DSO & Dr. Psych Mom Go Live on TikTok
30 May 2023 · 37 min
Ralph Brewer and clinical psychologist Samantha discuss divorce recovery, infidelity, and rebuilding relationships. They cover attachment styles, codependency, why the honeymoon stage doesn't return, and how sexual desire shifts over time. Ralph talks about his Help for Men Brotherhood community for divorced men facing loneliness and dead bedrooms.
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Um, so anyway, uh, Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer, who are you? Introduce yourself again to everybody watching you that's on your site.
My, my name is Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer. I go by the, uh, the fake pen name of DSO, which stands for Dad Starting Over. And I've been, uh, writing, uh, for years. And here recently in the last— oh, I don't know, 6, 8 months or so, I've been doing more and more video, including TikTok and Facebook and YouTube and all that stuff. I've authored books. I have a men's only private group, and I've sold hundreds of thousands of books, most of them on the topic of sex and marriage with a title called The Dead Bedroom Fix. That's how most people know me. And I've written on the topic of divorce, infidelity, and sex and marriage.
New Orleans, right? Aren't you going to New Orleans for your birthday?
Yeah, we have our little, for the private men's group that I talked about, the DSO Fraternity is what it's called. We have in-person meetups, like an annual conference with all of our members, and we've done it in Nashville, Tennessee, Austin, Texas, Las Vegas, and next year we are all meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. So that's going to be cool. We're hoping Dr. Sykman could join us and put on a little chat.
I don't know, I got to check out all my cool kids' tournament schedules because that's how I roll, man, at this juncture. Um, I'm a clinical psychologist in private practice, and I work with couples and adults and everybody about relationships, sex, um, family issues, just like anything you would talk to a therapist about, except I do not work with kids at this stage because I have 3 kids and I don't need to work with any more kids. I got to save my patience for the kids that I have. Um, and so I also— my whole thing is Dr. Psych Mom, and you can follow me on TikTok And anybody who's watching, please do send likes, send likes for this so that more people can see it. You have no idea how difficult this was for Ralph Brewer and I to get this started today. It was very tough. We tried to do this spontaneously. That was our first mistake. That should never happen. It needs to be planned multiple weeks in advance.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
With trial runs. And if any of you have any questions for me, and DSO about, you know, relationships or sex or marriage or men and women or any topics like that, then certainly send us your questions in the comments. That would be great.
I have a question for you, Samantha. Um, I didn't mention this in my little intro that I do what's called coaching, which is basically guys just pay me for my time to talk about stuff. And I will be the first to raise my hand to say I am not a licensed medical professional or mental health professional of any kind. Not a nothing. I'm just a dude who wrote a book and everybody liked it and said, can I talk to you? And back years ago, I decided to start charging for my time. And it's gotten to be to the point where it's so much demand for the service. I actually have 9 other dudes who are helping me out on the Dad Starting Over team that talk to guys just around the clock, basically from around the world. So pretty cool, but also kind of sad if you think about it. So my question to you, Samantha, though, is And this is something that I've struggled with. A vulnerable moment is keeping my cool, my sanity, my centeredness, whatever you want to call it, after talking and hearing so many sad sob stories day after day after day. And eventually, you know, you hear the same ones again and again.
For sure.
Psychologists for years have been categorizing people into personality traits and attachment styles and everything else. You start recognizing patterns and you hear the same shit over and over again and it wears on you. And I've been very open about the fact that I will talk to a guy, and if it's really bad, I have to put an hour between meetings or else it's just too much. And sometimes they're so bad, I literally have to go lay down and recharge and just be like, because, you know, you hear some, you hear some stuff, you know better than anybody. So how is it that you stay centered and able to be a good mom and wife after dealing with all this horseshit all day long?
