DSO & Austin Talk About Sex After Kids - From Facebook/Youtube Live

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. Welcome everyone. Welcome, welcome. My name, for those that don't know, is Ralph Brewer. I go by the pen name, fake internet name of DSO, which stands for Dad Starting Over, which is not coincidentally the name of my business website empire, whatever. DadStartingOver.com is the website, so check it out. You can see us across all the social media channels, just search for Dad Starting Over. And with me today is Mr. Austin. Austin, how young of a gal are you, Austin?

34.

Young man, young man. Welcome. And Austin is a, what we call a coach within the Dad Starting Over world, more specifically in our DSO fraternity, which is our members-only group within the Dad Starting Over world. You can check it out at the Dad Starting Over website, dadstartingover.com, or we have the domain of dsofraternity.com, gets you to the same place, and you can learn more about our private group. We have all kinds of cool stuff won't go into all of it— live meetings, all kinds of interesting things. Yes, we get together in person. Yes, we have coaches, guys who can help you one-on-one. And what we have learned is there's such a demand for guys to talk to other men one-on-one, kind of a mentor relationship, guys that have been there and done that. We will talk to Austin, we will learn more about his specific area of expertise and his experience and, uh, and why he became a coach. And, um, anywho, and if you are a member of the DSO fraternity, uh, you get what we call coaching at a pretty considerable discount compared to the general public. In fact, I would say 99% of our coaching clients come from the DSO fraternity, and they keep us so busy that we have— how many of us now, coaches-wise, Austin? You know, I should know that off top of my head. 9, 10 of us total?

Well, yeah, if we're going with, with everyone, yep. That's about 9.

Yeah. So we keep, we keep pretty busy and we conduct meetings live, like I mentioned, in Zoom and everything else. And Austin is with us here today. Austin is one of our longtime dudes. He's been— well, I don't know, maybe you want to tell the story of how you discovered the Dad Starting Over world and what brought you to us here today. I'll let you take it from here.

Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, I actually found The Dad Starting Over world about 3 and a half years ago. I was searching for content and trying to find stuff, you know, question— questions that I needed answers to. And I came across the book The Dad Bedroom Fix. So, um, read that book, immediately joined the group. And, you know, this is of course before the fraternity, 3 and a half years. So, um, that's really where everything hit me like a ton of bricks, and I started working on myself. I was a part of the group for a year before I started getting into coaching. And even before that, I was writing articles for you. So I started with writing articles. I was working with other guys in the group and it just kind of started organically that I was working with them. So I might as well do it the official way and start doing coaching. I've been coaching for 2 and a half years. Yeah, right, right around 2 and a half years.

Excellent, excellent. And your specific, uh, what's the best way to say this, your, your forte, your niche, your niche, there you go. What, what is it that, uh, uh, you honed in on subject-wise that you said, now this really resonates with me?

Yeah, so, so in my own experience coming to the group in, at the time, a 10-year marriage. Now it's a 13-year marriage. I had tendencies that very much align with what Dr. Glover would call nice guy tendencies. So very much don't rock the boat. Yes, dear. Do anything possible to make the most important person in my life happy. In an effort to make myself happy. That's really what it, what it gets down to when, when you dissect what the, um, the nice guy tendencies are in a marriage. It's, it, it ends up being very selfish, and it doesn't seem that way to you when you're, when you are that way. Um, and also, as I got into, to coaching and working with other guys, I learned a lot about myself in addition to what is very common And what is very common is a lot of these issues are not that significant. They don't rear their, their head early in the marriage until kids come along. And it's a very common theme that when they— when the first child comes, especially if there's a fast follower second child, there, there's going to be issues that, that come to fruition at that moment. It's— the issue is forced, the weaknesses are exposed.

