal You know yourself better than anyone. And I know lots of guys who have done the very quickly after the divorce, uh, what we call rebound relationship thing. And what those men will say when it explodes in their face, which it invariably does with these rebound relationships, it hurts just as, if not worse than, the divorce that they just endured. Why? Because, um, the rebound relationship, with all those feelings and everything, comes a sense of hope and elation because you just went through a really big traumatic thing with the separation and divorce from your very long-term partner, even if that relationship was based on a lot of dysfunction. And, you know, like you say, like a dead bedroom thing for 28 years. Yeah, there is a part of you that says, yahoo, I'm free! But there's also a very real human part of you that says Oh my God, I lost my partner. I'm kind of rudderless in life. I'm kind of lost here, like a lost little kid, abandoned kid kind of feeling, you know? And that sucks. And one of the biggest ways in order to stop that pain is to go get in a new romantic relationship. And sure enough, when you're in that state of mind, you haven't quite healed, quote unquote, from your trauma from all that, you tend to attract other kind of sort of broken people, if not really, really broken people. And then that ends in chaos. And then suddenly thrown in your face with this new breakup is, oh wow, I'm not healed yet, I'm broken. I thought this person was like this gift from God, so to speak, that, you know, came from the heavens and just dropped in my lap. I thought I was just such a lucky individual to find this person, and oh crap, no, they're just as broken, if not more broken than the ex, which sheds a light on the fact that I'm broken too. Oh, this really, really sucks. So maybe that's what you're in a way saying, I don't want to go down that road. There's two schools of thought here. Yeah, maybe it's a bit soon. Maybe you know yourself better than everyone and you're right. Maybe you do need to stay clear of this gal. The other school of thought is, dude, eventually you're gonna have to jump into the deep end of the pool here and hang out with people of the opposite sex, people of the opposite sex that you say you may have a little bit of attraction towards. Nothing wrong with that. And they may say, "Just go for it. Test the waters and see how it works." You start catching feelings and you're like, "This is going a little bit too far," you can always pump the brakes and say, "Let's cool it. Let's just hang out. We don't need to text 90 times a day. We don't need to hang out, you know, every day of the week. I know both of us have kids out of the house and all that other stuff, but maybe we just need to cool it and stick to just Saturday karaoke kind of thing." If it gets to that point, You may break her heart. She may break your heart. That's the nature of relationships. Welcome to real life. Thing 2, you saying, "Hey, I'm a dude. It's, you know, not getting laid sucks." And you're like, "You know, I found this website for these casual encounters, discreet sexual encounters. What are our thoughts about that?" So it sounds to me like you got some real shame around your sexuality, probably. Very common, especially in today's day and age. Like a lot of mixed messages. We have, you know, people talking about being sex positive and, you know, not shaming people for their sexuality and their needs. But on the other hand, we have people telling men, um, long-term relationships and marriage, there's a big downturn in sexual activity, you should be cool with that. And if you try to take that urge and put it elsewhere in the form of pornography, sex workers, and so forth, you're a monster. So it's, it's difficult for some of us to navigate that. Especially your more anxious-y types. So here you are, you know, free and clear from a long-term dead bedroom marriage, as you put it, and, um, it's 6 months now. Well, prior to that, years of very little intimacy, I presume, between you and the ex-wife. And here you are now saying, let me go out and get some, but I'm kind of leery of forming real romantic relationships because of what I just went through, blah blah blah. Dude, I'm not gonna shame you for going down this route at all. What I will do is caution you that, um, you are one of a bazillion men in the same position. Actually, not the exact same position. There are a lot of married men still that are in your position trying to find, uh, easy sexual encounters with no emotional connection, et cetera. Two things to worry about. Number one is you're on a website that knows that there's a lot of quote-unquote desperate men out there looking for this kind of connection, and they have things to take advantage of you, such as fake accounts with fake women trying to get you to pump more money into their system. Like, uh, you know, hey, let's say it costs like $5 to join some kind of online thing. Oh, you've— you're trying to, uh, you know, communicate with Mary here. Mary is a premium member. To communicate with Mary, we need an extra $5 a month out of you. Oh, you want to send Mary some messages? You need to spend another $5. Next thing you know, you're spending $30 and $50 and hundreds of dollars on what's basically a big scam. This is not unheard of. Even in those legitimate, quote-unquote legitimate dating sites, your Tinders, OKCubids, and all these others, they have fake profiles out there for people just trying to take advantage of quote-unquote desperate dudes. So be careful. Don't give out your information. Don't give out your name, address, phone number to people that you, you know, that you're not sure they're not real humans, they're not a real woman. Maybe do FaceTime conversations. Just be careful. And thing 2 is, um, so many men saying, I'm gonna go into this world of casual sexual relationships because I'm worried about catching feelings and getting my heart broken and getting hurt all over again, but I have very real need, right? Again, not going to shame you for that, but please be aware, um, from what I have seen, it's rare for a man to be able to go into that world of sexual connection and not eventually quote unquote catch feelings or become romantically intertwined with the person they are in this relationship with. In other words, You think you're gonna be like wham bam thank you ma'am and do that, let's say, on a regular weekly basis, every other week, I don't know, meet up with your F buddy, as people call it, and everything will be fine. Well, even if you are a pretty cold dude in that way and able to keep things physical, don't think that your partner is going to be the same. More often than not, no. And more often than not, you won't either. So if you're saying, I'm worried about myself going down the road of a romantic relationship. I know me better than anyone. I know that it's going to lead to some bad stuff with the current mindset that I'm in. Then be aware that you're playing with fire by, you know, dipping your toes into the waters of, you know, what do you call it, uh, discreet sexual encounters. May not be so simple. All right, brother. Hey, if you want to, you can check out our group at Help for Men. Go to helpformen.com/join and check out the HFM Brotherhood. We are a group of hundreds, over 700 individuals from around the world, just men. A lot of them are in your shoes, post-divorce, trying to navigate these post-divorce dating waters, if you will, trying to come to terms with their own issues, mental health and so forth. And you're looking for other men, you know, to bounce things off of, this is what the group is for. We have, you know, private discussion forums, we have live Zoom meetings, you can talk one-on-one with myself, we have live get-togethers, you can get all of my books at no additional charge, all kinds of really cool benefits. So check it out, the HFM Brotherhood at help4men.com. All right, brother, best luck to you.