In this Dad Starting Over podcast episode, host Ralph Brewer first promotes the Help for Men Brotherhood, a community offering forums, live Zooms, coaching, and resources for men feeling isolated or overwhelmed. He then addresses a listener’s “Dear DSO” submission from Nick, a husband of 17 years with four children who works 10‑12 hour days and ends up handling most household chores—cooking, dishes, laundry, and cleaning—while his wife spends most of her time on the couch or online. Brewer explores why this dynamic exists, suggesting that Nick may have unintentionally trained his wife to be passive by not setting firm expectations, and also raises the possibility that the wife could be experiencing depression, noting higher prevalence of anxiety and depression in women and describing typical depressive behaviors. He outlines the challenges of confronting a possibly depressed partner, emphasizing that depression often resists quick fixes and may require professional help. Brewer offers concrete steps: set clear boundaries, have direct conversations, seek individual and couples therapy, consider medication or counseling for the wife, and, if necessary, evaluate the relationship’s future, including divorce. He also provides practical lifestyle recommendations (sleep hygiene, exercise, reducing substances) and encourages Nick to be patient and persistent in re‑programming family dynamics. The episode concludes with multiple calls to action for coaching, membership, and further support through dadstartingover.com.
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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 at dadstartingover.com/dear-dso. Fill out the form.. You can submit your own story and I will respond here in video format. Uh, before we get into today's Dear DSO entry, if you could please, I would greatly appreciate it, give me a follow, give me a like, give me a subscribe, however it works, wherever you are watching this, whatever platform you are using. Hey, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much. Now on to today's question. This comes from Nick. Nick says, I am the husband, I am father and wife of the household. Ruh-roh. Nick says, what do I do? I have been with the same woman for 17 years. We have a 12-year-old boy, twin 11-year-old boys, and a 5-year-old. I'm exhausted just reading this. I work hard every day for 10 to 12 hours. Oh, Nick, geez. I then come home to clean dishes at least 4 days out of the week. After dishes, I cook a home-cooked meal every day. This is all while my wife sits on the couch and sleeps or surfs the web. Don't get me wrong, she cleans the bathrooms on an average of twice a month, and same with washing the clothes. We have 4 kids, so laundry has to be done weekly. I don't know about you, but in my household it's Daily. Seriously. Therefore, I do the laundry and clean, uh, the other 2 times of the month. Oh, I see. Uh, we have talked about our roles in the house, and she seems to understand, but then reverts quickly back to the same behavior within a week to 2 weeks' time. It's like pulling teeth to get her to want to show me any form of gratitude. By gratitude, I mean just by showing that she cares for all the things that I do for the household. Truthfully, I have so much more to say, but this is already getting too long. Please help right away. It's not getting too long. That was a pretty quick one, Nick. That's some nice guy behavior on your part. You don't want to, you know, be too annoying. You don't want to overwhelm me with your, with your problems and all this other stuff. Dude, you gotta cut that shit out. This is— that's what this, you know, this, um platform is for is for you to reach out and share your story and get some help. I hate to say this, and it's going to sound misogynistic, sexist, mean on my part by some people. Some people will hear me say that and say, how is that misogynistic, mean? It will just wait. This is common, super, super common for some of you women that are married to assholes that just sit on the couch and play video games while you're doing all the housework and everything. You're probably like, yeah, right. No, dude, you can ask my friend, like therapist friend, my psychologist friend, Dr. Psych Mom, and other people like her. They hear this shit all the time, which is dude works a lot of hours and comes home and works a lot more hours while wife sits and what we say finger fucks her phone. The thing is, Nick, the first place my mind goes to this, there's my mind is going down several roads here, so bear with me. Issue number 1 is you are putting up with this. You have, in essence, trained this woman to do this stuff. Why? Because she did a little at a time, and you basically, with your inaction, said, "That's cool." And so she added a little bit more, and your inaction showed her, "That's cool." And by inaction, I mean you didn't take the action of saying, Cut this shit out, get off your ass, and do XYZ. I don't work 10 to 12 hours a day just to come home to have to do 5 more hours of housework, especially since you are sitting at home all day long and able to, you know, complete all this work, at least do half of it, while again I'm working 10 to 12 hours a day. Chop chop, get up, let's go. But I'm willing to bet you didn't do anything to resemble that little speech, did you? What you did is said, "Well, I see wife sitting. I see she's not going to do anything. Better get my ass in the kitchen or else these kids ain't going to eat. I better get my ass to the kitchen or else these plates are just going to keep piling up and piling up. Oh, look, pile of laundry. Somebody's got to do it." It's human nature. This isn't a sexist thing. This isn't a lazy wife thing. Again, I have plenty of women that will report, plenty of women followers that will report their men do much the same thing. This is an asshole at home who has been trained to learn that this is perfectly okay behavior. Why? Because you ain't going nowhere and you did not put your foot down. Or, you know, I'm inferring a lot here, I'm assuming a lot. You may have very well put your foot down and said, you got to do this or else. And she did what a lot of people in her position do is say, oh yeah, or what? And your answer to that was, or I'm I'm just gonna keep doing the laundry, the dishes, the cleaning, the cooking, and everything else while you sit there. And then I will blow up eventually a few weeks later and you'll start doing some work for like a week or two and then we'll go back to square one again. And we'll do that for years. Cool? And her answer is, sounds like a plan. You gotta put your foot down, dude. The other avenue to go down, why is she doing this? No sane person would sit back and watch your partner do all this shit and just twiddle their thumbs or finger F their phone or do whatever. And not contribute? It's gotta be a reason. Either they're just a tremendous narcissistic asshole, or, this is more common than what you think, she's depressed. I'm not making excuses for her behavior. I'm just trying to help understand it, right? A lot of people are depressed. Women are more prone to anxiety and depression