DSO Reacts: That Dead Bedroom Couple Video Everyone Keeps Sending Me

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. All right, this should be fun. A lot of people have been sending me this video clip. And why? Because it's a clip from a UK television show where a therapist, I assume, sits down with a couple, a married couple, and talks about their problems. In this particular couple, their particular problem is no activity in the bedroom, if you know what I mean. Ever since the new baby came into the picture, the Mrs. there doesn't even think about it anymore, and the Mr. there is beyond frustrated. And if you don't know, I wrote a book many years ago about this exact scenario. In fact, when watching this video, I had to smile and laugh to myself because these two are playing out a scenario that I spell out exactly in the book, almost word for word. It's kind of interesting, maybe even a little creepy, just how universal the human condition is. So much so that I can write a book and tens of thousands of men can email me to say, "Dude, do you have a camera in my house or something? This exact same thing happened to me word for word." This video here touched a nerve 'cause thousands of men watched it and said, "Oh my God, this is exactly my scenario." And thousands more women said, "Yep, I can relate to this woman completely." I thought I would watch the video, give my feedback, and maybe give a little advice to the couple for what it's worth and see what I think. So let's watch, shall we?

So has anything changed in your life since this little darling has arrived?

Oh, yes, totally. Absolutely. Yeah.

I mean—

Well, before the baby coming, right, we were at it like rabbits. It was just amazing. It was keeping me fit. It was brilliant. I love sex. I'm a pretty horny guy, do you know what I mean? Once our baby came, it's just boom, gone. You know, a man needs his needs, do you know what I mean? I do.

I get that. I think since having a child, I'm just exhausted. I work full-time. I come back home. I pick her up from nursery while he's working. I'm the one attending to her. I put her to bed. Last thing I want to do is just get frisky. And I think—

I'm gonna pause there. Um, this is the entirety of, as far as I can tell— we'll watch for the rest of the video— but as, as far as I can remember and as far as I can tell to this point, this is all this woman is talking about in terms of the work discrepancy the child work discrepancy between the two of them. So she says he's at work. She pointed that out, that he's working, and because he's working, she's the one who has the time to go pick up the kid from the nursery, as she says, and then bring the kid home and put the kid to bed. We don't know, was the husband home during all of this child-related work? Is he still at the office for whatever reason, or at the work site? But a lot of women watch this. If you look at the comments on this video, you can see it on Facebook and so forth. A lot of women said, well, there you go, he's not helping with the child in any way. There's, you know, Exhibit A, the number one reason for why there is this downturn in their physical intimacy, because she is exhausted. And why? Because he is not helping. Guys, we don't have enough to go on to jump to that conclusion. I'm sorry. Yes, he is giving the impression so far— not to jump all over this guy, but— and I don't want to base it just on a, you know, literal minute of video here and just what we see, but the impression is one of maybe he's not the most mature individual in the world. He does come across as a very youthful guy. He comes across as, uh, you know, he's got the full arm sleeve tattoos, he's got the man bun. He looks like kind of a a fun guy, a bad boy if you will. And she comes across as a much more conservative, mature, sedate type, and they seem to be clashing, at least at this point in their life. And I think taking all that into account, a lot of women are jumping to a lot of conclusions here and filling in a lot of blanks where there's none and saying, well, obviously this guy is not doing what he's supposed to do as far as childcare is concerned, or the work you know, revolving around the child. She takes on all of it. And so far, all we know is this woman said, I pick the kid up and I feed the kid and I put the kid to bed and I'm exhausted. Well, there's a lot of little in-between things there, isn't there? We don't know, number one, how old the kid is at this point. I'm assuming somewhat of a newborn, maybe less than a year old. So there's a lot of little things, and we don't know how much he is doing, if anything. If he's at work, if she is resenting him for being at work all the time, that we just don't know to this point. All we know is he's a very horny guy and he's not getting any.