Yep. Having, you know, the order of, I guess, the severity of complexity or difficulty in our minds as men in a relationship, it goes from, you know, the spectrum is the super easy stage, the honeymoon stage, you're my girlfriend, woohoo, you know, dating, that's easy stuff, right? To now we're a committed couple, it's a little bit more difficult. Now we're married, we just crank the difficulty up a few notches. Now we have kids. Oh my gosh, we ripped the knob right off the machine. Now it just becomes exponential. And it's not because kids are bad. It's not because parenting's bad. It's just different. And it changes the landscape, the tone of the relationship completely. And if you don't have— well, we can go on and on about what allows you to best handle that and best navigate that world and still remain connected as a couple. We could go on and on about that, but it's, you know, if you come from a good background, good family, you watched mom and dad do it, you have good mentorship, good, uh, good group around you, peer group that you can learn from and so forth. It's— some people make it look really easy, like they're just a sexy couple and they're just always connected, and they got a litter of kids at home and they're just, you know, smacking each other on the butt in the kitchen and smooching all the time, and they're very connected in that way. But that's relatively rare. Prayer. For most of us, it takes a concerted effort, and it's almost like we have to learn from scratch how to do all that. And that is in part— I wrote a book you mentioned, The Dead Bedroom Fix. For the guys that haven't read that yet, it's for men, all about, man, I wish I'm in this committed monogamous relationship, marriage for most of us, pardon me. And, um, you know, I wish I was getting more action in the bedroom. Well, I wrote a book for men all about this issue, and it's called The Dead Bedroom Fix, so check it out. But Um, before I forget, you also jumped over, quickly mentioned a book by an author by the name of Dr. Robert Glover, who we know. He's a friend of our group. He's been to our meetings before. He hung out with a weekend with us. He wrote a multi-million seller book called No More Mr. Nice Guy. And for those guys and gals listening to that saying, what the hell's wrong with being nice? Who doesn't want to be nice? You have to read the book. It's basically another term for codependency. Being a boundaryless, pushover-y guy who's not, you know, congruent with himself. He's not, uh, to use a Dr. Glover term, a fully integrated man, meaning he doesn't have the self-confidence, self-worth, and blah blah blah. Very good book. I recommend, uh, every guy. If any of that is resonating with you and you're, you're one of those guys like, why does every girl like jerks? And I'm so nice and kind and nobody likes me, check out the book by Dr. Robert Glover. Um, Because if you get in a committed relationship, as Mr. Austin and millions of other men have learned, those nice guy tendencies bubble to the surface in a big way. And then when you have kids, oh shit, dude, it's over. Yeah, so you have to correct that. Now, to Austin's credit, he's learning about the nice guy stuff. He's diving into that 100%. He's like a lot of, a lot of guys who are anxious, and I'm not pointing fingers, hey, hello, that's me as well. Um, we dive into subject matter like, holy crap, this is my new thing I'm focused on, especially guys, you know, ADHD, those types of guys, the guys on the autism spectrum and neurodivergent guys, as they say now, really dive in. They know that world well. We hyperfocus on a subject matter. And for you, the subject matter was, I have recognized, I've just discovered this thing called this nice guy tendency. Let's dive into this and figure out how to fix this thing. And you really learned a lot and you shared a lot with our group. To the point where I recognized I have an expert on my hands here on the subject matter. He's really helping everybody else. Austin, why don't you make this official and call yourself Coach Austin? That was basically the genesis of our relationship. And you didn't just stop there and put your feet up and say, I'm Mr. Coach Dude now, oh, this is great, and make a few extra bucks a month, yahoo. You said, nope, I gotta keep this train rolling. Leading into, where's the graphic at? Oh geez, hold on a second. I had this all, oh, here we go. Um, all right, this is— see if it comes up. There it is. Um, be a delay here on Facebook before it shows up, but you wrote a little book which is available in ebook PDF format for now from the Dad Starting Over website. Go to dadstartingover.com, go up in the menu, click on books, and you'll see it. But the book is called Why Sex Ends After Kids and How to Fix It. And we, uh, you and I went back and forth on the design of this, the COVID of it, but how perfect is that? Yeah, it did take a while.

There are a lot of iterations.

Yeah, I got a woman in the back with like, looks like a 1-year-old, and there's the dad who just assembled the crib, it looks like, and he's just sitting there just with his hands on his knees going, what the fuck? That is right, that's the quintessential dude. And that, that is a struggle, and it's not a, it's not a bad thing. You're not, you're not alone in that struggle, men. If you see that and can relate to that image there, it's, um, a lot of people A lot of people, uh, can relate to that. A lot of men and some women, but mostly men, that we have found, uh, when, when we enter into that domestic family stage of, of the relationship and have kids, the sexiness tends to go right out the window. And unfortunately, us men are wired to maintain that sexy as much as humanly possible. And so you recognize that, and you wrote a little book about it. You want to talk some about it?

Absolutely. And you know, that, that graphic, it represents really the tragedy of the situation. It represents how when you have kids as a couple— this isn't just men, of course— as a couple, you have to grow up very fast. You have to become more mature. You have to become less selfish. You have to— there's a lot of work involved. And I think just because of the way that a lot of men are within their marriage, especially if their wife is a stay-at-home mom, especially if they have a job that works long hours. They have this mindset of divide and conquer, especially in the idea of equality and all of those other things where you take the kids, you take the house, I take the job. A lot of men have that mentality. I know I had that mentality for a while. Even if the wife works full-time, you know, that mentality can happen. And it just so happens that because women are going through the pregnancy, they're potentially nursing after delivery, they are with that child so much, they just— and it's a beautiful thing, the attachment a mother has with the baby. It just, it pushes the women to mature and stand up. And I'm not speaking for all men, but the men that I work with, oftentimes their wife had to mature very quickly, had to step up and, and, um, you know, seize authority with the children and things like that. Those men, myself, what I experienced early on is it really exposes your weaknesses, your your inability to step up and take charge and lead. And a lot of men will defer. They'll defer to, hey, mother knows best, I'm gonna take a back seat. And what they're often doing is leaving her to do everything. She does it best. She knows what she's doing. She knows what the baby needs. And that turns from a I'll let her lead us to I'll let her do everything. I'll let her take all authority and initiative with the child entirely. And over time, that, that becomes very unattractive. But on top of that, you've got the issues of things that were okay when you were younger, like, you know, staying up till midnight, drinking beer and playing video games. Is kind of cute when you're 23, 24, no responsibilities other than your young professional job. It's not very cute when you've got a newborn. It's not very cute when you're sleeping in until 10 or 11 AM. I wasn't a big video game guy, but it's an example. It's not real cute when you're sleeping in until 10, 11 AM and your wife's been up intermittently all night. That— it just exposes the worst parts of you that don't grow up. And I think that's, that's really what pushes men and women apart early in the life of their kids and being parents. And it doesn't get prettier from there, especially when you put in the sexual frustration those men have. You know, their, their, their wife is, is 100% focused on this child and the guy. He notices something's missing. So he starts getting hyperfocused on what's missing, and that tends to be sex. So when you've got the guy taking a backseat in the situation, letting his wife lead with just about everything at the house, and, you know, taking their talents elsewhere, potentially with their work, and a woman who's really focused on raising this child and and loving this, this newborn, and then of course toddler and young child, it creates a very unhealthy dynamic. He's only focused on other things and work and then wants to focus on her for sex, and she, she's not even thinking about that. It's not even on her radar. And the way that it's being gone about honestly freaks her out. It creeps her out and that's where everything goes downhill. That's, you know, usually if you're having these coaching conversations, you can ask about, you know, when did everything go south? And there's usually a first or second child involved right around that timeframe or that's where it got much worse.