than men are. By virtue of their biological makeup. When we look at personality traits, for example, the acronym to use to remember the personality traits is OCEAN, O-C-E-A-N. Openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, did I miss one? Openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Neuroticism is a propensity for negative thought. You have a much higher prevalence of anxiety, depression, and all those negative thoughts in your head. When we test people, and we say, who are the most neurotic? Women win by a landslide. Okay, now that doesn't belittle depressed men out there, anxious men. I know this will get, you know, the pitchforks out where people, or the men in my comments will say, men have problems too, men commit suicide. Yes, I know. All I'm saying is women have a prevalence, a higher prevalence for anxiety and depression. This is not a contest that you want to win, guys. Let it go. With that being said, depression can manifest or present itself in a lot of different ways. And one of the most common ways is glued to the couch, you know, inaction, not doing a damn thing. They don't get up and exercise. They don't get up and clean. They don't clean themselves. They don't clean the house. Kid is sitting on the floor crying and screaming. They don't get up to say, "Hey, what's wrong, kid?" Kid's got a full diaper, whatever. Mom or dad will change it. They're depressed. And the question is, why? You, as her partner, if in fact you think she may be depressed, let's jump to the conclusion that she suffers from depression, right? So you've determined she suffers from depression. What do I do? That's the tough part, because a lot of us that have been down this road of having a loved one, sometimes a parent or sibling or romantic partner who's depressed, We just want to, you know, grab them by the nose like a bowling ball and drag them into the therapist and say, talk shit out, get it worked out. Seriously, I'm tired of sitting, you know, doing shit for you. I'm tired of the same arguments. I'm tired of all this bullshit. Go get help. Sometimes that does it. Sometimes it takes an intervention of people to say, we're all tired of this. We're worried about you. But at the same time, we can no longer live like this as loved ones in your life. Please get fixed. Uh, what is really, really frustrating for people in your position, people like you, is that the depressed person absolutely, positively refuses all help. Their depression becomes part of their persona. It becomes part of their life story, if you will. And it's almost like it's a crutch, and without it, life looks like a lot of work. Like, you know, when you go to a depressed person and go, well, here's what we're going to do You're going to have a good sleeping schedule. You're not going to stay up all night and, you know, on your phone and on Netflix and on your computer. You're going to go to bed at a decent time. No alcohol. Right away, a lot of people go, "I'm out at that one," but whatever. Get up at a good time, good early time. Exercise. Eat right. No sweets. Let's try to drop the caffeine. Let's try to, again, drop the alcohol. It looks like you're a smoker. Probably should stop that. Looks like you're a marijuana user. Let's try skipping that for so many weeks or months, see how it works. All of this sounds like sacrifice. It sounds like discipline, and it sounds like the old W word, work. And a lot of people that are depressed, when they look at work as being the solution, or at least in part a solution to their problem, they're just very work and effort averse. It sounds exhausting. Getting up and checking the mail for them is exhausting. Getting up and changing a diaper is exhausting. They're depressed. And I'll be damned if the rest of us don't suffer as a result of this. But something's got to change here. This is not sustainable. It's not healthy for you, my friend. You should not, Nick, you should not put up with this. It needs to stop now. Not tomorrow, not a month from now. Put your foot down and say enough is enough. We're going to get help with this. We're going to talk to somebody. If in fact she is depressed, and that somebody may prescribe medication, may prescribe certain kind of therapies, in-person, one-on-one counseling, group counseling. You two come in as a couple. This is going to take a while to figure out. You have years of training. You've trained this dog to act a certain way. And suddenly tomorrow you're going to be like, you know, all that training I gave you, you know, pet dog. Well, that's terrible. I shouldn't say pet dog for your wife, but you understand what I'm saying with the analogy. You train somebody or something. And by the way, we human beings are animals. We're trainable. You show us how to live life a certain way. If you do this, then this happens. If you don't do this, then this happens. And you do so for like over a decade, almost two decades, it becomes programming imprinted in them. And then we, as the sane people or the healthy people, say, um, hey, time to rewrite your programming. Let's go. Doesn't work that way. It's going to take a while. So dude, you know how you've been patient through all this shit? Prepare to be more patient through a lot more shit to get this stuff worked out. Am I inching towards divorce? It's the easy way out. Uh, there— I say easy, you're breaking up a family, kids, the drama, money situation. But for you, it will feel like a giant 900-pound gorilla just jumped off your back. And you will say what a lot of men say in your position, which is, why the eff didn't I do this 20 years ago? I would love to chat with you about this. These things are nuanced. They're complex. There's a lot of things working here. Go see a therapist if you don't want to talk to me about this, or talk to a therapist and me about this. But you need help, my man. You got a lot of stuff going on up in the old noodle, your noodle. She has stuff going on. Something's got to give here. You can't be stuck in this state of limbo. So get help for you and for her. I think your family and your relationship deserves, you know, don't just— some work here. Don't just throw in the towel right away. Put in the old, the old effort. The effort that goes beyond just being a yes man and trying to smooth things over and avoid conflict. All right, buddy, best of luck to you. Reach out to me if you want to do the coaching, dadstartingover.com/coaching. If the pricing's a little high, join our members group. You get a lot of cool benefits with the members group, including just, you know, discussion, live discussion with hundreds and hundreds of other guys from all over the world, many of which are in your position or they were in your position. And with that membership comes big like half-off discounts from that coaching. So you could join the group, sign up for just 2 or 3 months, see if you like it, buy a coaching session, and that is cheaper in total, all those combined, than if you just bought a coaching session from dadstartingover.com. Just an idea. If, if it's not through me, if it's not through our group, you need to get help somewhere, buddy. Okay, best of luck to you.