Also, a lot to do with my sex drive going down is just since having a child, I am just not happy with my new body down there. Like, I've got extra skin. Like, I look at myself in the mirror and I just think to myself, this is not me. I just miss the way I looked before.

Yeah, but if I'm telling you that, you know, you look nice, you should just accept what I'm saying.

For me, I need to be confident within myself so I can look at myself like, I look fantastic, and that confidence would just naturally come out.

It does, yeah.

Like, I don't feel that, and that's what's stopping me from—

I do tell her, I do say, "Oh, Bub, you are so fit." Look at her, she's beautiful, and, you know, she's got some lovely bum. Babylons that I just love.

He loves them too much. It's just ridiculous.

Love the puppies.

But all right, first of all, that's a first for me— the babylons— when talking about boobs. I've never heard that one before. He says puppies, that's a common one in America, but babylons, not so much. So again, he does come across as a pretty youthful, dare I say somewhat immature, guy, you know, talking about her boobs and so forth. But I, I get what he's saying here, and it's very, very frustrating for men. Here is this wife who he's looking at, and by the way, she's an extremely attractive woman. I noticed she has the cleavage out, so there's somewhat of a sexy vibe to her. She's still very feminine creature, and she's not afraid to show it off. Good for her. And, um, he's saying, you know, you're as— you are as sexy as can be. I love it. I love your chest. I love this new, you know, shapely version of you post-baby and everything else. And she's just saying, yeah, I don't like me very much, sorry. And that's a big reason why I don't feel sexy and feel like doing it is because I don't like myself very much physically right now. Very, very frustrating for guys because the guy is saying, um, I can fix that. Watch, you're awesome, you're hot, you're beautiful, I love you. Oh my God, you're so sexy. And wife takes that all in basically and said, yeah, it means nothing, sorry. Oh, that's frustrating. We love our wives to death, we're just so lustful for them. We're gaga for them. And the wife's just like, yeah, but that doesn't really mean much to me, Mr. Husband. I think probably in part a lot of the women are saying, you just want to get in my pants. Let's be honest. That's why you're saying a lot of that. No, we're saying that because that's how we feel. Or, you know, I've been with you for years and years, dude. I hear this stuff all the time. It's just in one ear, out the other. It's just background noise to me at this point. It's how I feel about me. Well, how can we resolve that is what this guy's probably thinking. I tell you you're hot, you tell me no, I'm not. I'm kind of at an impasse here. What is it we can do to fix what's going on between your ears so you can see the reality that I see, that oh my gosh, you're beautiful? The overall message that we have to send to men is one of, um, motherhood completely transforms a woman. Completely. Uh, Wife 1.0 is dead. You now have Wife 2.0, and part of Wife 2.0 is, uh, her being a sexy creature just goes right out the door, and it takes a lot more work to drag that part of her out. It was very, very easy at the beginning, stages of the relationship, the dating stage, the honeymoon stage, whatever you want to call it, to bring that sexy side out of her. Uh, this guy, in his defense, as immature as he may come across in some ways, uh, he calls himself a horn dog and everything else, uh, part of that is his wife's fault in a way. Hear me out, because she has basically trained him to be this way. In essence, they have been hot and heavy all over each other, doing it like rabbits, as he says, for I would assume a period of months, if not years, together. So she has trained him that if you want to get this over-the-top doing it like rabbits porno type of behavior out of me, you just got to be you, Mr. Man Bun Tattooed, you know, looks like a graffiti artist kind of guy. I got a kind of have that urban, you know, vibe about him. Just be you, man, and I will reward you with over-the-top sexual behavior. Here you go. And he's like, great. And then suddenly everything changes. She has turned the page on that version of their life. Now they have a new, uh, new wife 2.0, a new life 2.0, post-baby. And no one ever sat him down to say That old game plan of yours of just walk in the door and be yourself ain't gonna cut it anymore, dude. You can throw all that out. It's a whole new game plan now. You can't lose who you are for sure. That's important. That's the guy she fell in love with. But as far as how to bring about the sexy, you got a lot of obstacles to overcome, and one of those is her own vision of herself, unfortunately. And you can't do much about that other than Keep doing what you're doing and reinforce the fact that she's a beautiful woman. Possibly help alleviate some of the work that she's taking on. Again, we don't know enough here, but based on what we're hearing, is he not doing anything? Is he in fact doing a lot around the house? Is he off to the office working 10 hours a day while she's working maybe a few hours a day? We don't know.