And you hit on a key point here, which I don't want to lose, which is the maturing angle of all of this, where the woman is basically, here's this new human being that popped out of your body. And for a lot of women, that's a, oop, I'm no longer a Miss Young Thing, I'm a mother now. And the maturation process just accelerates instantaneous. I'm a mother, I have— I'm in charge of this new little thing, look what I created. And the mind shift is, like I say, instantaneous. But for men, not so much. For men, it's— we seem to have this innate biology of, look what I created. Well, time to do that again. And not necessarily with her. If we're going to look at this as a very cold biological thing, this is why we have the men have the wandering eye. This is why, you know, pornography and sex workers and everything is a thing. If, if we don't have a moral compass, a lot of us kind of steer in the wrong direction. So we have that battle with this, this, uh, this partner of ours who's just instantly matured and instantly went through a mind shift of my primary goal in life is to raise and, and, um, protect and make sure this new little human being is okay. And we're over here— some of us are over here not being the most mature individual in the world, especially when compared to that. And then we try to reintroduce sex into the equation. And what a lot of women do in that instance is shame the sexuality and shame it in terms of You need to grow up. You're, you're being a little, you know, like, God, get over yourself. And we interpret that as, you know, sex is not a youthful dumb thing. Sex is a normal thing. Well, in the grand context of the image that you're presenting to her as her partner and man, it is just one of several things that can be construed as being very immature and childlike. You're right, the guy who doesn't necessarily do his part, plays the video game still, stays up late, yada yada yada, and the wife's just sitting there seething watching this man. And then that same man says, you know, it's been like 3 months since the baby was born, don't you think it's time? And what does she say? How about you grow up? Seriously, I mean, come on, get with the program. Oh, grow up? What do you mean? Well, perhaps if you hadn't been such an immature man. And we could go on and on about the possibilities, what led you to that point, that dead bedroom situation. Um, but here's one thing also I don't want to lose is new mother. Um, there's major biological changes, dude, hormonally, physically. Um, I just had a call here recently, and I'm doing a podcast for the fraternity about this. We have a members-only podcast, and, um, where the coaching client said, my wife is still nursing, the baby's not quite 1 year of age yet. In addition to that, we have a 4-year-old at home. In addition to that, we also have a 6-year-old at home. In addition to that, my wife does not work. She's home all day with these kiddos. I work a lot of hours and I come home and it kind of upsets me to see things like a kitchen full of dishes and a wife who doesn't really pay much attention to me at all. And, uh, I'm not getting my physical needs met in any way, shape, or form. And I blew up at her. And he blew up at her in a pretty nasty way. And I said, well, what you said was not good, was it? No, it wasn't. Have you apologized for it? No, I haven't. Probably should. Hey, hey, wife, I was a dick. My bad. You know, people have bad days. I had a bad day. I came home, I was stressed. I saw the kitchen thing, I saw this, I saw that. I just tried to reach out to you and touch you, and you rejected me, and I just blew my top. And that was shitty of me. Sorry about that. But he He said, yeah, I agree. But he also then followed up with, here's what I'm thinking, Ralph. I'm thinking maybe I should go to her and say, I just need to see more work out of you in terms of repairing our reconnection. And I say, work? That's how you're going to frame this to the woman who has 3 little ones at home, and one of which is hanging on her boob. And her biology, by the way, has cranked down to the point where it's almost like a menopausal state. Um, she doesn't— she's not thinking, feeling nothing sexy at all right now. Mother Nature has made sure of that. And here you are going, I think you need to put more work into being a sexy woman, you know. Hop to it, woman, let's go. Not gonna work, dude. He's like, yeah, I can see your point. So again, the game plan has to change completely. Now, it could be said at the early honeymoon stage of the relationship, there may be something that she does that you go I don't really like that. That's kind of a turn-off to me. And she— girlfriend would be like, oh, well, okay, good to know. Thank you, I appreciate it. That's— it sounds like I need to make some changes here. I didn't realize what I was doing was unattractive. And she cranks up the sexy a little bit here and there, or whatever it may be, and off you go. But the game plan has to change when there's a baby literally hanging on the boob and two toddlers and whatever. Um, yeah, it— this again exhibit number 972 for things get quite a bit more difficult after the marriage and kids.

