Dear DSO: "Why Are Women So Mad When Men Relax?!"

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, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website. You can submit your own story or question to deardso.com. That's deardso.com. And if it's a good one, I will create a video here for the whole world to see. And by the way, we have a new feature on Dear DSO where you can click a box, put in your email, I'll get with you and we'll schedule a time to actually record a conversation. You won't be on video, just audio, kind of like an old school radio call-in show. And we can do that way. So more interaction back and forth as opposed to me just reading an email. So something interesting. But anyway, this one comes from Mr. Wordsmith380. Wordsmith380. Wordsmith, for those who follow, is kind of a regular on my livestreams that I do on Facebook and YouTube. He's been a regular on there, YouTube comments. Haven't seen him in a while, so good to see you, Wordsmith. He says, "I realized something recently. There's a lot of jokes out there about how women hate to see a man happy. There is some truth to it, but it's only partially true." Women love to see a man happy when he is being active or proactive. When he's happy about a mission, a goal, something he's really working hard on, women love this. When he's doing things for the kids or for her and it clearly makes him happy to do so, women love that. When he has the boys over for poker night or to watch the game, women don't love it but tolerate it because he's strengthening social bonds, etc. But when he's doing something lazy by himself, spending Sunday watching the game on the couch alone, or spending 45 minutes in the bathroom, or even just sitting in a dark room alone in silence, as I often do. They seem to hate this. Ralph Brewer, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. It seems women are only happy when a man is doing, but he must be thoroughly enjoying it. If she can tell he's miserable taking her to antique shops all Saturday morning, she will be annoyed. Well, wordsmith, who wouldn't be? I mean, let's say you're really, you know, pumped about some event or something to take your wife to. I don't know, some new restaurant opened up and you think it's the most amazing thing ever, and you take her and go, "Huh? What do you think? Look at the menu, isn't this awesome?" And she's just sitting there going, "Yeah, great." I mean, why would you, you know, take that well? You'd be like, "Oh, another, you know, fuddy-duddy person. I'm trying to enjoy something." God forbid you try to enjoy this or see it from my perspective. And so a woman dragging her man to the antique shop and going, "Look at all this cool stuff!" And he's just like, "Oh God," and staring at his phone. Of course she's not gonna take it too well. But there is something to this whole— sure, people like to see people, you know, enjoying themselves and on a mission, as you put it. Women seem to especially like it when they see their man achieving. There's nothing wrong with that. And they like to see us positive about things. People like to see people do positive things and act in a positive way, again. Nothing unusual about that and nothing necessarily gendered about that. But there does seem to be something specifically unique about the man is relaxing, doing nothing, like completely zoning out, vegging out on the couch, or as you say, go into the room by yourself and sitting alone in the dark. Wordsmith, are you okay? Watching the football game or whatever. Sure, I think every man can relate to the whole woman, you know, kicking the couch going, "When are you gonna get up?" or "What are you doing?" or slamming things around the kitchen as you're trying to sit and enjoy your game. You're like, "What is going on with her?" it's not her. She's just pissed that you are sitting in silence and doing nothing. A lot of women have a very difficult time relating to men in the regard of we have what we call like a nothing zone or nothing box that we go to. You know, picture life, and I didn't make this up. There was a gentleman that I don't know his name and I don't know how to find this. There was a YouTube video and I've shared it before where he talked about the difference between men and women and our brains and how they work. And he said like men tend to compartmentalize. Everything is like in boxes. So I have my work box and it's enclosed. Just work. Friend box, just friends. Wife, lover box, just for that. And sometimes there's a box where there's just nothing. We just zone out. And when the wife's like, "What are you thinking about?" We're just like, "Oh, um, I don't know. Nothing really." And it's true. We just zone out. We're just like, it's our own little form of meditation. Re-centering ourselves. And a lot of women can't relate to that because going back to the video of the guy talking about boxes, he says the The wife equivalent is wires. Everything is interconnected. There's, you know, and he says, and within these interconnected wires is something called emotion. All thoughts bleed in with other thoughts. There's no delineation between things. It's, and so they can't imagine that somebody actually has a box with nothing in it. They can't compute. It could be argued that like in their primitive mammalian brain, when they see man sitting doing nothing, well, he should be up doing something, something productive, because let's be honest, it's a household, it's a family, whatever, there's lots of stuff to do. And she has the wires, everything is interconnected, 100 things spinning in her head at once. I gotta do this, I gotta do that, da da da, what if this happens, what if that happens? Anxiety, you know, women tend to be more anxiety-prone than we are. So their knee-jerk thought or reaction to a man sitting doing nothing is not necessarily, oh, look at him, he's in his healthy little zen moment of nothingness, let's leave him be, let him recalibrate or recharge, as it were. Instead, it's, "Look at that lazy a-hole. Doesn't he have the same kind of wired energy that I have? Doesn't he see that there are literally 1,000 things to do? And to sit and stare at guys playing football, or to sit in a dark room doing nothing, or whatever it may be, it's counterproductive. He should be up doing something." Ladies need to understand that it's not laziness. It's just something that we need. And some guys, we find a way, one way or another, don't we, to get that accomplished. It may be some men when they come home, I remember my father doing this, he would sit in the driveway. He was home from work after his 45-minute commute, and instead of just coming right in and saying, "Dad's home," he did that most of the time. Sometimes he would sit in his truck, and he had the radio on and his newspaper open, drinking coffee, just sitting in his truck. Basically his own little enclosed alone space. Time away from everybody else. And some men accomplish this, you've alluded to it, with the 45-minute bathroom break. Unless you have some kind of serious digestive problems, which I would suggest maybe some fiber supplementation, there's no reason for us to be in there for 45 minutes. We're basically zoning out. I'm tuning out the rest of the world right now. This is my little alone time doing nothing. And again, a lot of ladies can't relate to that. But there's nothing, ladies, there's nothing nefarious about it. There's a term I often use. There's nothing evil going on. There's no conniving little secretive things. We're not having affairs and cheating on you and texting other women or whatever. We're alone. Leave us be for a little bit. Sure, if there's 100 things to do, maybe your dude, sometimes our ladies need this too, a little nudge, eh? Yeah, gotta do something. But at least counterbalance that with he's gotta have his man time, his alone time, his recalibration time, his recharge time. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. So good point, Wordsmith, appreciate it. Thank you for reaching out, buddy. And I've mentioned this to you before in comments. I'm assuming it's the same Wordsmith. Join our group, the Brotherhood, the HFM Brotherhood at help4men.com. You go to help4men.com/join and you can join us. It's a community of men much like yourself trying to figure out this whole relationship process. The dead bedroom thing, which I know from your previous comments is one of your recurring issues. The parenting thing, being a stay-at-home father, all that good stuff. We have a lot of guys going through that in our group. Help for Men Brotherhood, it's a community with all kinds of cool benefits to join. We have a private forum, we have live Zoom meetings, we have like over 900 hours of audio content just for our members. We get together in person, discounts on courses and coaching. All kinds of good stuff to get you on your way. So check it out, Wordsmith, at helpformen.com/join, and look forward to meeting ya finally. All right, brother, but thank you for sharing this. It's a good one.