How important is it for you to have that level of activity increased?

Oh, very important. That connection of making love is what you— what is so important in a relationship.

I feel like I'm forever just either prepping Ocean's food or like using baby as an excuse again. No, I'm not. I'm not.

Okay, so right away she says it feels like I'm always doing this baby work, therefore it's hard for me to get in the mind space, the headspace of Miss Sexy. Here he is saying it's extremely important for me as the man to have that physical connection. And he's right, it's extremely important for both of them. It's just that she's out of that mindset right now. So that's not even— as far as the menu of things that I need as wife and mother right now, sexy time with husband is way down at the bottom of the list. Sometimes it's not even on the list at all. She doesn't even think about it. While he, it's at the very tippy-tippy top of the list. And so she tries to explain that discrepancy by Um, hey jackass, I'm doing a shit ton of work here for the kiddo. Now again, we don't know exactly what he's doing. So far we've heard pick up at the nursery while he's at work. So far we've heard feed the kid and put the kid to bed. Don't know exactly what he's doing, if anything, around the house. Uh, would like to know more information before jumping to conclusions, unlike some of you out there.

Do you realize that he was feeling dejected?

Not to that level, actually. I didn't. I mean, I knew— oblivious.

I knew You see how frustrated he is? Like, she's completely oblivious to the fact that, hello, we used to do it like rabbits and now all of a sudden we're not. Duh, of course I'm going to be frustrated and upset. It's a duh to you, dude, but not to her. Again, Wife 2.0 doesn't think of this. Wife 2.0 is thinking baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby. You know, if you had to hook up like a machine to her brain and so that the machine is able to verbalize what's going on in her head. If we did that to your head, dude, it would be sex, sex, food, uh, football, uh, sex, sex, sex, food, football, work, right? But for her, if we hook that same machine up to her head, it would be baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby. So dude, she's not thinking of this. It doesn't take much to deflect her and have her, her thought patterns always go to baby-centric stuff, which is what she's telling you. I'm preparing the food for baby. You come way down the line, dude. You need to realize that.

By the way, I didn't think he felt this deeply about it. I mean, for me, it's like, you know, if we don't have sex for a couple of weeks, it's just because, you know, our minds are not in it. Like, I thought he was on the same page as me.

Doesn't—

again, she's making the assumption that I feel these certain extreme baby-centric feelings that overwhelm and smother all the other feelings. I assumed he was on the same page as me. Just a very obvious disconnect between the two of them. And men and women both do this. I feel all these feelings and have all these repeated thoughts and everything. For men, it's, I'm always thinking of sex. I'm always remembering those awesome do-it-like-rabbit years that we had before. I assume that you have that mechanism within you too, wife, and it's just buried in there under the kids and stuff. But I assume I could just pull that out at any time just by, you know, grabbing your butt and saying your boobs look awesome. I thought that would be it, we'd be ready to go, you know, just like what we always did, what you have trained me to expect all these years, wife. And now suddenly you're saying you don't have that mechanism anymore? And wife is saying, I thought you were feeling this same feeling of overwhelming baby-centric mind thoughts that just, you know, wipe out everything else. You're saying that there's still just this very visceral, strong desire for sex, so much so that it's making you almost depressed over this? I had no idea.

It's a communication, because maybe we don't tell each other.

What's the longest that you haven't had sex?

Oh, in our relationship, long time. I think 6 months.