Yep. And as you know, I'm going through that right now. So, I know Ralph Brewer—

Yeah, tell us. How old is the—

Yeah. 3 months. 3 months old is our youngest and final. And then, we have a 6-year-old as well. So, yeah, that is I, I had no clue the first time we had a child how much maturity was required and how much her focus was changing during that time. You know, I, I assumed, you know, every guy hears that from the doctor, it's going to be 6 weeks after, you know, delivery that at least there's, there's no sexual activity. And, and every first-time dad, I feel like, hears that, whether they verbalize it or not, they're 6 weeks. But that's not the, that's not the point there. The point is, you know, especially if they're, you know, breastfeeding. I think your point about similar to like menopausal, it, it's, it's, it's not even on the radar hormonally. And then my wife has recognized this as well. It's very different seeing all of this. And that's— I was almost done with the book when we got pregnant. And there's a few things that have delayed the book over, over time, you know, that I wrote a large portion of it from my own perspective. Then I started coaching and I said, oh, back up, I, I need to do this for a while, get a lot more of other person's situations, experience, really understand empirical data maybe of a lot of this information and expand my understanding of it. And that delayed work on the book for a while. And then of course, when the baby came or when the pregnancy happened, which was unexpected, a great unexpected though, it said, well, I just wrote a book on this. I get to test it out. I get to experience it firsthand post-book. And I even put a little bit at the end about what that experience was like. And it's, it's real interesting seeing how all of the different points within the pregnancy and, and the delivery phase and then the postpartum, there's so many opportunities to, to take a wrong turn as a guy and to not be mature enough. And I definitely think that one of those is postpartum. Their, their hormones. And my wife and I have discussed this, you know, with, with how her hormones are. And when you're breastfeeding, how that is, um, it's just sex is not even on her radar. Intimacy, intimacy is something that you can, you can have, and you can have a great relationship and everything. Um, but if you're expecting to deliver your wife, to deliver the baby in 6 weeks, 6 weeks later she's ready to tear your clothes off, it's just not gonna happen for most men. And, and that's a, that's a really point of emphasis for maturity. You have to understand it's not about that right now. It's a different chapter of your life. You can still have a wonderful relationship with your wife and everything. You can, you can be very intimate, but it's not going to— you know, she's, she's not going to have that ovulation-type drive to just go at it, and she's not going to have that new relationship drive.

That's, that's something that is, uh, very disturbing for lack of a better term, for a lot of men is, uh, I had wife 1.0 when— well, let's call it girlfriend 1.0— when, when it was, uh, very hot and heavy. And that's, for a lot of men, that's what hooked me in, in part. I mean, let's be honest, probably a big part. And I felt very, very connected to her and very, very validated, and I was king of the world because of this hyperphysical connection. And now I see these phases, and now I see this phase where it is basically completely stopped. And, uh, I, I— can I have the old her back again? Yes, you can. Um, be patient. Now here's the danger though, let's not just kind of gloss over this. Um, you can disconnect as, as a result of the new baby breastfeeding, and before you know it, a year goes by and nothing. This happens for a lot of people and they're like, oh, and next thing you know, it's a year and a half. Roh roh. And next thing you know, you're staring across the table at a woman who seems to be pretty sexually dormant. She lost that spark, so to speak. If you want to look at it as kind of the, the pilot light on your stove or whatever, that's gone out. It's not even there at all. And that's when you got a problem because you two lost your connection completely. And it was a combination of you did things wrong, she did things wrong, the biology sure as hell didn't help, the stress, everything else. Postpartum is an issue for a lot of people. There's all kinds of avenues you can go down that keep you apart, and it's tough. So you read my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, your book to explain what's going on with the kiddos and what you can do to help bridge that gap between the two of you. But it is a gap that needs to be bridged. Otherwise, you can— as we've learned, you can lose that connection pretty quick, and it can go away, and it's hard to get it back, man. Really hard. I don't want to lose sight of this as well. I'm gonna see if I can bring this comment up on the screen. Here for everyone to see. This is, uh, Gianna. I'm gonna get my glasses here. Old man time. Uh, Gianna from Facebook says that, uh, her and her hubs' ex, they had twins and sexually the roles were reversed. Um, so he put a mom hat on me and he didn't want sex as much as I did. He rejected me all the time. Um, that is From what we have seen, not the norm, but it's not unheard of. It is. And you are, Gianna, shedding light on something, which is— it is— how best to put this— when you enter into the world of the maternal, the domestic, the family or whatever, it is tough to match that with the world of the erotic and the sexy and the playful and everything else. Sometimes, yes, even for the men. There's the old Madonna whore complex, as we call it. She cannot be a sexy, fun creature. She's a mother now. And for some men, when that switch is flipped, they can't go back. And it could be argued that's a form of some kind of mental distress on their part. They're acting out some kind of trauma from their past or whatever it may be. But whenever they see a maternal figure of any kind, they don't equate that with anything, anything sexual, even if it's their own partner. And that's unfortunate. And we hear that a lot. Um, the more popular I'm getting with my videos going out and stuff, the more messages I'm getting from women. And, uh, Gianna, you're not alone. That's what I'm hearing a lot from women is, I don't know, ever since we started becoming a family and there's a lot of stress that I'm hearing, there are a lot of stressful triggers, you know, some kind of financial thing. Men went— the man went into hyper work mode, hitting the streets trying to sell, sell, sell, got a second job or whatever it may be. And his energies are so hyper-focused on the provider, he loses the lover side completely. And here's a wife going, sure would be nice to have my lover back. It happens. I, I, um, I dare say that's not the majority of situations by any means. You're probably in the minority, Gianna, but, uh, it happens.