Well, I mean, honestly, like, I see 7 now, and this is less than ever before, but I see 7 clients a day, and I go back to back so that I only do during school hours. I go every 45 minutes from like 9:15 to like 3:15, 7 or 8 people a day every day. Yeah, except now Fridays, and I start a little late on Wednesdays, Mondays. But it used to be in COVID, it used to be like, uh, like 10 or 11, you know, clients a day, which was insane, which is why I started my practice. I mean, it's called compassion fatigue. And it's like a number one source of burnout is when you keep hearing, you know, sad things and you have to be there. And I mean, you know, coaching, like, you don't have necessarily like certain— obviously you have to be present with your people, but I mean, I have to take certain notes and I have to provide certain treatments and interventions. So I do have to be kind of in my right mind to do that. I mean, it sounds like, you know, there's two things. I mean, work-life balance, obviously making sure that it's not something that do all day, every day, but also having like kind of diversity in what you do, which also you do. Like I write also, I do social media also. It's not like just constant only clients all the time, 'cause that would be very, very onerous. And you know, time to recharge, you know, time to not do things. So like this day, Friday, which is why I asked you if we could do something on TikTok, I don't have clients today. So, you know, and that's fine to take a day off. Really in my field, 20 clients a week is considered full-time. So, and those are 45-minute sessions. So like, it doesn't seem like it would be full-time until you've been doing it for a few years and then it does. I see more than that now, but you know, still that's what's considered full-time and you wouldn't think that, but there's also the note-taking, there's also the, you know, all the stuff you gotta do, but it is, it's very hard to talk to people about sad stuff all the time. That's why some of what I'm doing is moving into coaching because with the coaching clients, they don't all come in with like, you know, suicidality, you know. I mean, there's, there's levels. So people are coming in for like relationship coaching or like sex coaching is totally different than somebody who's struggling with debilitating depression after childhood trauma. Like, that's like pretty different ends of the spectrum. So yeah, I mean, just hire more people, Ralph, and then you like outsource more shit.
There you go. Yeah, you know, I have, um, attempted to kind of price myself out of basically put a premium. If you want to talk to the man, you know, it's going to cost you a little bit more. And that doesn't really deter a lot of guys. A lot of guys are just in some—
what ends up happening, which is what happened to me, is you end up working with only like super high achievers. So like I got now mostly like CEO type of people, which is great because like they're usually like super fast and quick and they learn very quick. And it's a— it's, it's very different, but it is, it is a different kind of, um population. You, you're not— I'm not seeing like everybody any— and I don't accept insurance, but even like still I do the same thing as you. My rates are higher and then my, my therapists are, are lower, and that's based on how much, you know, other stuff you can provide. What's interesting, what people also have with you is a parasocial relationship. You know what that is? You heard of that?
Parasocial? I would assume—
no, means that people feel like they are our friend because they He has talked so much. So like they kind of forget that is not bidirectional. So that expedites the coaching. So like if you've done all these YouTubes and all these podcasts and everything, same as me, people come into coaching and they're like, oh, I am this template that you discussed. And also this thing that you said and also that thing. So like they feel like they can hit the ground running because you provided that much content. And that's why you can like jump right into coaching and it can be like at a premium because they feel that you already know that.
You know, it's funny, they also will cut you off mid-sentence and say, yeah, yeah, I heard you talk about that on that podcast the other day. It's like, man, you're stealing some of my thunder here, you know. I had a little speech prepared. He's like, yeah, I've already heard that before. And they know, you know, personal information about me. Yeah, I know about your wife and where she's from. I know this. I'm like, really? Oh yeah, I did talk about that, you know, last year in a podcast. So these people pay attention. They watch everyone.
Yeah, they pay attention. They're really trying to learn. But yeah, you'll see see, like, the more that you price yourself up, then that just means that you turn into somebody who's only for a certain bracket, which, you know, is positive and negative. But I mean, for short term, how many kids you got there you got to send to college, right? So I mean, for sure, positive. Yeah.
One of the negative is if you do price yourself into a certain echelon of earners, um, you know this better than anybody, you tend to see more of the narcissistic tendencies in people.