Was it 6 months? No, 6 months. I gave you something within 6 months. Like, that's ridiculous. Yeah, but maybe—

okay, this is really not good. First of all, he knows how long it's been. 6 months. He's probably right. Men are more acutely aware of the exact time frame. You know, I got guys that when I say, when's the last time, they're like, February 13th, 8 PM, 2 years ago. You know, they're able to tell me the exact day and time. But for her, again, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, when's the last time you had sex? She's like, ah, shit, I don't know. And when she hears the partner go, 6 months, she's, what? Nah, no way. That is— and I spelled this out in my book, The Dead Bedner Fix, check it out, Amazon, Apple Books, Audible— I spelled out the scenario in the book exactly word for word where the man says, you know, it's been— it's always the reaction from the women is always the same. What? No way it's been that long. They just, we're on two different planets, guys. They have no idea. For the men watching this, your woman has no idea. She knows in general that yes, probably because most of you have been whining about it or begging for sex, she knows that it's an important thing, but she doesn't know to what level. And she certainly doesn't have a calendar in her head like you do. And some of you guys have literal calendars on your computer where you've been marking off when you don't and spreadsheets and so forth. Some guys go to that. Degree of, uh, obsessiveness over this. But for the woman, no, not at all. And that is very, very frustrating for men, uh, that that is not as important to you as it is to me. What the hell? Because again, it sure seemed to be important to you for all those years pre-baby. That's what's frustrating.

Sex, like making love.

You don't make love.

That's really horrible. I don't make love. What the hell am I doing then?

Why are you screaming?

Why are you making these noises? What's that about? What's that? Do you know what I mean?

He doesn't. He just likes to get straight into it.

Okay, so she may have a point here with he's just jumping right into it. He doesn't do the slow boil of getting me in the mood and setting the tone and quote making love. He just humps her like a dog, just jumps right into it. And he's, he's hurt by this, to hear that. Probably again because I'm gonna keep harping on this. He has been trained over the years by her, hey, if you want me in that way, you know what you got to do. Literally walk in the door, grab me by the hand, throw me in bed, and we'll just go right at it. Um, that's that honeymoon sex. You two are just crazy for each other. And now she doesn't know how to verbalize it, but what she's telling him is, dude, That game plan is done. Throw that game plan out. It's going to take a lot more. You have to set the tone early in the day, throughout the day, one of love, one of partnership, one of help with the kiddo, one of all these other things. It's just to set the table, so to speak, for what is possible lovemaking at the end of the day. This whole thing of just wham bam thank you ma'am ain't gonna do it for me anymore. Maybe back then, younger pre-kid me, that was, that was the ticket. I really love that. But now, not so much. And that is— look at his, uh, he's— his, uh, his body language. He's frustrated, like, goddamn it, I don't know what to do here.

I want her to be spontaneous. I want her to be like, grab me sometimes, you know what I mean?