I, I was hoping you brought that, that comment up, um, and from, from where you and I are with, with, uh, you know, the DSO group, that perspective, we are probably not talking to those guys a whole lot because they're not looking for the dead bedroom fix. It's, it's quite the opposite. So we're probably just not exposed to that, that, uh, group of men out there that, that go through that. And you're, you're exactly right. I even put a small section of the Madonna-whore complex into the book because it's, it's important to understand when your wife is getting hyperfocused on, um, on kids and the, you know, the priorities of motherhood and, and being a mother. It's easy for them to, to shift dramatically from being that, you know, 22, 23-year-old girl with, with no responsibilities, school, you know, college, whatever the situation is to now she's a mom, now she has these, these children that are so important in her life. And it's just, it's hard to see her as the, the past young sexy self, and it's not compatible and almost taboo to also be a mother. And that, that's the whole dynamic with the Madonna-whore complex. Uh, you, you can't be both pure and a mother. And sexual and have sexual needs. It's not always just to be sexual, but also to, to recognize that you have sexual desires. That affects men the same way it can women, especially if they have, you know, past issues. If they've had an interesting— I'll just call it an interesting relationship with their mother. It could affect them more dramatically if they have a religious background that they misinterpret to how it applies to sexuality. Maybe it's been misrepresented to them. The Madonna-whore complex can absolutely affect men. And also, you've got men that reach out to, to outlets for pornography, and they just cannot see their wife who is sitting there breastfeeding their children as this woman in porn. It's, it's not compatible. See the two the same, and, and it tarnishes what they see as sexy.

Yeah, it's, it's— I was going to say, it's unfortunate that a lot— what a lot of those women, and Gianna, in your, uh, Gianna, excuse me, in your situation find is that The energy's in there. How often, how often have we said this with the roles reversed, but the genders reversed? But yeah, the energy is in there, but it's just being redirected in other ways. And the adult entertainment slash porn industry is one, uh, sex workers is another, affairs is another. Um, if you have a guy who's just— anything that approaches the domestic and the family and the maternal really turns him off. He's still a red-blooded American male, as they say, and he's still got those needs, and it's being redirected somewhere. So for a lot of those women, I say, one of the things I always ask when those women reach out to me is, do you have any indication that he's looking elsewhere? And yep, here come the floodgates of stories, and which points to a lot of codependency on the wife's part because they put up with so much. And but anyway, that's, that's neither here nor there. It's a whole other ball of wax. But do we have any questions at all from the audience for us? Austin has a hard out here in about 20 minutes or so.

You know, you, um, yeah, we just got a message from, or a comment from James that you might want to put up. Um, I'll let you go ahead and get it up before I start reading it out loud.

Sir, this is James from Facebook. Uh, James says, uh, you mentioned hormone issues with women after kids. My wife and I adopted, no biological kids, but all these same things still happen. Are the same hormonal issues still at play? How interesting. Good question, James.

Yeah, so, so that one, um, I'm gonna avoid a little bit the, the medical answer because I don't have any type of credentials to, to put behind that of what having children without actually delivering those children are, are doing to you. I'm sure there are effects, but also the mental that we just talked about, uh, the, the Madonna whore complex affects a, you know, men and women, obviously. And, and of course, that, that man didn't give birth. So, uh, the, the way that you see your wife and the way that your wife sees herself as a mother, the way that her priorities shift to being a mother, the way the maturity has to happen very quickly, and if it happens in one and not the other, it turns into the man being one of the children very quickly. So, um, all of these factors can apply to a situation where you adopt. The, the hormone— and I know you're specifically asking about the hormone issues, can they still be at play? Um, but all of these other things we're talking about also apply there. I, I would be interested to find out how a I mean, that would be an interesting study to understand how a woman's hormones change that has become a new mother but didn't actually go through the physical delivery.

