Dear DSO: "It's Like When Your Boss Just Decides to Cut Your Pay!"

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 a new Dear DSO entry on the website, and you can submit your own story or question. To deardso.com, and if it's a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see. And this one comes from one of our old friends. He's been here, I think this is the fourth time he submitted a question, not sure exactly, but Wordsmith. Wordsmith is back, our hyper-analytical friend. No offense, Wordsmith. And he says, hey Ralph, I'm back, with a smiley face. This one is kind of aimed towards the ladies in your DSO world, he says. Ladies out there, imagine you've got your dream job. It finally happened. You love the work, the hours, the people you work with, and the money is awesome. Everything is great. Now a few years go by, and one day you see your pay stub and it's a third of what it usually is. You ask your boss, what's going on? And boss says, I just don't feel like paying you more than that. We've had to cut back on some expenses lately. You don't like this, but you still love the job and you don't want to leave. So you keep working for months hoping things improve and the boss will pay you more. But it gets worse. They are paying you less and less all the time until it's basically minimum wage. You still love your job, but now you're eating dollar packages of hot dogs and ramen noodles for every meal and barely getting by. Finally, you realize something has to change. But what are your options? You can quit this job you love so much and get another better-paying job that you may not like nearly as much. Or you can get a part-time job with another company on the side just to make ends meet. But if the boss at your day job finds out, they will most likely fire you. It's in the contract that you signed that you would work nowhere else. Although you did this on the basis that your salary would remain the same too. So you feel they're in breach of contract as well. This is basically the position women put men in when they decide sex is no longer important. Now my question for you, Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer, and for the ladies in your audience: why do women think that men will just put up with this indefinitely? Why do women feel that their men are so invested that they will just be okay with enforced celebracy. It seems that they just don't respect their men. If you spend much time on Instagram, you will see women making gag reels or skits about denying the husband sex. It's done in a joking manner, but there's a lot of truth behind it, and women in the comments will be bragging that they do the same thing. If men made reels like this about denying their wife's hopes of emotional connection or affection, they'd be crucified immediately and probably get their account banned. I'm considering doing this as an experiment, he says. So just curious to get some thoughts on this, Ralph. Thanks for the great content as always. And yes, I'm still considering joining the group. He means our community, the HFM, Help for Men Brotherhood. Learn more at help4men.com. I suggested that Wordsmith should join us based on all of his previous, uh, other emails to me. And he says, um, yes, I'm considering joining the group. I've had several therapists tell me that they can't help me unless I leave my environment, so maybe you guys can. Take care, he says. Oh, wordsmith. Um, I find myself saying that a lot lately with you. Oh, wordsmith. Another hyperanalytical take on what I and probably others that would take in all of your situation based on what you've said over all these months, maybe years now, um, we would just simply say solution's relatively simple. And it sounds like you've been to more than one therapist who has told you the same thing: you can't do better mentally and emotionally unless you remove yourself from that— overused term, I know— toxic environment. Your relationship is wildly dysfunctional and you're reaching out and trying to understand it and find a little nugget of wisdom that will flip and turn things around, dammit, when the solution is staring you right in the face and the therapists are telling you the same thing. You got to leave that dude. It's bad. And for those that don't know, I'm not jumping to conclusions. I do not suggest divorce and split and separation just willy-nilly like that. That's a huge freaking deal. Especially when you got kiddos, which Ward Smith has more than one. But you have to take into account the complete picture here. Ward Smith has been dealing with a lot of crap for a long time and very disconnected from the wife, and he's just brokenhearted and he can't figure out what's going on here, and it sucks. And he continuously reaches out to me and saying, hey, I got another scenario for you, another analogy for what's going on, to maybe somebody out there will understand. And my point here, Mr. Wordsmith, is we understand, dude. We've been telling you for a while now. We got the solution. Get the hell out of Dodge, mister. And you're like, nah, not listening to it. Anyway, here's another analogy for you to help better understand. No, no, we got it, dude. But your situation aside, let's just pretend that I have no idea of your past. I don't know, you know, what's going on with you or anything. I'm just going by this email alone. And