This is every man's desire. I want her to desire me every now and then. Damn it, is that so hard? I want it to be spontaneous. He wants to walk in the door and she drags him into the bedroom because she can't get enough of him. Every man's fantasy. Well, where would he get this kind of fantasy? Again, early stages of the relationship, that's where. Because she used to do it before and he grew accustomed to it. He's been trained to expect it, and now he's not getting it anymore, and he's extremely frustrated. He wants his drug back because that is flat out addictive. So this is an illustration of what a lot of guys call the old bait and switch. What a lot of men think is that this young lady here actually, in essence, put on a show in those early pre-kid years of being a lustful sexual creature And now that she has the marriage and kids and he, quote, can't go anywhere, she drops that act. And now she can show her true, her true self, which is somewhat sexless, doesn't really like him in that way. That's what a lot of men internalize this as, that she put the bait of sexual her out there. And then as soon as he grabbed it, she pulled it away and said, you know, psych, I was just kidding. Now you can't go anywhere. Now you have a baby. Now I'm going to destroy you in divorce court and so forth. Now you're just gonna have to live with it. Um, I'm sure that happens from time to time. That is not the norm, guys. I know you think it is, but no, it is not. What is happening here, you're watching Mother Nature at work. The natural order of things is go crazy, procreate, make baby. Husband, sperm boy, your job is done now that you've The baby is taken care of. Mom and baby are their own little entity there. She's able to care for the baby completely from A to Z. You are no longer needed. And her body is saying, you can let this one go, let this guy go, let him go out and do this whole mating dance with additional women. And his body is saying, your job is supposed to be mating and making more babies. Why aren't you doing this? This, what we're seeing, is a very natural progression. But we as a society have laid on top of this natural animalistic instinct, this caveman stuff of ours, this institution called marriage. So we have this blanket of marriage on top of all of this foundational caveman stuff, and we're complaining that it's not working quite right in our minds as men, that, hey, I put this institution of marriage in place here, that's supposed to solve all of that caveman stuff. No, it doesn't. It takes work, and I'll get into that more here in a bit. It takes work on both your parts, and especially on the woman's part, to overcome all those natural instincts. And she's not doing it, and he's certainly not doing stuff in the right way either. They're the— they need to put their hand on the wheel and control this car because it's going out of control and it's going to spin right off the road into into divorce territory if they don't watch it.

Boom. And just do something that I'm like, oh, I wanna like, I don't know, come in and then I've got like these rose petals I gotta follow up the stairs.

You know, maybe in the evening when we're watching TV or something, and I'll just kind of like sit next to him on the sofa and just wear some sexy lingerie. I'll try and be spontaneous. I know he likes that and he enjoys that. He's just a horny devil. He wants it all the time.

But okay, so If I'm understanding correctly, I wasn't sure what he was talking about with the rose petals and stuff like that. Is he saying that he's trying to woo her and be romantic and do things? Good for him. But for a lot of women, if this is a consistent pattern and she feels very pressured, it's gonna shut her down even more, which is very, very frustrating to a lot of guys. He's like, look, I'm putting on the romance act. And the woman's like, oh God, here we go. And she says there, she does things like if you're sitting on the couch watching TV, she'll come in with her lingerie and sit next to him. Kudos to her. This is great. But it sounds like that's a pretty rare thing if it's been 6 months in between sessions, as he claims, which he's probably right. But when she does this, I hate for her language to be— because I know that's something that he likes. It's, uh, I get it. But she needs to frame it and put herself more in the mindset of, this is for us, this is reconnection time, this is our sexy time, this is fun time. Fun is missing from this equation here. These are two people not having fun together, and that's what they need to do. And she keeps reframing it as this, I know he likes this, so I do this. And then she goes on to, he wants it all the time, but I don't have that in me sometimes. And it's tough. And this is a slippery slope that she's going down here, one of reframing everything as he is the, uh, the nag and the guy who was always wanting something that she is frankly kind of repulsed by the idea. She doesn't even think about it. She's like, oh God, here we go again. He just wants it all the time. And You can't frame it in that way. Again, the car's going off the road. You need to make some corrections here.

I don't necessarily have that in me.

