Jack's wife rejects his sexual advances repeatedly, and when he gets upset about it, she gets angry at him instead. Ralph Brewer explains that her anger likely masks shame or guilt, and suggests the real problem is five years of avoiding the conversation. Jack needs to decide whether to actually talk to his wife or accept the marriage won't change.
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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. Hello everyone, Ralph Brewer here, and we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website.. And you could 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 out of it for the whole world to see. And this one comes from Jack, and the subject line is, Wife Angry After She Rejects Me. He says, hey DSO. Well, hey Jack. He says, I got a quick question for you. I'm 40 years old. My wife is 35. We've been married for 10 years and we have a few kids, he says. Typical story, but after becoming a mom, the wife's libido disappeared. No medical issues. She just doesn't think about it. And he says parentheses, imagine that. And doesn't seem to care about my needs. I've explained to her that she may get into it if we start He's referring to something called responsive desire. But she most of the time isn't even willing to try. My question: recently my wife said no to sex and quote, "I just don't want to," parentheses, "we've done it maybe 5 times in as many years." Ouch. And I was a bit annoyed by the rejection. Now my question is, why did she then get angry at me? Did she expect me just to be cool with yet another umpteenth rejection? Uh, it's been a few days and we've been very distant, he says. She rejects me and is angry? I think it's due to feeling shame or guilt on her part. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks. Well, pretty common one. If you've been watching my stuff, you read the book, I assume, The Dead Bedroom Fix. For those watching this that you haven't read it yet, check out deadbedroomfix.com. There's my book right over my shoulder there. So 5 times in 5 years, pretty much textbook dead bedroom sexless marriage. Her overall attitude is one of, just don't want it. Sorry, dude. You come back to her with, maybe if we kind of get started, you'll like it. You'll like the idea more. And she's like, no. You ask one more time, proposition her. She says no. And for some reason gets really irritated and angry at you. And you're like, what's the deal? Why would she get angry? It's almost as if she's being like annoyed or put off by your suggestion. You're inconveniencing her, right? You're in the middle of something, something important, whatever it is, and somebody comes up to you and says, "Do you want to do insert ridiculous thing here?" And you're just like, "What? No, I'm busy doing something." And then they pester you more about it and they try to make you feel guilty for not wanting to do the thing that they want to do. And you're like, "Can you just leave me alone?" That's kind of the energy you were getting from her, right? That's how she sees this dude. If 5 times in 5 years and repeat rejection wasn't enough of a blunt signal for you, I don't know what will be. She doesn't want you in that way for insert potentially valid reasons on her part. What is not valid or nice on on her part is the way she's going about doing this. You don't let this go on for so many years and just brush it under the rug or whatever and just, you know, get irritated when somebody asks you for something that is very healthy and normal in a relationship. Shows me that she's got something going on upstairs. It's not good. Probably, if I had to guess, her mom and dad and their dynamic was very much like this. That's what she grew up with. That's just the way married couples with kids act, right? In her mind. And here you are going, "No." You should have said, "Uh, no," and remedied this situation 4 and a half years ago. Not like 5 years into this do you say, "Man, why is she so upset when I ask her for sex?" Dude, you've trained her to be this way, in essence. You've trained her to get away with treating you in a very unhealthy manner. It can only escalate and become more and more unhealthy in the form of being angry at you when you ask her to do such ridiculous things. In her mind, she's not wired in the way that you want her to be wired, my friend. Now, I say this, and there's going to be a lot of people, mostly women, who will come back and say, that's really presumptuous of you, kind of an asshole take on all this. There could be, you know, real valid reasons why she doesn't want to do that. Sure, I've already mentioned that. Could be very valid reasons. But this is not the way to remedy it. By ignoring, getting mad, and just letting this go for years, year after year after year. And you aren't helping your cause either. It's healthy version of the talk time. Wife, we— this is weird. I'm weird for putting up with this, frankly, and not trying to fix this all these years. You're weird for being so resistant to any kind of connection. What is going on with us? Are you willing, wife, to work towards bridging the gap, as I often say, between the two of us? If not, we can just shake hands and go our separate ways, co-parent these kiddos. What do you say? Are you willing to work with me? And it doesn't mean, wife, just jumping into bed right now, because if you, wife, said, let's just go to bed, fine, that's not what I want. I don't want fine. I want somebody who wants to connect. That's what you want too, right, Jack? I would hope. You just don't want the physical release and just get the hell out of your wife. If you do want that, then you don't want— you don't like your wife very much. Which, after 5 years of being turned down, I don't blame you for not liking her too much. So be honest with yourself. Do you like her? Do you love her? Do you appreciate her and want to connect better with her? Or do you just want to release with somebody that you frankly kind of hate now and resent? Some big picture questions to ask yourself here. If you'd like to chat with me one-on-one, you can do so. Book time with me at help4men.com. Go to coaching in the menu or go to help4men.com/coaching. Or better yet, join our private group, the HFM, the Help for Men Brotherhood, the HFM Brotherhood. Go to help4men.com/join. We have private discussions about these topics and a lot more. Hundreds and hundreds of men from around the world. The discussions are very active 24/7. We have many live Zoom meetings every single week. Myself and others on the team host these meetings. We get together in person. You get all my books at no extra charge. We record all our meetings, so you have like hundreds and hundreds, almost 1,000 hours of meetings that you can listen to from your phone. All kinds of good stuff. So check it out, the HFM Brotherhood at help4men.com. All right, Jack, I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for reaching out.