Yeah, well, these are the big people. Like, if you can be the head of a company, then you're gonna have some narcissistic characteristic traits. I mean, that was my CEO podcast, you know. I mean, there's just— if you're an outside-the-box thinker, you're an outside-the-box thinker for better and for worse, you know. And the wives sometimes can't deal with it, as you heard in my podcast. Like, they're just like, can't you just fucking be normal? And they're like, normal got us this ski chalet, you know. So it's like, you know, like, very— it's very different. But I like working with like a whole range of people. And honestly, the the smarter the better, like the people who are more verbally quick, the people who are gonna like the posts and the podcast are the people who like to engage quickly on that verbal level. So then the work is more interesting and that can also negate some of the burnout if you feel like you're being challenged. The burnout comes when you're like, oh my God, I've heard this story for the 8th time today. This is the same, same interaction that I'm having basically.
Yeah, yeah, my burnout is probably in the form of— and it's— and I recognize this because of the personal baggage and the prejudice that I bring to the topic is, you know, you hear these guys be like, well, my wife, you know, had the affair, and I caught her, and then we worked it out, went to counseling, then I caught her again, and we worked it out, and she moved out, and then she came back, and we caught her again. And you're just sitting there kind of like, I'm seeing a pattern here, dude. And then, you know, I have a guy who was famously caught his wife 6 times in different affairs. And just keeps work— trying to work it out and try to work it out. And usually it's not just a matter of she stepped out, oops. It's usually she stepped out and then while she's out, she's also stepped on the neck, so to speak, of the husband and really treats him like dirt. And you just see these guys that are very codependent, and it's just— you just want to shake them by the shoulders and go, dude, snap out of it. Those are the ones that always—
that comes from childhood issues, you know, that always comes from being treated bad as a kid or seeing one parent treated bad by the other parent. I mean, whenever anybody of either gender comes in and they say that my spouse struggles with addiction, all I say is, which of your parents was addicted? And they're always like, how did you know that? Well, shit, how did I know that? Because who's going to be drawn to an addict? They didn't seem like an addict. Then when we go through it, there's all these red flags. And this could be a work addict, exercise addict, like any kind of addict, not just drugs, gaming, shopping, any of it, you know. And in these cases, a lot of times people are drawn to drama addicts, you know, emotion addicts. Addicts. It doesn't have to be a sex— sex addict is one thing, but it's not only about sex. So a lot of those people are just like addicted to attention. And so then you got like the codependent guy or a woman that's married to this person who's just addicted to attention and validation from other people, you know, and that manifests through flirting, through inappropriate, you know, boundaryless friendship or whatever, you know.
You nailed it. The boundarylessness is it. A phrase that I often hear coming out of my mouth with these men is, your spouse is not necessarily a bad person. That's, that's the knee-jerk, is that they're evil, they're the devil. No, they're just a broken or damaged little girl who has a lot of baggage, and part of that baggage has manifested itself to the point where she has zero boundaries, and she just lets it all in. And when she gets a little bit of attention, because she's a pretty good-looking woman, there she goes, and away she goes. It makes her feel good to get a lot of attention from others. And I know you don't necessarily agree with this sentiment, but the sentiment I have, and it's sometimes the simplest answer is the right one, and it's just, I'm sorry, she's just not really cut out for this whole spouse thing. And not everybody is, not at the current mental state that she is in. She may be 10, 15, 20 years down the line, after a lot of good hard work and introspection on herself, Good luck waiting on that. But as of right now, you're trying to mold somebody into something that they're not. And, uh, you know, good luck with that.
Yeah. And I mean, sometimes people can be motivated to change for the children's sake, you know. And that's the biggest one for women in particular, is to work on themselves for the sake of the kids. And for the men, it's the same thing. Like I say, like, do you want your son to have a wife that acts the way that, you know, right now that your marriage is going? Like, do you want your son or your daughter or anybody to be in this dynamic? And they say no, you know. And that's like, do you want— you like— that's the biggest question that people can ask themselves to kind of really have an epiphany, is would you want your kids to be in this marriage? Well, I mean, if not, then, then you either got to change it or get out of it, because this is the marriage they're going to be in for sure. We don't know yet whether they're going to be the problem or the enabler, you know. Like, we don't know, it's either or. Because that's the only template they know. So it's going to be one or the other.