Okay, so that's the end of the video. It was a good one, and it was pretty illustrative of a common marital situation for, dare I say, the vast majority of people, which is man once continued vibrant, active sex life that he had grown accustomed to. And as I say, he's been trained to expect all these years. And wife says, "Nah, I think I'm over that." Frustrating. So what can they do? Guys, again, read my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix. I wrote it for a reason. I've sold so many copies for a reason. It really resonates with a lot of guys. It is not the solution for 100% of men by any means. I'm not going to oversell it and say it's this miracle or whatever, but it is a game plan that for a lot of guys in certain situations and certain marriages report back and say, this is it. For others in more dysfunctional relationships where there's mental health and other things involved, it may not be the solution for you. It sounds like, if listening to these guys, it would be the solution for this guy. He needs to reframe things. He needs to understand where she's coming from and empathize better with her. Yes, he needs to chip in more if in fact he's not doing his part around the house in terms of baby care and all other stuff. Yes, he needs to do more, with the caveat that washing baby bottles, preparing foods, changing diapers is not an aphrodisiac. These things, dude, will not get you laid. Ladies, you need to stop framing it in that way. If you don't like tit-for-tat kind of sex play, chore play, and so forth— if man washing dishes and then going to you and saying, huh, now can we do it? That's obviously a turn-off. But again, why would he think that? Why would he do that? Because, drum roll, you've trained him to think that way. He comes to you and says, "Me want more sex," and wife says, "I'm exhausted, it'd be nice if you did more work." Our little dumb man brains interpret that as doing chores equals more sex. So he does more chores, and he comes to you saying, "Now sex?" Again, you got to tell this guy, "That doesn't equal sex necessarily. What it equals is respect from me, because when I'm doing all this work and I see you sitting on the couch watching TV, playing video games, or so forth, that actually knocks my respect down for you. I need a more, more mature partner." That is one of the many building blocks that come together, pieces of the puzzle that come together to form a more sexy wife. It's not the be-all and end-all. It's not every piece. Not every piece says chore on it. A few pieces do. So what do I suggest for this couple is the question. A lot more open and honest communication. Uh, read my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, for the guy. For the woman, suggest you go to therapy or meet with some type of sex therapist, someone who is sex positive. That will help you break down walls and do things that will allow you to allow your responsive desire to come out. Responsive desire is something that is most common in women that are in marriages. And that is, I don't necessarily think about it all day long like he does. But once we get in the act and we get going, then I feel it. And then I'm like, oh yeah, that's why I love him and why we do this. This is great. This is fun. This feels awesome. But guys, sure as shit, as soon as that's done, there is that post-glow moment, but it doesn't take long for that brain to once again start going, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby. We're just totally different creatures. We have to respect that, man. Again, this is something that we need to sit these young men down and explain, to say, oh, you're thinking about having a kid? Let me tell you what to expect. Let me tell you how the game plan changes. Let me tell you how the complete tone of your relationship is going to change. 'Let me tell you how she's going to change. This is what you need to expect.' Unfortunately, um, it sounds a little conspiratorial, but I think why we don't have that type of conversation with young men in part is because I think we know if we sat down, uh, let's say 100 men, and gave that speech to them, uh, at a young horny dude stage of their life Let's say you sit down a 23-year-old guy who's in the peak of his sexuality and he's just, you know, ready to go at a moment's notice. The wind blows right and he has an erection. Those type of guys. If you sit those guys down and say, hey, you think about having a kiddo? Yeah, eventually. Well, let me tell you what's in store for you. Those young men out of 100, probably like 89 of them would say, nah, no marriage for me, thank you. That's how important that is, ladies. Believe it or not, yes, they would throw out an entire institution if it means they're not getting their physical needs met. That is basically why we're here on this planet, let's be honest. But we need to have that conversation with guys repeatedly throughout every stage of their life. If you're looking to do this long-term monogamy, marriage, kids thing, here's what to expect. And follow up to that, but it's not a hopeless endeavor. There are things you can do. It just takes work. That's the problem. And it takes a lot of work. It takes arguably more work on the man's part, a different type of work on the woman's part, which is breaking down boundaries for the woman. And for men, it's changing expectations and changing game plan to get what it is you so desperately want. Because again, we've put on top of this very animalistic caveman instinct that we have this blanket called long-term monogamy and marriage. And it's not necessarily a natural fit. They don't click together like two Lego pieces. They're at odds with each other. It's like two magnets that are flipped around. You ever try to, you know, flip the magnet and they— you can't put them together? It's kind of like marriage and our natural instincts. And it's a constant struggle to keep them near each other and on top of each other. You have to put in that work or else the whole thing again just collapses and you go off the road into a smoking fiery pile of rubble. It's no good.