Yeah, I mean, here's, here's something we know on the men's side. We have a baby, the men's testosterone levels drop. How interesting. It's Mother Nature's way of, quote, neutering us as men and saying, please don't go anywhere, sit still, quit, make— don't run around and make babies. We know this for— there's been scientific studies that it drops in on what the percentage is. But yeah, for most men, the testosterone levels drop to the point where some men experience almost a depression after this, like, since the baby came. Lack of sleep, um, just the presence of the child in the home that we've seen, that there's hormonal fluctuations in men when they hear the crying baby. It's— there's all kinds of interesting scientific things here, but one thing we don't want to lose sight of James, is old anxiety. If there's nothing more anxiety-producing than I am in charge of a new little human being, especially for women, a woman's brain pre-kid, post-kid, as far as the anxiety and stress and everything else is concerned, it's just night and day different, totally different world. And I've mentioned this in other videos, it's not the most popular thing in the world to say, but it is a scientific fact that there is a personality trait that is known as neuroticism. Which is a propensity for negative thought, one of the Big Five personality traits. And when you survey people and say, well, let's look at who is the most agreeable, that's another personality trait. Well, that tends to be women, tend to be the most agreeable people. Who tends to be the most neurotic people when it comes to a man-woman couple? Usually, sorry to say, it's the woman. Well, neurotic people tend to be more prone to anxiety, depression, and other things. And, uh, what really sets off, like I say, anxiety in people, especially in women. And if you have a woman that's prone to anxiety, especially to super unhealthy levels, you may have seen James here, anxiety-prone person. Let me give you the most anxiety-producing thing possible: a new child. There you go. And you sat back and watched them become super duper anxious, which anxiety goes up, libido goes down. That's not an unusual thing, men and women both. So, lesson learned. Um, to— I'm going to bring up a question here from YouTube. This, uh, Halal says, what advice would you have for a young person seeking to marry? Oh geez, that's a whole— man, we could go on for hours about that. But to keep it— to keep it succinct, I posted this earlier on the, on the Twitter and Facebook, I believe. Um, You got to be pretty pragmatic about the, um, courtship process, the mate choosing and everything else, you know. Um, look at their family background, watch them in stressful life situations, you know, get to know them for a period of years, not weeks, months typically. This does not apply to everyone in the whole planet Earth. There are people who have met one day, married the next, and, um, were married for 60, 70 years and had 100 kids and grandkids and lived happily ever after. Austin's raised in his hand. He's of those. Those people exist. But I think Austin would be the first, like myself, to say we're not successful because of that. We are successful in spite of that. Um, we are one— we are one of, hopefully, fingers crossed, one of those that lasts for decades and decades and have lots of kids and grandkids and everything's wonderful. I have often pointed to myself and my now wife, wife number 2, that, um I was barely divorced when I met her. In hindsight, I should have waited quite a bit longer before even going out in the dating world, but I didn't. Instead, I went out and just met all kinds of ladies, and she was one of them. And this is when I said I am unusually attached to and have a whole lot of common with. But to our credit, we gave it a good almost 4 years before tying the knot, so we really got to know each other. And over those 4 years, we saw all kinds of trauma and torment and awfulness and great stuff and traveled. And so we really put each other through the wringer. So that's what I would say, Halal, to guys like yourself. I would assume— I apologize, Halal, pardon my ignorance— I assume you are a man. If not, you say young person, so I'm speaking to the young men out there. Take your time, really get to know the person. And there is still a leap of faith involved there, though. You can't cross all the T's and dot all the I's and be 100% certain. There's always going to be a little bit of uncertainty there, such as life. Go ahead, Austin.

Oh yeah, yeah. So, so, you know, I, I will even take the question, um, so you kind of addressed it from, you know, meeting and, you know, making sure everything is, is figured out prior to, uh, I'll take it into what you should be doing as you're newly married and how you should be driving the relationship. I put a whole chapter in about individuality. Individuality, you know, one thing that I should have done better early in my marriage, because I got married at 21, 3 months after meeting my wife. I should have matured a lot first. And, and when I, I was young and immature, I did a lot of bad behaviors, like not maintaining my individuality. You know, you, you, uh, you move and get married and you apply these nice guy tendencies. You have some anxiety. You put everything you have, all of your stock, into this one person. And that, that sounds very Hollywood, maybe, maybe very Disney. To put everything into this one person, to make them your best friend and all these other things. But you're putting them on a pedestal that is detrimental to your marriage. You, you are making them your sole source of social interaction, of masculine validation, of maybe even someone to, to give you therapy, if you see them as your psychologist, if you make them everything in your life and, and you simultaneously abandon your, your, your friends that are not your wife, your hobbies that are not shared with your wife, if you abandon all these things You're essentially abandoning all the things that she loved about you when she married you. You're turning your back on your own life and you're saying none of that is going to exist anymore and I'm just going to be a puppy at your feet. And it is the most detrimental thing that you can do.