Here's the kicker though. If you're a therapist and you sit down and you point to the person who's stepping out of the marriage and you say, do you want to work this out? Yes, I do. And you say, well, be honest, why? Well, I don't want my kids to grow up in a broken home like I did. I want them to grow up in a good stable environment. So are you saying, cheater person, that You're only hanging around because of kids, not necessarily because for him or her and your love and devotion to him or her. And they got to be honest and say, yeah, if it wasn't for little Billy and Sally, the kiddos, I'd probably be long gone. And that's really sad for the other person to hear. And from what I've seen, the more, I guess, self-worth, self-confidence, self-whatever you want to call it that the other person has, if they hear that, like, I'm only here for the family unit, this stability, the whatever, and they're just— that just turns them off even more and drives the, uh, the victim in that scenario away even further.
Yeah, and it's really both though. I mean, you know, like the guy who's staying, or the woman that stays with the alcoholic or the cheater or whatever, you know, they're frequently staying for the kids too, you know. I mean, there are just so many couples that are just staying for the kids. It's on both sides.
Well, I tell you what I hear often is, uh, when I ask the men, dude, what are you doing? What's going on? They, many of them will point to, and it sounds silly, but it's true. You don't understand. This wasn't my wife for the first so many X number of years of our marriage. It was a dream. It was 4 or 5 years of, I'm telling you, it was amazing. And then something happened. Usually that something is kids. And, you know, kids came into the picture and things just slowly but surely started. And then she just went off the rails and she's cheating. And she's drinking and she's doing everything. What I want is not necessarily just to stick around because the kid— that is an important thing, but really what I want—
the honeymoon stage back.
I'm hoping we can get the honeymoon stage back because I never felt more alive ever in my life than at that point. And I love her to death. And they cling on to that, that image of that woman, you know, wife 1.0. And I'm like, you're not getting that back, dude.
That person's gone, the bond both ends, you know. I mean, the Mr. Romantic is gone, the sexy woman is gone. I mean, the honeymoon stage is not retrievable generally. There's 3 stages in any relationship. It's the honeymoon stage, the, uh, disillusionment stage, and then acceptance. So whenever we— I especially see couples is in the, uh, disillusionment stage. And so some couples can work through that and move toward acceptance, and some people just split up in disillusionment, or they stay in disillusionment forever, you know. So the, the reality is that the honeymoon stage, nobody even comes into therapy. I have like long-term clients, if they like meet somebody new, it's like, why Why are we even doing therapy? Because they're just, everything's fine. Oh, now everything's good. You know, it's bullshit. I mean, it's nice, it's good, but like, the reality is, if you grew up with parents that stayed in a disillusionment phase because they were unhappily together, or that split in the disillusionment phase, then you have no template for how to move through that into acceptance. And acceptance is acceptance of yourself and the other person. It doesn't preclude work, obviously, on the relationship, but it's just kind of seeing things more clearly, that there will never be the return to the honeymoon stage. Wasn't real. That was a lust-fueled, you know, biological stage to make a baby. It doesn't go back to that, but it could go to something deeper, like a more attachment-driven, you know, life-building partnership, you know. And of course you could still be having sex, etc., but nothing's ever gonna be like the honeymoon stage again because you're basically like drunk on new love. It's like you're just drunk. It's not real.