right away, you're kind of— the framing of this, the theme of this is just wildly off from the beginning. Number one, you framed it as the boss. The boss has said, here you go, you know, thank you for your efforts, here's your reward. And now with the same effort on your part, employee, the boss is pulling back on the reward saying, I don't think so. You could be argued, keeping with that analogy of the boss and you as the employee, is your boss not in essence kind of testing you in that way? If you want to frame it in that way, it's not necessarily the most accurate way, but that's how us men kind of look at things in life. We look at things in terms of life is throwing some tests at me. The universe, God, whatever you want to call it, is saying, here you go, dude, how are you going to react? Do you roll over? Do you say, eh, oh well, it is what it is? Or do you, quote, kind of fight back? Do you stick up for yourself? Do you say, "I'm not putting up with that. I put boundaries up. We had a deal, Mr. Boss. This was our agreement. You are reneging on our agreement. Therefore, I'm out of here. Gonna find another job. Adiós." So in keeping with this analogy of the employee and boss, in your scenario, wife would be the boss. Not the sexiest thing in the world, dude. Wife is rewarding you for being a good boy. Also not the sexiest thing in the world, dude. People change. Relationships are not so simple. People go through emotional, mental, physical changes. The way they were 10 years ago is not how they are now. And sometimes this results in really not so good stuff. And sometimes it's very overt and in your face. And if you want to look at it this way, it's life, or your wife in particular, testing you. What you gonna do now, buddy? And this answers a question you had on here, which is, why do, in this scenario you gave, why do the women in this scenario, or the boss if you will, why are they saying, or why do they think rather, that they can get away with this? And the answer, again wordsmith, is pretty simple. Because they've gotten away with it year after year after year. In that example, the boss suddenly lowers your paycheck. Why? They've probably done that with other employees in the past and got away with it. They want to see how you react. And then you're like, "Oh well, I like this job." And the boss says, "Got another one." Same thing with wifey. If she has past relationship experience, she's done this before. She watched mom and dad. They did the same thing. And now she's doing it to you. And your reaction is, "Oh well, I'll stick around. I love you too much." And she says, "Got another one." Mr. Wordsmith, the only solution here is to say, "Enough's enough. I love myself too much to deal with this poor treatment." And again, for those watching this, you don't know the full story. Wardsmith has endured a very disconnected, sexless relationship for a long time as a stay-at-home father taking care of— Wardsmith, I don't remember, I think it's like 4 or 5 special needs children that you have adopted. You're up to here with stress. Your spouse is basically disconnected from you and you're left going like, what now? And her reaction is basically, not my problem. And this leads to a cascading, snowballing series of negative effects on the relationship, including sexlessness. And your reaction again is, hmm, oh well, what am I gonna do? You know what to do. Enough's enough. We're going to fix this or Wordsmith is outta here. And maybe you've had some semblance of that conversation before, but it's led exactly nowhere. And so she has been trained to know when Wordsmith says certain words, they really don't mean anything. And this has been going on for years and years probably. So that's why she thinks that way and why women like your wife think that way because you have trained them to think that way. Oh, and your point, you know, in your last point there with you went to therapists and they're saying you need to leave that, uh, what do you say, leave your environment, that you won't get better unless you do. You're hoping that we will tell you differently within our group, the HFM Brotherhood, helpformen.com. I can tell you now If that's your intent, if you want to spend money on our group, which is not much at all, you don't want to spend the few bucks to join our group because you have the fear that we may tell you, dude, what the hell you doing? I can tell you now, a predominant reply or thought when it comes to your situation is going to be, dude, what are you doing? Much like the therapists, much like pretty much everyone else that you've probably gone to with this issue. I don't know what else to tell you, dude. I feel for you. I do. It sucks. If you'd like to chat one-on-one with me, you can. HelpForMen.com. Join the group. The cost of talking to me one-on-one is like half the price, plus you get to talk to 700+ dudes from around the world, live meetings, the forums, get all my books at no additional charge, meet in person, all kinds of cool stuff. I highly suggest you check it out. You need more dudes in your life, strong dudes who have been there, done that. All right, brother. Anybody else listening to this that applies to you as well? Mr. Ward Smith, thank you once again for another good one. I do wish you all the best. Keep in touch, take care, and we'll see you on the next one.