And to flip it over to the wife's side, if she had a good peer group, a good mentor, parent, or whatever, they would say the same thing to her, which is, uh, wifey, You cannot throw yourself completely into the maternal mother world because that's not who your man chose to marry, date, and so forth. He didn't marry this anxious, hyper-involved, forget the husband, forget sex, forget everything. So you need to make some effort, wife, in that direction. And there's nothing wrong with that. And to that point, I'm going to bring up another comment here from Facebook. Uh, Mr. Donald says I noticed that many of the men's issues on this channel have to do with us men, quote, not doing enough, or quote, not maturing. However, what does one do who is fulfilling their roles and not receiving this relationship with their wife that they desire? Not just sexual, but I assume he means any kind of intimacy. What advice would you have for men who provide for their family? They're very active in the household duties, take charge of many of the childcare responsibilities, abilities besides breastfeeding. LOL, that puts a vision in the head. By the way, the things I mentioned aren't award-worthy characteristics. These are things that should be expected of a partner. But if you're doing all that— good point. So Donald here is saying, man, everybody in the world is repeatedly punching me over the head saying, uh, you need to be a better hubby and here's what you need to do if you want to get your needs met. And he's like, uh, hello, I'm doing all that shit. I'm kind of tired of everyone saying this is all my fault here. It's a two-way street. You're exactly right. Just to the point I mentioned, you know, a few minutes ago. Yeah, it, it is a two, two-way street. But this is the difficulty. We have to be empathetic to the plight of a wife who's a mother, who's anxious, who has the hormonal changes and so forth. But at the same time, yes, she needs to— and like I mentioned, I think this is by virtue of her social group and or mentors and parents and so forth need to say, you got to set aside the, the mommy mode every now and then. Don't lose sight of that hubby over there because he's an important guy. That's— he's the guy you love. And if you dismiss him and if you take him for granted, you're going to lose the guy. And I think that right there is a message which is healthy, and that is a message that unfortunately doesn't get out a lot, does it?

And you know, I will typically lean towards topics of, you know, here's how you can fix— so obviously my, my audience, the guys I coach, they're all—

that's very masculine. That's a very masculine thing.

Yeah, right. Well, and, and of course I'm not talking to women, so it doesn't, doesn't necessarily help me to, to go down the rabbit holes of of here's how women can improve themselves, because that's not really my area of focus. However, I would also throw in, um, as much time as I spend on, on the mentality, on the, you know, things like confidence, what you're doing as a leader, all of these things that, that make you more attractive, that you're doing mentally, or I'll even say socially and leadership-wise. We can't also ignore the physical, right? So one thing that I did in my— over the years in my marriage is I became overweight. I think I missed— didn't add that part in at all, is I had gotten out of shape. I was— I had a desk job at that point in my life. And I just was, was not in good physical shape. After I read the book— and the book I'm referencing is The Dead Bedroom Fix written by Mr. DSO right there— I lost about 30 pounds of fat, and I am still on a quest to add more and more muscle. So I had a very serious physical change at the same time. I didn't see anything mentioned in your, um, your comment, Donald, about, about what you've done physically or where you are. A lot of guys will come to me and say, I'm leading, I'm, I'm doing what I should around the house, I'm doing my best to connect, I'm being attentive, all of the things, I'm not being lazy. Okay, well, what was your physique when you got married and how is it now? What's your nutrition like? How often do you lift weights? And sometimes it comes up at that point that, um, they're about 60 pounds above where they were. And, uh, I don't know, Ralph, if you want to talk about the, um, the 900-pound bearded woman.

Yeah, there's a segment in my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, available at Amazon, wherever books are sold, um, that, uh, I, I equate— a lot of men have created a— and it's not necessarily just the physical version of themselves, but they've created this entire husband package, if you will, of one that is holistically not that attractive. And then they hit on the wife and wonder why she's kind of like, um, simply because the wife, for whatever reason— good, bad, whatever it may be— is just not attracted to you. And I equate it to, let's say that there's this person that you, you know, mentally you really connect with, but the problem is that she's a giant 900-pound woman with a beard. And then that giant 900-pound woman with a beard says, you know, we should do—

we should—

you and me should go in this room over here and get it on, you'd be like, uh, no thanks, I'm good. Um, that's kind of what some of you— not all of you, and Donald, this may not apply to you in any way, shape, or form, and Donald says, uh, he's better shape than most men. Hey Donald, what Austin did was a very masculine thing, is, well, let's take the product off the shelf and see if we can reconfigure it and put it back on the shelf and see, you know, if people are going to buy it or not. I'm oversimplifying, using cold terms there, but you know what I'm saying. Um, and to your point, is like you're saying, Donald, you're saying, dude, I've taken the product off the shelf, I've reconfigured, I've changed, I've cleaned the thing up, I put it back. And frankly, a lot of people would grab the product off the shelf, just not my wife. And that's what bothers me. And I get it, dude. Part of your— to keep in the masculine frame of fixing, maybe some of your fixing is things such as, um, having a better sense of self-worth. Maybe it's being more of a leader in terms of putting up boundaries and expectations and saying, "Wife, we got a real problem here. We're really physically and emotionally disconnected, and that's no bueno." By the way, what I'm saying I don't think is needy in any way, shape, or form. Some people may look at it that way. I don't. I think it's a very masculine, normal adult thing to say, "I'm concerned about us. What's up? What do you think about this? Do you see this as a problem, wife? Yes or no? Because I do. I'm— here's the kicker— I'm not sure I can go on long term like this. I love you to death, wife." That's why I married you, you know. That's why I made babies with you, because I want to be with you forever and ever. But what we have now is extremely unhealthy, and I'm hoping you agree with me on this. If so, are you willing to put in the work to kind of reconnect here? Maybe that means go talk to somebody if you're not comfortable sitting talking to me one-on-one. Maybe a third person will help us. Maybe it's just a matter of us saying, babies, go to Grandma. Mom and Dad are going to go away for a weekend. And by the way, wife, before you go there, it doesn't necessarily mean I, you know, I'm trying to get in your pants and we got to do it. I just, we need to reconnect here. We're just, we're disconnected and it's very bothersome to me. I don't know, wife, what do you think? Um, maybe you've had those conversations, maybe not, but that's what I, what I found in my experience is a lot of men just flat out don't have that conversation.