Well, I would contend that you don't— you can't go back to the honeymoon stage 100%, but you can see blips on the radar that remind you of the old you. And that, that in turn, that is as a result of getting away, just the two of you, away from the kids, away from the domestic unit of the home and the family and everything else, and becoming just the two of you again. That's when you see those blips. That's—
yeah, sure, you can. And you could like feel more and less in love with somebody. For women, they do every month when they ovulate. The guy looks handsome that day or that week. But, you know, I mean, in reality, the problem comes when people start to— as I said, that like the next time that we do a pre-scheduled YouTube, it should be about perimenopause and menopause. And, and a lot of guys think like that their wife who's in her 40s or 50s is just like one couple's vacation away from acting like she's 20 years old. No, she's not. She's fucking 20 years away from that. So she's not going to act like that. You can have like a fun night going out dancing and having sex, but then the next day she's texting with the kids and her like, she's anxious about this or that. And so are you. And like, you have to make money and she has to do what she does. And like, some people, especially those aforementioned guys that like run companies and like are big movers and shakers, sometimes it's very hard for them to say like that they literally cannot just make the world into what they wanted with a recaptured endless honeymoon stage. That's why I have my podcast I titled Can't Buy Me Love. The richer they get, the more they think that maybe somehow I buy everything else, can I just get back that thing? You can never get back that thing. You can get a different thing, you know.
I was just gonna say, a lot of men, especially your— let's go back 10 minutes ago when we talked about the more narcissistic types, um, they do get back that thing in the form of, uh, The Italians call it the gomar, or whatever you want, the little, the side piece, the little one. There are some, there's some—
Or they get divorced and they go see like high-class hookers a whole bunch. I mean, like, there are many ways to feel young, but those are generally some, you know, people don't tend to find those as fulfilling in the long run. Almost every man wants to remain in love with some version of his wife, but some of them think that like that version of his wife is just never going to change. I am just astonished always by like how people will just negate literal like biology and aging. And I see it more and more, you know, like just they don't feel that like as you get older anything's supposed to change at all. Of course it does. Your children change. And I have a good analogy with these guys. I'm like, you know how like your wife doesn't want your kids to grow up and she still wants them to keep hanging out and playing like Parcheesi with you instead of like going out to the mall with their friends and you think that she's being, you know, smothering crazy. The equivalent is when you want her to act like she's 25 when she's 45, because she's not. It's a different stage. I like— a couple guys actually said, you know what, that was a really good analogy because I'm always telling my wife, why don't you let the kids grow up? But then I don't think about it with her. You know, she's gonna grow up too, in a sense. Doesn't mean she has to be sexless, obviously, certainly not. But is she gonna grow up? Yes, she's gonna change her priorities, her body, her brain are always going to be evolving.
But unfortunately for men, that evolving, that process of change and aging means that the sweet, cute, bouncy, loving, lustful stage is diminished, if not shut off completely. And that is what— that is what we, to be quite honest with you, are wired to react to. I mean, hello, there's this thing, there's this thing called pornography and sex workers.
I don't know that word.
And sex workers and everything else that prey on that, on that need, that desire.
Oh yeah, sure. And the girlfriend experience, you know, that whole idea of being the hooker that's like the girlfriend though, and she kisses and she says you're cute and all this stuff. Totally. But like, it's the same thing. I have a podcast coming out that's like, men want like young, cuddly, bubbly women, just like how women love young and cuddly, bubbly kids. Like, everybody idealizes— everybody wants that little kid, like, oh, he gives hugs and kisses, instead of a moody teenager. That's like how men like that, you know, kind of young-acting woman. But is she always gonna act like that? Certainly not. Can she do it sometimes for fun? Yeah. Especially— it's interesting, especially if people think about it as— do you have to go? You said you have to go in like 2 minutes. You have to go in 2 minutes.
Me?
Yeah, you said you had to go.
What time is it? Totally. Yeah, here soon.
Yeah, soon. Well, anyway, um, yeah, so like a lot of women respond better to thinking like he almost like wants this for a night. Can you be flirtatious and fun like as though it's like a fetish of his almost? Like as though it like, you know, sometimes women will do something different in bed, right? So if you say, oh, he wants you to kind of act in this flirtatious way sometimes then they can get behind it. Oh, sometimes. Okay, I could do that sometimes. It's like, you know, a nice thing to do for him. But where they really start to feel inadequate and angry and resentful is when the guy's saying he wants them to return to that woman wholly. And they're like, I don't even know that woman, that version of myself. So like, they could do it if it's framed in a different kind of a way, as like kind of like a practical gift to give their husband periodically, like dressing up in lingerie, versus that He's not going to be happy unless they wholly return to a younger version of themselves, which is impossible, you know.
I tell you what's really tough. And this is— I'm raising my hand— is this my personal experience. I was in a marriage for— the relationship was 20 years, marriage for 15. And of course, I saw all the stages and got to the eventual stage of just blahness. And we were just buddies living under the same roof. And then all the drama and awfulness happened, and then I'm thrusted out into the single the world, and then you get a taste of the good life from a man's perspective. And to be able to— oh, what's the, what's the term— put the genie back in the bottle and just say, that was fun while it lasted, but now back to the more domestic, even keel stuff. It's like a lot of men in that stage, post-divorce dating, they got a good head on their shoulders, they don't look too bad, they got some charm, they're able to get some dates and have their physical needs met. They're like, I kind of enjoy this, you know, if you want to look at the blip of like, yeah, or whatever, it's like this.
I urge my clients not to remarry too quickly if they're loving it, you know, like I urge them to be real sure that you want to remarry. Of course they all remarry, but you know what I mean.
Well, you say they all, we're seeing far less now.
It's, uh, 90% of my clients will still remarry. I mean, people just love to pair bond, you know, they really, they're like prairie Volds.
Uh, and we're missing some before we wrap up here. There are comments that we missed out on. Howie says, as hurtful as it is, divorce is probably the best thing that ever happened to me. And, uh, Howie, was that because of— well, there's a lot of ways that could be a good thing. Because, you know, you left a toxic situation, or because of all the awesome sex that you're having, uh, except for the time he misses with his son, of course. Um, yeah, I'm, you know, a relationship, the less I want it.
A lot of people think that, men and women think that. Women remarry less than men.
Yeah, I mean, I've mentioned it in a video and a lot of men don't like to hear it. When we poll people to say who's the happiest, the people that go to the top of that survey as far as self-reported happiness are single women.
Yeah, single women do whatever the fuck they want, you know. So it's like, I mean, so do single men, but the men really are— men are more romantic than women. They really are, and I say that over and over.
I do too. I always say men are the hopeless romantics in a relationship, and women are far more pragmatic about things.
That's true.
In the later stages of the relationship.
Yeah, like this guy, not sure I would remarry, I would do my motorbikes and snowboard every winter. Yeah, a lot of guys go into the hobby lifestyle, they get like way into friends, way into casual sex if they want, and then that's that. But the majority still do want to be monogamously involved once they fall in love, you know, I mean, human nature.
So there's, there's the rub then. It's the, I want to have my pair bonding. There's, there's a lot of pushback against that term, if that's the proper term or not. The genuine emotional, intellectual connection with a human being, go through life with some, a partner to go through life with. But I also want that lustful, animalistic uh, rip your clothes off stuff. And, uh, I'll tell you, I work with a lot of pragmatic guys.
They date younger. By the time their sex drive abates, she's going into menopause. It works out if you're 50. No, think about it. You're— so let's say you're 55 years old, right? So you marry a woman who's 40. She's done having kids, so she's just going into perimenopause. You're like moving in lockstep. By the time your penis really doesn't work, then she doesn't care anymore, you know. But I mean, I really do think— not that either one of us did this, I think— but if I was a man in my next life, I would go 10 years younger. I just think it makes sense biologically.
Well, you know, it does, but that's, uh, you're, you're probably in the minority of women saying that because a lot of women say that, hear that, and go, ew, yeah, dude, no.