Um, yeah, you know, with the, uh, the nice guy tendencies, that's when men will tend to, you know, bottle it up, not address it frankly, and, and they'll also start passive-aggressive ways of going about the problem. Whereas one of the— if we want to call it maturing, if we want to call it self-improvement, development of standards, development of boundaries— one of the very masculine things you have to start doing that can take you getting out of your anxiety shell is saying very uncomfortable but honest truths. And, and that's the ability to be direct, just to say to your wife— and this, you know, in a healthy marriage, this is something you should be able to do at any time. It's just any type of conversation is happening. Well, yeah, sex stopped, you know, obviously that's, that's a key cog in our marriage, right? And that goes both ways. But if you're in your situation, you're doing everything right, your side of the street is clean, but there's a big problem. Well, say that. Hey, there's a, there's a problem here. We are in a monogamous sexual relationship, and part of that's missing. It's a very direct conversation about what's happening. It's called honesty, and it's called not being afraid of your wife.

But here's the kicker, Austin. There's quite a few people that listen to that and go, yeah, but you know what, my partner, man or woman, is going to come back to me and go, oh yeah, or what? I mean, yeah, dude, what you gonna do about it? Or woman, or whatever. You got to be able to go, or I'm not sure we're going to work out anymore. That's the part where a lot of people go, I— no, I'm not going to go there. I've made my vows. I married this person. I'm not about to just walk away for something like sex. It's like, dude, if you don't— if you're not able to take that leap and put it out there as a legitimate, healthy solution, then you're never going to get anywhere. It has to be understood that this is not a take-me-for-granted thing. This is a privilege for both of us to be in this relationship.

Standards without boundaries are not a good thing.

Exactly, exactly. I'm going to end on this because I know you need to run. Halal, thank you. And Halal, I apologize for calling you a young man, you are a young woman. Very good, thank you so much for joining us. But I'm going to put your— young lady, I'm going to put your last comment up here. I've noticed that the relationship talk space is dominated by women or men who hate women. All right, how do you feel about the increasing digital gender war that is happening? Well, I'll tell you what, I've talked about this with Dr. Psych Mom, Samantha Rodman-Whiten. Check her out, Dr. Psych Mom, on all the social media. Um, I will put it— it's very easy to go down the rabbit hole of all this negativity simply because it's what I call the vocal minority. The most angry, viscerally charged up people are the most vocal ones. I will post something and it will have, for example, 1,000 likes and hearts and laughies or positive stuff, whatever it may be, and 30 negative comments in the bottom. Well, guess what my little brain runs to? Those 30 negative comments. And I go, man, everybody hates this. Everybody's just pissed off, totally ignoring the 1,000 or so that said I like it and go about their way. Because people who are positive in nature have more important things to do, whatever. They just click like and go about their business while the angry person's like, I'm gonna tell this guy what I think about him and women in general, and women suck, and enter And so, Halal, don't, don't go down the rabbit hole of thinking that's how the majority of people think in this world. The majority of people who take time out of their lives to ingest a lot of negative man versus woman material out there and all that other stuff, yeah, they, they may very well be very negative and ready to blow up the world or whatever it may be, but oh well, negative people exist. Just the way it is. And the more public I put my face out there, the more I run into it. But I let those people— some of them are just going through a phase. They've just gone through a horrible breakup. They've just been dumped for the 9th time, whatever it may be. And they're just ready to just say, eff it. That's fine. Let them do their thing if that's what makes them happy. But I try not to let that affect me and my work. And we see that in our group, Austin, you know, every now and then. Our group is overall more positive and more constructive and men trying to do better. But every now and then we get the whole, I don't get it. Do these women have any sense of accountability? Do these women have any sense of rational thought? You know, we try to steer them to, let's look, let's look at this constructively, dude, and don't try to judge everything based on one, your one little experience. So that's what I would say to everybody. Austin, any last words? Let me put the graphic up here again. Go to the Dad Starting Over website and check out the book Why Sex Ends After Kids and How to Fix It. Download in PDF format. It is constructed so that you can read it just fine on your mobile phone. Fonts are nice and big so you can read it on there. Download the PDF, put it in your— if you're an Apple user, put it in your Books app, or I don't know what the Android has. I'm sure they have something similar. Very easy to read, very quick download off the website. Check it out, dadstartingover.com.

And we should also mention that we're going to do this again, 2 weeks.

Yes, in a couple weeks we will be at this again. Then we'll take a, like, a month break after that and then do it again. So because I can't do it the following 2 weeks, but yeah, we're going to try and do this every couple of weeks. Get everybody involved, get Austin more involved, get the coaches in general of the DSO fraternity more involved. Again, dadstartingover.com, the DSO fraternity at dsofraternity.com. Join us guys. It is for guys only. I think that's important. Sorry, ladies. Maybe we'll have something in the future where it's men and women, but for now, just men. I think that's real important. Us men need our own little space to talk about this stuff. Austin, thank you so much, buddy. Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Alrighty, and you guys all have a wonderful weekend. See ya!