So 10 years is another— 40 to 50, nobody should be complaining about. 20 to 30 is weird, but 40 to 50 is like, you know, that makes sense. Makes sense. But that's what I think. But you know, I have lots of unpopular opinions, as do you.
Yeah, well, my wife is, uh, 7 years— 6, 7 years younger than me.
You did what I said. My husband is only 18 months older.
And when we met, um, she looked quite a bit younger than me, and that raised a lot of eyebrows. And some people got, you know, downright nasty about it, and we had to always correct them. No, she's 30-some years old. Oh, okay, well, she looks good for her age. And so I was like, what the hell does it matter if she wasn't anyway? Mind your own damn business. But there is a stigma out there of the lecherous guy going after the young girl. And Howie thinks— is it Howie? I'm sorry, I don't have my glasses on here. Do I have reading glasses?
More or less why I just kind of stopped dating for now. Howie also started blacksmithing. Howie sounds like a very well-rounded dude.
Yeah, and you know, you talk about guys going to the hobby phase and so forth. We still have very physical and emotional needs of getting with women. And like I say, if you have a little bit of looks and some charm and so forth, oh my gosh, the world is your oyster. And, and the fact that I can go on a literal app and just say, I think I'll pick Cindy tonight, and that doesn't bode well for genuine long-term relationships when us men can get get my motorbike and my snowmobile and Cindy on Wednesday. That easy? It's like, well, of course they kind of stayed with her.
Well, I think the guys that have just been hurt, you know, then they really have a guard up, so they like more of the casual stuff. But as soon as Cindy turns into the love of your life, most guys are walking down the aisle again.
Here's a, you know, this is not a quick question, but it's maybe something for later, maybe something to write on. Do you see men who were formerly anxiously attached, Mr. Codependent type guys— I know that's a blending of two terms there— but, um, it goes through an avoidant, goes through a traumatic situation, gets hurt in a big, big way, and becomes a very avoidant, almost quasi-narcissistic type of guy?
Yeah, totally. People switch between avoidant and, uh, preoccupied, which is anxious, all the time. They just don't go to secure. So unless they get therapy, then they just vacillate endlessly based on their, um,, you know, based on their circumstance. So it's very easy for somebody who's anxious in one relationship to be avoidant in the other because they only know one pattern. So the way that you really got to look at it is if they're going to be anxious and be attracted to an avoidant, that's what they saw growing up was one anxious parent, one avoidant. So then they know one dynamic, but they could play both sides of that because they know both those scripts. So based on the next dynamic, they could do either one. What they never saw was securely attached, like, um, genuinely loving connected partnership. So that one, they don't know how to do that script, but the other two they're good at. So they could just—
it doesn't help with our young men out there that we have a lot of material that's geared— the quote-unquote red pill stuff, which is basically appeals to your anxious guys and says, you know, the remedy to your problem is you need to swing the pendulum all the way over to the avoidant side. Yeah. And close up.
It's gonna make any woman so mad unless she's avoidant, then it'll work. They'll just live separate lives. But, you know, or if she's like totally borderline, then they'll get like total hysterical bonding for a little bit, but she'll also light them on fire. So it's not a good look either way. But yeah, I don't ever say that shit. Like, I have podcasts on Inspiring Dread. Fuck no, not with a healthy woman. And at this stage of the game, most men have kids. So any woman that Inspiring Dread is going to work with, don't bring around your children because she is not stable. You know, and it just does not work long term for any healthy woman. Most healthy women are like, you're not telling me where you're going tonight? Fuck you. Why would I be in this relationship? What are we, children? You know, so it's, it's, um, that's sort of like negging. Yeah, the negging is the stupidest one. You know, the pickup artist negging stuff.
You know, a lot of that, a lot of that stuff I think is, is grounded in some reality of it's all about in the presentation. My wife has accused me of being a flirt and she thinks it's kind of cute. Why? Because I'm not lecherous and overly sexual about it.
Why are you wearing that shirt today? Or like whatever.
If I talk to a girl, whatever, I guess I just naturally kind of befriend them and tease them. And even if she's the most beautiful thing in the world, I'm just like normal, like I'm talking to anybody else. And my wife says, you know, you're a very flirty guy, you know that, don't you? I was like, really? She's like, yeah. It's like, you know, I don't mean to be. And I guess if I look at why it is I'm considered kind of a flirty, maybe some of that would be kind of— I don't know, negging's too hard of a term, but it's, you know, natural, normal teasing, not in a worshipy, just talking to a beautiful woman like she's anybody else type of thing. I think that's—
yeah, which is good, but the negging stuff is specifically on purpose designed to throw the woman off balance. So the women that are going to respond are the women that used to—
are used to getting treated like Well, there is a, there's a lot of material out there that you can read that appeals to a lot of those, back to the narcissistic CEO type guys, in, in the realm of, what's the word, negotiating and trying to get a sale or try to get a better deal from somebody and so forth, and power moves. And one of those power moves is to not be consistently as way the whole time, throw them a curveball every now and then.
Right.
And make them— throw them off balance and say, where's this guy coming from? And people that are in power naturally do that. One day you'll go in to visit the CEO and you leave going, oh my God, am I going to get fired tomorrow? And then the next day he makes you feel like his best friend. He always, always keeping you on your toes, always unsteady. So that doesn't necessarily— that dynamic doesn't necessarily apply just to romantic romantic relationships, you want to call it. That's kind of a very narcissistic ploy for any kind of human relationship.
And there's other— plenty of actually other good CEOs are just usually kind, you know, because they have enough power that they can be. And those are the ones that are more healthy. And I mean, the ones that manipulate grew up in a home where they got manipulated. It's just one-to-one correspondence. And then they're going to manipulate their kids and manipulate their wife and manipulate everybody. Howie asked you how to approach dating as a single father. I assume he asked you, he read one of your books.
Well, that's kind of a big, big picture question. How do you approach dating? I don't know, you approach dating the exact same way you would anytime. I always cringe when I hear guys that, um, there is a case to be made of you're an older guy or gal and you know what it is you want in life, and it's very healthy and secure to sit down with a potential partner and say, just so you know, I know this is my life plan for the next 15, 20, whatever years of my life that I have left. I want to get married again. No kids. I want to live in the country. I want to have a dog. And I want to— to me, maybe this is my avoidant side. If I sit down with somebody and say, hey, Alice, nice to meet you for coffee for the first time, and she starts up with that speech, I'm going to be like, check, please.
Boring. You want to get out. It seems very boring and rigid.
And it seems a little, to me, clingy, a little too like you just skipped to step 27 here. I just learned your name was Alice.
I always tell people not to do that long list of requirement shit.
That's to me— well, but in Alice's defense, it's, I'm secure, I know what I want, let's not beat around the bush here. If you're— why bother going down the road of getting to know each other if this is abhorrent to you, Mr. Date Man Possibility, you know, potential partner? I can see their— I can see their point of view, but it doesn't sit well with me. I'm with you on that. It always makes me cringe.
So yeah, it's control. Help you.
Don't lead with, I'm a dad of 3, I was divorced, I'm overcoming it, blah blah blah. It's just, I just want to get to know you and enjoy spending time with you, and if we click, then how about we go to the movie Saturday? Just, you know, who cares? And if it is, in the end, after 3 or 4 days, you're like, this isn't for me, then that's cool, not a big deal. Um, so yeah, um, I'm good at ironing. All right then.
You can lead with that on Tinder. That should be your subtitle. I'm good at ironing.
All right, well, I think we need to call her quits here.
A little late. All right, well, we'll plan something to do on YouTube or whatever, right? Yeah, Facebook. Facebook I will not do. It did not work. We would have to have so much practice. Yeah. All right, thanks, Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer. Have a good day.
Okay, Samantha, thank you. You have a good one. Bye. Bye-bye.
Talk to later. Bye-bye.
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